APOLYTON EXTRACIVS PACK.

[MarkG]

Gramphos seems to have managed to have 21 civs to choose from!
See http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=31391 for details

He says the max is probably 32!

This mean that we ought to start making the Apolyton ExtraCivs Pack containing the 16 civs from the poll!

Of course there is plenty of work on final decisions of leaders, city names, special abilities(we cant talk about special unit yet, the issue of unit graphics have not be solved yet), etc for these 16 civs


Locutus, will you be our project manager?

[Wernazuma III]

if only some creative guy could make custom leader animations

[monolith94]

Why do you have to have leader animations? What's wrong with leader portraits?

[Stefu]

Well! What are we waiting for? We need threads, we need design! There have been "Expansion Civs Explained" threads, which seem to have concentrated on histories of civs: We need "Expansion Civ Workshop" threads, where all the small details can be really hammered out. Some person to find good pictures off the web - and if he's a real wiz he'll even animate them good - some people to make city lists, another to make leader lists, and of course, suggestions for leaders, UUs, CSAs, anything! Perhaps polls where this stuff can be voted on?

[Ecthy]

Yeah, if we have the technical ability t odo so, then we shouldn't hesitate and immediately start working on the pack

Personally I'm incompetent to draw things, I would like to deal with some unique units workshop though, just stuff like historical examination etc etc., which also ncludes leader names etc... but then, those things have been widely suggested in the relevant "civs explained" threads, though I think ther still has to be some finishing work done

[Wernazuma III]

I won't propose further custom civ properties without having the game. We should at leat wait until we "euros" actually have the game.

[LoD]

Wernazuma III: A lot of civ properties (leader, cities, capital etc.) can be decided on without any knowledge of the game mechanics. Same with the civ attributes - they should correspond to what the civ actually represents, and which combination makes it more powerful.
The only problem would be the unique unit parameters, but we can always make a new version of the pack if any problems would arrise.

As an "euro" (actually an "end of the world euro", if you know what I mean MarkG ) I say let's go and do it!!!

LoD

[Locutus]

Originally posted by MarkG
Locutus, will you be our project manager?

Oooh, Gramphos? I think I finally figured out what my next 'great project' will be

I think that would indeed be a very good idea, Markos, and I am willing to once again sacrifice many hours of my spare time to manage it , presuming noone else wants the job...

Wernazuma,
I agree with you that while the Europeans and the rest of the world don't have the game yet it's not too good an idea to decide on implementation details yet: without having played the game it's hard to say what the 'feel' of the existing civs is and how all things are balanced out. However, we can make some general decisions: which civs should be included (that's what we've been doing for the last 2 months or so), what type of graphics we need, etc. We can also use the 'Expansion Pack Civs Explained' threads to make suggestions for the implementation details of the new civs, without actually making decisions yet (that's what we've been doing for the last few weeks or so). I'll take a few weeks before all the decision making for this pack is done, so I don't think we should actually wait two weeks before doing anything.

All,
If we do this, I propose we do this one step at a time. First and foremost we need to figure out how many civs exactly can be added to the game. Gramphos, is your claim that the total will be 32 based on any factual information you got from the files or is it basically a wild guess based on the fact that 32 is such a nice number? (Why not more then 32?)

While Gramphos and others (who actually have the game) are figuring out the exact number of civs we can add safely, we should start to determine if we're happy with the existing 16 civs. I know there are people on this forum (including yours truly) who would very much like to make some changes in those. We should decide if any changes are desired for this Apolyton ExtraCivs Pack (perhaps we should come up with a better name for it too, any thoughts?) and if so, which ones. For now I propose we poll the following issues:

- Should the Zulu be replaced/removed?
- Should the Iroquois be replaced/removed?
- English vs Brittish
- Do modern Civs that are former European colonies (USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil, etc) 'deserve' to be in?

(I'll take the liberty of starting polls on the above issues in a few minutes.)

Also, should we also mess around with individual properties of various existing civs? Should we change city lists if we feel their quality isn't up to our standard? (FE it always bothered me that Civ1 and Civ2 didn't have Emerita Augusta (aka Merida) on the Roman city list - it was for a long time the 5th most important city of the Roman Empire - while Curia AFAIK wasn't even a city!) Should we change the Unique Units (FE the Chinese UU: some may wish to rename it, some may wish to replace it with a crossbowman of some sort and give the (renamed) Rider to some other civ)? Do we feel any of the leaders need to be changed? Should we mess around with the CSAs, either because we don't like the existing choices or because we want to balance things out better with the new civs? What are people opinions on these issues? BTW, we should also figure out if it's possible to add new CSAs to the game and decide on the details of these (recent polls already showed that 'Seafaring' and 'Agricultural' have a lot of support). Perhaps we shouldn't decide on specific situations yet, not while Europe and the rest of the world still don't have the game yet, but we certainly can discuss if we want to change these things at all and make some suggestions for possible changes.

