The Historical Fantasia: After the Flood

[DSMyers1]

Is there a way to get countries like Elsiha for example to stop sprading over all continents and focus on only one?

The AI file should take care of that, but for some reason Elishah and Rangpur went wild this game.

 

[unmerged(18239)]

The AI file should take care of that, but for some reason Elishah and Rangpur went wild this game.

The newer version copes better with this problem.

That's nice because with my Roman game Europe became some sort of checkerboard.

 

[Boshko]

I've finished making experimental vassal files in which option A only frees one vassal and its set so that vassal events can't fire after nation foundation events and I've done a hands-off game up to the 1730s.

There was massive fragmentation in the beginning and then things slowly consolidated. There was a good bit of fluctuation and rise and fall of powers, but with the vassal events usually only firing once and with gobs of bad boy not being handed out, it probably isn't as hectic as the other version and in general, after the initial wave of colonization, the general eb and flow is more similar to Vanilla EU II. I think I can spice things up a bit by copying and pasting and changing the event number around so that the vassal events fire twice, thus shaking things up a bit.

If anyone wants to take a look at the altered vassal events I wrote, I'd be happy to email them out.

Also, I'm thinking of changing tech effects to make it a bit harder to build the larger fortresses, it got a bit annoying having Scythians have large fortresses all over the place and would make the game more fluid and free up more money for colinization.

And the distribution of revolters needs to be shifted. In Sub-Saharan Africa there is only Ghana I believe, which seems way on the short side as it allows northerners to build up big colonial empires in africa undisturbed. Others that need to be added are perhaps one or two more in the neglected bits of Siberia and the Uzbek region. Also, as I can see on your map, big Russian Empires seem to be the rule so maybe another revolter in the Russian region should be added, same goes for maybe something in the Serbia/southern Hungary region, and there seems to be a strip of Europe running from Belgium through central Germany that seems to be pretty short on revolters (or maybe the Dorians were able to colonize a massive swath in that region in my game after the revolters had set themselves up).

I've been converted to liking the massive number of revolters in the Mid-east (although the overlapping ones like Assyria and Nimrod could be yanked) but a lot of revolter tags could be freed up from the Americas which seems a bit over-populated with them (especially the Andean area) for a pretty peripheral area. The Indus river area could also perhaps get culled a bit...

In general in more peripheral areas like Africa and the Americas it might be a good idea to set up revolter tags with nice big spreads of potential territories to keep it at least a little tough to build un far-flung colonial empires in the emptier bits of the maps, without using up so many tags in places like the Andes.

Hmmmm, one more easy thing. Why not give +6 colonists in the nation set up event. Gotta do something to give the countries what go independent and then sit there and don't colonize for decades a bit of a push.

 

[unmerged(18239)]

And the distribution of revolters needs to be shifted. In Sub-Saharan Africa there is only Ghana I believe, which seems way on the short side as it allows northerners to build up big colonial empires in africa undisturbed. Others that need to be added are perhaps one or two more in the neglected bits of Siberia and the Uzbek region. Also, as I can see on your map, big Russian Empires seem to be the rule so maybe another revolter in the Russian region should be added, same goes for maybe something in the Serbia/southern Hungary region, and there seems to be a strip of Europe running from Belgium through central Germany that seems to be pretty short on revolters (or maybe the Dorians were able to colonize a massive swath in that region in my game after the revolters had set themselves up).
.

Bakc in the beginning I came up with three or four revolters for the Sub-Sahara part of Africa, one of them for sure where the Koshan for the others will look it up.

Next I will look a bit into history for the belgian and germany corridor and the Russian plains.

You can put the Batavieren in gelre and brabant. They kicked the romans out and where already around for some time when they did. Possibly I am one of their dessendants.

 

[unmerged(18239)]

All right, here we go.

Africa:
(culture)=(nowadays country)

Kush= Nubia
Khoisan = South africa, Angola, namibia
Bantu = kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique

Russia
Thyssagetae = Astrakhan
Sacaraucae = East of Kaspian
Samaritans = Souther Russia

 

[DSMyers1]

The newer version copes better with this problem.

That's nice because with my Roman game Europe became some sort of checkerboard.

This is the newest version, since it's on my computer

 

[DSMyers1]

I've finished making experimental vassal files in which option A only frees one vassal and its set so that vassal events can't fire after nation foundation events and I've done a hands-off game up to the 1730s.

There was massive fragmentation in the beginning and then things slowly consolidated. There was a good bit of fluctuation and rise and fall of powers, but with the vassal events usually only firing once and with gobs of bad boy not being handed out, it probably isn't as hectic as the other version and in general, after the initial wave of colonization, the general eb and flow is more similar to Vanilla EU II. I think I can spice things up a bit by copying and pasting and changing the event number around so that the vassal events fire twice, thus shaking things up a bit.

