Extended Cultures Discussion

[CaesarVincens]

Extended Cultures is a full modification based on XGM designed to bring a richer gameplay experience through expansion of factions' cultural identities. Extended Cultures will work with the RTW.exe, BI.exe, or Alex.exe.

Extended Cultures is now a fully mod-foldered, self contained mod. You no longer have to install XGM first.

In Extended Cultures, I've tried to give each major cultural group its own colony and barracks; in addition I am trying to add more depth to each faction. Each groups' colony has requirements which fit the faction, for example, the Carthaginians' colony requires a port for the higher levels.

I recommend reading the installation instructions and version history after downloading.

Extended Cultures

You can download the latest version of Extended Cultures here.

You can find the read-me and version history here.


Gameplay Info
Here is a list of major gameplay changes:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Buildings:
New faction specific colonies (Rome, Carthage, Saba, Iberia, Thrace, Scythia)
All colonies (except Punic) have a levy type unit available to most factions other than their own.
New faction specific barracks (Carthage, Saba, Iberia, Thrace, Scythia)
Circle of Elders (academy-like building) (Gaul, Celts, Germania)
Third Level Farms (all with paved road present)
Foundry (all with iron present at huge city)
Huge cities have been restricted to certain provinces.
Paved roads, highways, and Higher level farms get a small law bonus now.
A garrison building that increases public order
The Amber Road, from the Baltic to the Adriatic.

With the Marian reforms the Barbarian factions gain many new buildings, and there is one other building all factions get.
Fourth level auxiliary barracks, with customary mercenary troops
Paved Roads (barbarians, except Scythia)
Pantheon level temples (barbarians)
Odeon (Thrace)
Hippodrome (Scythia)
Catapult Range (Scythia, this is changed from XGM)
Second level mines (Iberia, Gauls)
Foundry (with iron present at huge city)

Traits and ancillaries:
New triggers for Circle of Elders
New ancillaries and triggers for the garrison building tree
New trait "Loves 'Culture'" which forms a triad with the existing "Hates" and "Fears" traits.

Campaign:
New native culture buildings
New "Player's" Monument; it does nothing, but looks exactly like the AI monument.

Please tell me what you think of Extended Cultures and if there is anything you think should be included.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to post them.

[CaesarVincens]

Would anyone be interested in seeing a XC basic? It would be just new colonies and barracks, no other changes to the base game. I'd make a Ethnic Traits compatible version as well.
I'd support that in addition to the regular XC.

[Zarax]

That would be easier to implement as part of XGM CV, not everybody likes the other changes...

[LucretiusTC]

Would anyone be interested in seeing a XC basic? It would be just new colonies and barracks, no other changes to the base game. I'd make a Ethnic Traits compatible version as well.
I'd support that in addition to the regular XC.

I think most of the players would be easier to accept moderate changes, and those Civilized Factions should have certain advantages comparing to the Barbarians. Besides we shouldn´t exaggerate the cultural impact of the Marian reforms to the gameplay. Surely the Barbarians understood the meaning of the better weapons, but I would be doubtful if they had been equally interested to build and govern huge cities. As we know for instance the Celts were non literate culture whose literature and history were preserved through oral tradition, and the written records about their lives are the texts left by the Greek and Roman authors, not themselves.

If we give everything to everybody, there´s a danger that various Factions become too similar to each other on the campaign level...:hmmm:


Luc.

[Suppanut]

I really the supporter to cultural impact and better barbarian city improvement since I don't really believe in accuse any people for barbarism after all as that term filled with political agenda of the one who use it. They may have different culture but no one high or lower than others in term of culture, only just in pseudo term of civilization that invent to created hiearchy in eye of user of term. We can made city function in different way but made each cultures not par or equivalent is quite look down to that kind of people.

[CaesarVincens]

Lucretius, I'm not trying to make everyone similar; in fact now I'm trying to find ways to make them more different, I've already started in 2.2.3.

I'm only tying the Barbarian reforms to the Marian reforms because of the hard coded aspect of the game, and the fact that I don't want to use scripts like EB.

If this were Empire Total War, with its tech tree aspect I'd do things differently.

And if a large majority truly disliked the Barbarian fifth level cities and other buildings, I'd remove them from XC.

Anyway, I do support adding XC to XGM 5.8, since it is simple and complete.

[LucretiusTC]

I really the supporter to cultural impact and better barbarian city improvement since I don't really believe in accuse any people for barbarism after all as that term filled with political agenda of the one who use it. They may have different culture but no one high or lower than others in term of culture, only just in pseudo term of civilization that invent to created hiearchy in eye of user of term. We can made city function in different way but made each cultures not par or equivalent is quite look down to that kind of people.

When we think about the ancient times, we shoudn´t exaggerate the speed of change for instance when it comes to technology. When this game starts around 280 BCE, and if the Marian reforms happens e.g. 100 BCE, that is only about 200 years. Even when the Roman Empire and the Germanic tribes lived next to each other for the centuries, the Germans didn´t adopt all the civilized inventions that were used by the Romans, and they remained as non literate culture. For some reason they didn´t start to build big cities in the middle of Germania. Besides I use the term Barbarian here as a collective term to those certain non literate cultures in this game.

