Sorry for being somewhat off-topic, but I wanted to comment on where you saw potential existing for more nations.
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Originally Posted by HoneyBadger
And I'd like to see a deep ocean nation. Right now we've got Atlantis-coastal, Oceania-main ocean, and R'Lyeh-which also appears to be coastal. Leaving the trenches untapped. And maybe the reefs. I've got a few ideas for both of those.
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Atlantis is deep ocean - read their EA fluff, its right there in the manual/nation selection info.
Rlyeh also seems to be predominantly deep ocean, or at least ambiguous.
And of course Oceania has Coral King as a hero - which implies reef. Oceania is in general coastal - this 'main ocean' has no referrent. What do you think that is?
I think the general Ocean ecology is fairly well-tapped. Which isn't to say that different Ocean races occupying some of those same ecologies but with different concepts couldn't work. Although it could be rather hard to do...
(FWIW, the ocean is actually divided into shelf (coast), slope (bathyal), and abyssal plain with a few specialized ecologies - eg, Hadal depths (trench). Abyssal plain is so low energy that I can't imagine a civilization actually living there, not to mention there isn't much exciting about it - its just a wide swath of muck. Which leads me to conclude that Atlantis is either Hadal (up from trench habitats) or lower bathyal. Rlyeh is probably upper bathyal - nestled in a gorge that cuts into the continental shelf (a gorge is explicitly the location of EA, and since the star impacts there, thus of all eras, and you don't get deeper than upper bathyal and still have gorges). Oceania is obviously our shelf power.
I suppose you could argue for an open-ocean power, except you can't build fortresses there... Or really have a civilization at all...)
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And someone really ought to do something for Wales, maybe Scotland. The Isle of Man is also a possibility.
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Seriously? We're already overloaded with gaelic nations. Marveni, Man, Eriu/Tir Na Og, Fomoria. Gaelic nations are the *last* thing we need more of. Especially since the mythological material for, eg, Wales/Scottland is really incomplete, and the king Arthur material is in use by Man already - making it as 'Welsh' as you're going to get with the source material.
Ok, i take that back. Greco-roman nations are the last thing we need more of, followed closely by gaelic nations.
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What seem to really be missing (though I do not have exhaustive knowledge of the existing mods) are:
-Islamic/Arabian nation, easily 3 eras here.
-Persia, easily 3 eras here
-Steppes horse tribes (Huns, Mongols, etc...), probably 2 eras (incl. Samarkand here).
Pacific Islanders seem to have a good mod, at least in development (don't recall how finished it is), which would be the other major hole.
That gets us at least nominal coverage of central asia and mesopotamia (which is actually woefully undercovered - Abysia is the only Mesopotamian nation, and only represents Sumer/Babylon - and then only mildly).
After those big blank areas are filled in, some other possible nation themes:
-Finnish, based on the Kalevala. Yeah, its european, but its different enough from all its neighbors and well documented enough you could squeeze an era out of this.
-MA Bogarus, likely based primarily on Nart's Saga. Russia only getting one era is kind of sad. They should at least have some MA representation. Nart's Saga represents the Caucusus, and so is at least sort of pushing into/towards Asia.
-Possibly a Mayan and/or Incan nation (although it could be hard to differentiate from Aztec-inspired Mictlan)
-Islamic Spain. Separate enough politically and culturally from the islamic empire historically to justify a separate existence - 1 era.
-Georgia (ie, the former Russian republic), focusing mainly on the Prester John legends. One era. Possibly combine it with Crusader States history.
But these are all sidelines.
I'm not sure how much more you can do with Africa for nations. Nubia was actually a really good choice because it has abundant history due to its middle eastern ties. But as you move farther south you end up with tribal societies that never really formed nations until they were imposed upon them, with the sole exception of the Zulu (who could make for a cool LA nation if there's enough diversity of material), and who have no recorded history.
Zanzibar, Mali, and other parts of N. Africa (saharan and mediterranean) are mostly part of a greater islamic nation/empire historically, and could easily represent specialized troops of such a nation from an appropriate time period. Civ IV made the reach of making Mali a playable civ based solely on the era of Timbuktu as a center of research and islamic culture - and what they were doing was fishing for African nations to de-eurocentrize the game, a noble goal but the source material is thin.
Similar to Africa, N. America is hard to represent because what few nations there were left little evidence of their culture behind. And one could certainly argue that N. Am is better represented than it has any hope of being, with LA Atlantis being very much an Inuit-inspired nation.
At the end of the day you can only have so many nations that amount to 'unarmored or poorly armored people with crude weapons'. Yes, they have different mythologies, but you end up with a lot of nations that are basically the same with variant summons and slightly different national mage paths. You also get at most one era out of many of these. Not to mention Mictlan seems to have stolen liberally from other american traditions - eagle warriors would have been one of the most thematic units for a possible N. Am. nation, and have nothing to do with the Aztecs.
Basically, cultural breadth is good, but go where the source material is.
(Edit: If I do a mod, it'll be the Islamic one. I have ideas. I need to figure out how to do artwork).
Re: Ammon Kush-Darkest Africa
Hybrid Mode