If anyone wants to take a look at the altered vassal events I wrote, I'd be happy to email them out.

I would like to see them (that must have taken you a lot of time) But I think the change of what choice A is should work well enough. It seemed good to me...

Also, I'm thinking of changing tech effects to make it a bit harder to build the larger fortresses, it got a bit annoying having Scythians have large fortresses all over the place and would make the game more fluid and free up more money for colinization.

Huh. I hadn't even considered changing fortresses. Let me know what that does to gameplay.

And the distribution of revolters needs to be shifted. In Sub-Saharan Africa there is only Ghana I believe, which seems way on the short side as it allows northerners to build up big colonial empires in africa undisturbed. Others that need to be added are perhaps one or two more in the neglected bits of Siberia and the Uzbek region. Also, as I can see on your map, big Russian Empires seem to be the rule so maybe another revolter in the Russian region should be added, same goes for maybe something in the Serbia/southern Hungary region, and there seems to be a strip of Europe running from Belgium through central Germany that seems to be pretty short on revolters (or maybe the Dorians were able to colonize a massive swath in that region in my game after the revolters had set themselves up).

I have 3 or 4 Ukrainian and Crimean are revolters, and the Finns in Northern Russia. I couldn't find any historical nation in Central Russia before 1000 BC... And check out the revolt.txt. There are a number of German Revolters, some 5 or so. Could use somebody in Belgium, though. Riphath shoulc be in Serbian Area. Check Nation.csv for the nation list, though I'm sure you've already seen that.

I've been converted to liking the massive number of revolters in the Mid-east (although the overlapping ones like Assyria and Nimrod could be yanked) but a lot of revolter tags could be freed up from the Americas which seems a bit over-populated with them (especially the Andean area) for a pretty peripheral area. The Indus river area could also perhaps get culled a bit...

Nimrod should change into Assyria, but I haven't made the events. They should not revolt at the same time. And as for America, I did the ethnic groups of the Indian tribes. For India, I just wanted there to be enough to make it interesting, which I think was successful. But there are plenty of extra tags, so I would be quite happy to add whatever y'all come up with.

In general in more peripheral areas like Africa and the Americas it might be a good idea to set up revolter tags with nice big spreads of potential territories to keep it at least a little tough to build un far-flung colonial empires in the emptier bits of the maps, without using up so many tags in places like the Andes.

This is trying to be historical, you know... Sure, if you can find historical revolters in the empty areas, let me know what they are and I'll add them

Hmmmm, one more easy thing. Why not give +6 colonists in the nation set up event. Gotta do something to give the countries what go independent and then sit there and don't colonize for decades a bit of a push.

Good idea.

 

[DSMyers1]

All right, here we go.

Africa:
(culture)=(nowadays country)

Kush= Nubia
Khoisan = South africa, Angola, namibia
Bantu = kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique

Russia
Thyssagetae = Astrakhan
Sacaraucae = East of Kaspian
Samaritans = Souther Russia

Oh very good! I like specifics. These will be added.

 

[DSMyers1]

Now this looks interesting:

Originally Posted by Kasperus
Converting civ3 requires 2 tools:
-a decent Graphical editor which can handle PCX-files and enables Palette editting (PAL-files). I use JASC's Paintshop Pro 7 myself but possibly other popular graphical programs (photoshop, gimp) have the same possibilities. WIndows Paint is unfortunately not good enough
-a tool called FLICster, developed by the civ3 community, free to use, which can be downloaded from
The civfanatics forum (see down the first post for direct links)
It is in that forum that you can also find links to many custom-designed civ3 units.

You don't need to own civ3 to convert civ3-units though not having civ3 installed has 2 disadvantages:
-you cannot convert the standard units obviously as you don't have them (duh!)
-you cannot use in FLICster the palette-change option (iow you can only make units in their standard colour, often blue, though not always equally 'visible'). With civ3 installed you have the option to change to 1 of the 32 colour-palettes for units.

A full civ3-unit (as either downloaded or borrowed from civ3) can consist of many files but for our purpose only 3 are needed:
<unitname>Run.flc
<unitname>Default.flc
<unitname>AttackA.flc (alt. AttackB if it is included, depending on preference)

You can open these FLC-files in FLICster where you can see a preview of the animation. If you have civ3 you can also view it in different colours. Most important though: you can convert it to an (almost) usable format. For that you choose export then click on the button next to Export type and change it to the 2nd option called Multiple Filmstrip PCX and you UNcheck the thing next to border or the file will be screwed.
If you have civ3 installed you can also specify the Palette-part by chosing which colour you want to convert. The other options have no meaning to us.
Once done hit the Export-button. The files will be stored in a map called FLICster which is created in the same map that the original FLC-file has been.
You have to convert the default, run and attack file in this way.