Luc.

[CaesarVincens]

I'm trying to add requirements to most if not all the colonies past the first level and am looking for some suggestions. Right now only Carthage and Saba have any requirements, a port for Carthage and either a port building or a appropriate market for Saba to reflect their sea empire/trade empire status.
Also Scythia can't build more than the first level colony outside barbarian lands, since I don't think they ever really settled down outside the steppes.

So more ideas anyone? I was thinking maybe having the barracks for the Greek factions.

[Suppanut]

I think building requirement for colony of each culture should cultural building which really icon of their cultures or factions such as...

Roman = Highway or Baths
All Greek faction except GCS/Indy Greek = Academy(not barrack as barrack have colony as requirement in itself)
GCS/Indy Greek = Port
Barbarian = Tavern/Bardic Circle
Persian = Execution Square or Paved Road

etc.

[CaesarVincens]

I would do the GCS as a I did Carthage and Saba, but I don't think I can code it that complexly without a new tree, but the Academy is good.

But what I would have done for the Barracks is have the third level barrack be the requirement for the second level colony, and so on.

[Suppanut]

When we think about the ancient times, we shoudn´t exaggerate the speed of change for instance when it comes to technology. When this game starts around 280 BCE, and if the Marian reforms happens e.g. 100 BCE, that is only about 200 years. Even when the Roman Empire and the Germanic tribes lived next to each other for the centuries, the Germans didn´t adopt all the civilized inventions that were used by the Romans, and they remained as non literate culture. For some reason they didn´t start to build big cities in the middle of Germania. Besides I use the term Barbarian here as a collective term to those certain non literate cultures in this game.

Luc.

Thanks for enlighten me, Luc. But I still hate idea to be discriminated peoples into superior civilized and inferior barbarian culture but ignore its people potential. Some of peoples which regarded by mod as barbarians are have potential to develop huge city(based on 24,000 population in game mechanism) for sure are Iberian(like Tudentani, if they are not become loser by Roman) and Thrace. Gauls also have potential and complex society/culture which possible to developed it. Scythia also have some chance if we like to count late hybrid-culture of Bosphoran as partly-steppe people. I'm quite sure that it quite too far for germans to build huge city by itself but I think they could possibly develop huge city captured from other so called "civilized" factions but if other so called barbarian can why should germans can't do in game mechanism?

[CaesarVincens]

Well, if we consider that Rome TW scales down population levels along with unit amounts, (as I should think Rome had well more than 10000 or so in 280 BC; more later too)
Very few cities should ever become huge, but that's the way it goes in most mods.

[DimeBagHo]

The barbarians did of course have the potential to build cities on the scale of Rome, it just took another 500 years or so, and there are good reasons for that. Maintaining urban populations of half a million or more required highly sophisticated engineering and economic arrangements - aqueducts, sewers, roads, granaries and grain shipments on a huge scale, and that sort of thing couldn't be done without schooled engineers, advanced mathematics, and lots and lots of scribes.

The population numbers in Rome are, more or less, supposed to represent available manpower in a region - rather than the general population of a settlement - and as CV says the numbers are scaled down by about 1:10. As a rough rule you should think of a region with a population of 24,000, as representing 240,000 men available for military service, and perhaps a total population of around 1,000,000 people.

[Whiskeyjack]

I agree with Dime, and in all honesty i would prefer it if only a few cities could reach huge city size even for civilized factions.

[CaesarVincens]

That's doable using hidden_resources.

[Archbaker]

If we make it so that only cities like Rome or Alexandria can become huge cities, I do not think it will be a problem to allow barbarians to upgrade them or to build a few level 5 structures—I am not sure if they need to get much new on the fifth level beyond the ability to keep large populations happy, though.

Apart from this scenario, I agree that huge cities for the barbarians is not something that belongs in XGM proper.

[Webba]

If you use hidden resources to restrict where huge cities can be developed wouldn't it really mess up civil order levels in lot of places? The population would still be rising well past 24000 but there would be serious squalor and no new buildings to counteract that. It would require some widespread adjusting of population growth rates, right?

[Zarax]

We already adjusted growth rates, the problem now is that we also put a boost to small towns which offsets it.
I corrected this in my slow mod and now cities stay small and grow slow.

[Webba]

Well in that case I fully agree with Archbaker. As long as the factions are kept nice and diverse.

This is probably really stupid of me but I can't find the XC file to download, just the basic one. Where can I get this?

[Suppanut]

Maybe we should add something like these lines to cap city at level 4 to have growth rate about 0 or less if not set tax to low tax rate.

        proconsuls_palace requires factions { barbarian, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian, greek, roman, }
        {
            capability
            {
                population_growth_bonus bonus -4 and not hidden_resource huge_city
                population_health_bonus bonus -4 and not hidden_resource huge_city

and

        imperial_palace requires factions { carthaginian, eastern, egyptian, greek, roman, } and hidden_resource huge_city
        {
            capability
            {
                population_health_bonus bonus -4 and not hidden_resource huge_city

Then you will no need to fear that city would grow beyond large city if you not force them to be(which not so wise idea to do).

Do health bonuses effect on chance to get random plague in cities? If yes then would be good as overcrowd city should have a load of chance to received plague event