The above issues are based on concerns of Apolytoners posted in this forum in the past. I don't know how widespread these concerns are (maybe some are only held by 1 or 2 individuals) and I don't know how many people would actually want to see these issues fixed in this particular mod. Those are the reasons for polling in the first place, so please don't flame me for accusing the Americans or Iroquois of (not) being a real civ or wanting to foul Sid's work or whatever. If others have ideas for other things to poll, I'd love to hear them of course.

Once we've made some important decisions regarding the existing civs, we should decide which civs should be added to the expansion pack. We'll mainly have to decide whether or not certain civs should be merged together or not. For example, many people have voted for a SE Asian civ but some have voted for the Khmer, some for the Thai, some for the Annam, some for the Hmong, etc. We should decide if (and how) these civs should be merged to a single civ that represents all these (ala Babylon/Sumer/Akkad/etc) or if we should leave them for what they are. The same goes for Oceanian civs, various African civs, Native American tribes, Latin American countries, Scandinavia and perhaps a few others. Until now I deliberately tried as much as possible to keep this stuff open for Firaxis to decide but if we're gonna make a mod ourselves we'll have to decide on these issues ourselves as well of course. IMHO only once we've made all necessary decisions here and decided on which (32?) civs should be included in our mod we can start deciding on the 'implementation details' of each civ (leader, UU, generals, CSAs etc). As Wernazuma suggested, it might be a good idea to wait with dissusing these sort of implementation issues until the Europeans actually have the game as well (though suggestions can already be made in the 'Expansion Pack Civs Explained' threads), but LoD also has a point that many of these issues don't really have much of an impact on gameplay or balance.

Once every nitty griddy, teny tiny, dirty little detail has been decided upon the mod can actually be made. Because making all the necessary graphics for this mod could turn out to be a humungous job, discussion and work on this should IMHO be started now, independently from the rest of the process described above. Issues to discuss are: should we use fan-made animated leaders (ala the existing civs), presuming fans can make these, or just portraits ripped from the Internet (or something else altogether)? If we rip portraits, should we only give these to the extra civs or should the animations of the existing leaders be replaced with portraits as well? Is it already possible to start working on unit graphics? Should these be 1-facing (ala Civ2), 5-facing (ala Civ3 - I think), animated, unanimated, etc? Do we use the existing 5 cultural styles or do we wish to add new ones (and if so, which ones)? Can we add cultural styles at all? What kind of graphics are involved? What other issues do we need to decide upon in terms of graphics? Do we need new sounds? Where do we need these? What is possible, what is practical? We can and IMHO should start discussing these issues right here and now.

Once the important 'graphical' decisions have been made and if it turns out that there is a lot of work involved in the graphics (and there are actually people willing and able to do this work), work on the graphics should IMHO start ASAP. Even if we still haven't decided yet if the Iroquois should be in our mod, it's quite obvious that the Spanish and the Mongols definitely should be. So work on the graphics for these civs can begin as soon as the 'graphical' decisions have been made (if necessary some polls should be started to determine for what leader and UU exactly graphics should be made for these civs). By the time the most 'obvious' graphics have been created hopefully we'll also have made some decisions regarding the rest of the civs and accompanying graphics.

This is the process for making this mod as I propose it. It's certainly not written in stone so if people disagree with any part I'd love to hear about it. Note that I don't have the game yet and I'm not sure when I'll get it (might be much later than the 16th: I don't plan on paying $50 for a game that's as incomplete as Civ3 is out-of-the-box and that can't be modded the way I want to mod it), so we should assume that the project manager of this mod (presuming that that will be my role) will never actually have a copy of the game. I can only manage the whole process, I can't actually make the mod myself. Others who do have the game will have to actually implement the decisions that are made by us all.

[Locutus]

WTF? Is there a limit on the number of polls a day I can post or something? I was only able to post 1 poll (English vs British).

Maybe others could help me by posting these other polls for me?



Edit: polls have been posted. Some really weird sh*t going on here: I could only post 1 poll this afternoon but had no problems posting three a few minutes ago. Anyway, here are the URLs:

Iroquois and Native Americans - thanks adaMada (and Markos - I think )
Zulus and Africa
America and Mexico
England and Britain

Contribute to the Apolyton ExtraCivs Pack and vote!