Now you have 24 PCX files, 8 files per action which have all specified the direction (as N, NW, NE etc). For eu2 we need all the 8 Run-files, 1 Default-file (the SW-one) and 2 Attack-files (SW and NE). The other can be removed. We are done with FLICster.

The next part depends on what graphical program you use. I base this tutorial on how it works in Paintshop. If you have other tool then note that needed actions at least are:
-adjusting the palette (editting, saving and loading up the .PAL files)
-changing both the background-colour and the shadow-colour to the specified colours in the palette (by convention true green and true red)
-saving the PCX files in BMP-format.

It is best to start with one PCX and use it as base for the other ones. In starting situation they will have all the same palette which facilitates your work somewhat as whatever you change in the first PCX won't have more catastrophical results in other files that in the original one. Say, take the default one and start with that.
First you need to edit the palette. In paintshop you chose Colors -> Edit palette, which opens a window with the palette showing every colour in a raster. You need to change the first 2 boxes to determine the transparance and shadow. In fact it doesn't matter what colour is used here (green and red are only conventions) BUT the whole background must refer to the color in first box and color of all shadows to the 2nd (it isn't enough to change it to a true colour if it doesn't refer to the colour from the boxes but to a different box). Because you will have to replace a colour anyway it is just easiest to change the first to true green (RGB 0 255 0) and the 2nd to true red (RGB 255 0 0). If you're lucky this will not affect the starting image (at most 1-2 pixels. If more then you will have to change everything coloured with one of the 2 first colours to a similar colour from the rest of the file first. Note that you need to apply similar change to all the 11 files first before changing the palette!).
After that you save the palette (in paintshop in Color -> Save Palette. We will need that later.

In civ-files the transparant colour is defined mid-in the file so you have to work with replacer again. In paintshop replacing is as such easy: You chose the Dropper-tool, leftclick somewhere in the background of the image (which will be always mono-coloured and usually pink), rightclick in the small palette-box in the right-upper corner of the screen on the 1st colour (our green background). Then chose the color replacer-tool and by right-clicking in the image you will replace the ugly pink to our green. For this set tolerance preferably to 0, size of the brush as big enough to save time. Continue till all the background is green.
Shadow can be tougher to replace as sometimes shadows in civ3-units are multicoloured. For Eu2 we need it in 1 colour though. Luckily in paintshop you can for that just adjust tolerance by color-replacement. To edit out all the shadow it shall be around 70 (if it doesn't affect your base-image that is, otherwise you will have to be very careful with replacing. Luckily units are not very often pink-coloured or it must be that you need flamingo-warriors...). Do it always after you changed the background to a really different colour, otherwise the whole background might become red and you will lose your shadow! Obviously you need to replace the shadow to the 2nd colour in the palette.
Then you can save the bitmap to some logical name like <unitname>_Default.BMP or such.

For all other 10 files you follow the following practice:
1. Load the previously saved palette from the first file (in COlors-> load palette)
2. Change the background and shadow in the same way as in first file to the colours from the palette.
3. Save the files as BMP's.

Finally you create a new, small bitmap and load up for it again the same palette as you used in all the other 11 files. Save this file as something like <unitname>_palette.BMP. THis file may be as small as you wish. It is easiest to just cut out a small image from one of the unit0bitmaps as it will have per default the same palette.

Now you're done with graphical part which, if done without complications it shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes.
One warning: If you work with palette do NEVER change the colour-rendering! It must always remain on 256 colours!

However, alternatively you can skip the palette-process if you want units without shadows. In that case instead of the previous:
1. Change the colours-range from 256 colours to 16million or higher for all the 11 PCX-images.
2. Replace the whole background and all the shadows with true green background.
3. Save every file as BMP. You're done with graphical section.

Last part is to create the SPR-files. These are stored in your GFX\Units - folder and you can use them as base. You will need 11 of them and keep the format of names as used there:
T is type, usually ARMY or NAVY
C is countrytag which will be the tag defined in the armynationalitysprite in Country.csv
A is action - for landunits either STAND (our default), FIRE (our attack) or WALK (our run)
D is direction
L is level (there are 4 for eu2, 1 is default)

It is best to just copy-paste a set of existing SPR-files and then rename it to a tag you wish to use. You can edit the SPR-files in notepad.
There are 5 rows in a SPR-file.
1. The name of the appropriate bitmap, must fit the direction and action of the bitmap.
2. Origin. Determines the position of the bitmap on the screen, or more precisely of the left-upper corner of it in relation to some right-undermost corner possible for units in the game. This is something to try out yourself what wlooks best ingame. Increasing x means the unit will move left, increasing y moves it up. For big units as cavalry the correct settings will be about x=60-70 and y=80-90, for infantery units it will be around the default values as made by pdox.
3. The number of frames, usually 14-20 for most civ3-default and attack files and 10-15 for run-files. If you don't enter it correctly the animation will be 'weird'
4. Palette - specify here the name of your own created Palette-bitmap - our <unitname>_Palette.BMP file which you have to place in the GFX\Palettes folder. If you worked without the palette in the non-shadow way then you can leave there a standard palette - it makes no difference.
5. Speed - actually delay. The higher the number the slower the animation will run.

Remains to place it correctly and change the country.csv. If you used a new tag (one unused for sprites by paradox BUT existing in the game of course) then you will have to place the SPR and BMP's and the Palette (as well) in the standard game-folder (not an issue as it won't overwrite anything). Only if the tag you used was used by paradox as well then you can use moddir.
In country.csv (usually the one in moddir) you change the column ArmyNationalitySprite to the tag you used for your custom unit.

That's all. Together with testing out and placing it correctly it shouldn't take more than ~30-45 minutes to convert 1 civ3-unit into eu2 format. B)

I think I could do that, and that could make some much more interesting units for the ancient age. Much more up my alley -- graphics.

 

[DSMyers1]

First unit converted: called phalanx, actually that is a formation and this is a hoplite, I think. He's a little small, but looks really nice in the game. Here's what he looks like:

Check out this site: Civilization Fanatics' Forum-Unit Graphics and tell me which ones you think should be converted for use. There are thousands to choose from.

I think that perhaps this should be the highest tech sprite for the greek, aegean area peoples.

 

[Khephren]

This is another good site for unit graphics.

 

[unmerged(28406)]

Wow looks nice will be next version be more "realistic "like addin the greek states (cant have hoplites without the greek states they invented the hoplites )and the persian empire

 

[unmerged(18239)]

First unit converted: called phalanx, actually that is a formation and this is a hoplite, I think. He's a little small, but looks really nice in the game. Here's what he looks like:

Check out this site: Civilization Fanatics' Forum-Unit Graphics and tell me which ones you think should be converted for use. There are thousands to choose from.

I think that perhaps this should be the highest tech sprite for the greek, aegean area peoples.

That looks realy realy nice.

BTW, if you need any other historical info just give it a call and I will conduct some new searches. Some of the stuff, for example the religious info was, alas, unfindable.

 

[DSMyers1]

Wow looks nice will be next version be more "realistic "like addin the greek states (cant have hoplites without the greek states they invented the hoplites )and the persian empire

The scenario ends at 1000 BC, so there won't be any city states, besides there isn't any room in Greece to put them. As for the Persian Empire, Persia exists and it's up to you to make it an empire. But for the Hoplite: this unit would probably not come into play. It would require some quite high tech level to get to the sprite that would not be reached by the AI, most likely.

 

[DSMyers1]

That looks realy realy nice.

BTW, if you need any other historical info just give it a call and I will conduct some new searches. Some of the stuff, for example the religious info was, alas, unfindable.

If you'll recall, you are still reorganizing the religions as you see fit...

 

[DSMyers1]

This is another good site for unit graphics.

Good site. Except they need a better way to organize them all Can't I have just the ancient sprites? :wacko:

 

[DSMyers1]

Here's the final score from that hands-off game. Of note, the Niu-Chi collapsed through a BB civil war (5+ declared independence) and the Algonquin took much of Canada through defections.

 

[unmerged(18239)]

If you'll recall, you are still reorganizing the religions as you see fit...

Some of the stuff, for example the religious info was, alas, unfindable.

I tried and tried and tried but there are no books stating clearly for a region which religion they practisep. India for example was populated by a single empire during the 2500 period but there was single religion.

 

[DSMyers1]

@Mosby: Okay, we'll leave the religions jumbled up to prevent an easy world conquest. Unless there is a particularly messy part... Maybe I'll clean up the Indus Valley a bit...

Second sprite finished, and it's a dandy. Much nicer than the last one:

 

[DSMyers1]

Okay, for those who want to do research for this mod and its upcoming historical events (need to work on those...) here is an excellent site :
AllEmpires.com
It even has monarch lists for such nations as the Elamite!!!

I will probably release a new version with only the alterations on the vassal events, and save the sprites for later. I have only done 3 so far.... I was also working on Israel and their historical events. But that requires a united Egypt, which means the Egypt events. Does anyone want to do those?

Mosby has volunteered to take care of Assyria.