[Ribannah]

Originally posted by Locutus
Poll: What should we do with the Iroquois?
- Don't touch them, how dare you challenge Sid's wisdom?! They're perfect the way they are...
- Bah, I hate 'em! Remove them altogether (more room for new civs)
- Iroquois, Schmiroquois! Bring back the Sioux!
- The Iroquois are nice but the Inuit/Apache/[insert your favourite tribe] would be even better
- Merge all American Indian tribes together and call them Native Americans (or whatever)
- Other (please post suggestions)
- Banana

In their Golden Age, the Iroquois were the main power in the region. The Sioux nor any other tribe north of Mexico ever got close. The only other tribe to gain ground after European contact were the Navaho, as far as I know.
I would like to have all Iroquois leaders and towns and UU to be REAL Iroquois leaders and towns and UU though - but as I don't have the game yet, I don't know how bad things are. This should be easy enough to accomplish.

The 'Native Americans' had no country, and they wouldn't leave room for the
'Foreign Americans'. It wouldn't do to dump the Americans, however, since everybody would ask: who built all these wonders?

The Zulus rate lower than Ethiopia or Nubia but with 32 slots soon available (great job, Gramphos!), who cares.

[adaMada]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32360

-- Apolyton ExtraCivs Pack: Iroquois


my contrabution to Locutus's fine effort -- I hope I did it all right .

Cheers!

-- adaMada

PS: For the other people posting these polls, post here and say what you posted so we can be sure to not double-post any.

[heardie]

I would be willing to help out on units. Would convert CTP2 units if can be done.

[Locutus]

Ribannah,
As you probably figured out yourself, I mentioned the Sioux as an option because they were in Civ2. I mentioned Native Americans as an option because this was suggested by others and because they were in CtP. Personally I wouldn't want to change the Iroquois but it's not my call to make...

From what I've seen now I highly doubt the Iroquois will be 'pure'. I think I saw some non-Iroquois city names in screenshots and IIRC the UU is a horseman (and thus not Iroquois). I assume you advocate changing these properties if they are not purely Iroquois? I know I do anyway...

As for the Africans: don't be too sure. We don't know yet how many civs can be added without causing bugs. Until Gramphos et al had more time to test, we should assume this number lies anywhere between 0 and 65536 (although I don't plan on using every slot if the number is actually that high ). Perhaps it turns out that only 8 civs can be added, that would leave all other Africans out...

Thanks once again for posting that poll, adaMada

heardie,
Great, very good to hear that I thought about CtP units as well but I see 2 mayor problems:
(1) We AFAIK can't convert standard game units to Civ3 graphics, only fanbased units (and even that only if the modmakers allow us access to their original non-sprite graphics)
(2) Civ3 units and CtP units have *very* different styles. It would probably be butt-ugly having both types next to each other...



Heck, in my enthousiasm I forgot to give my own opinion on the issues that I raised in my own post Here they are after all.

Changing existing civs: I think we should look at these very critically and esp. when it doesn't require new graphics (or old graphics can be reused somehow) change everything that's not to our liking. As far as this is concerned, I have very little respect for Firaxis' work (in every other way I worship them of course ). If they screwed up big-time in our eyes, we should not be shy of a complete revamp, at least in the non-graphical areas (city names, CSAs, leaders). How much changing we make in the graphics should IMHO depend on how many artists volunteer to work on this mod. If possible I think we should add 3 or 4 new CSAs (presuming we can have at least 23 civs total).

Merging civs: I think some civs from geographically the same area could be merged, most notably the Mali/Ghana/Songhai and SE Asian civs. Perhaps the Polynesians and Aboriginese and other Oceanians as well. The merged civ should IMHO carry the name and properties of the civ with the most votes (Mali, Khmer, Polynesia) but have the # of points of all combined (corrected for double votes). This way some (mainly non-Western) civs that currently just don't cut it but which many feel should somehow be represented can be included after all.

Graphics: I think we should aim for the highest possible quality for units and city style and such (if it can be changed). If we don't have enough artists, quality for leader animations can be sacrificed by just used portraits from the web. The units should at least be 5-facing (perhaps better known as '3D'), preferably animated. If some are animated and others not, I don't think that's a problem. Leader graphics should be consistent though: either all portraits or all animations.

Anyway, that's all just my opinion. I'd love to hear others...

[Gramphos]

The BICs has a limit of 32 spots for civs. One is however used by the Barbarians, which makes it possible to add 15 new civs. I don't know how the game reacts to this.

[Locutus]

Okay, thanks for the info, Gramphos. We'll assume for now that 15 extra civs are possible (certainly no more).