MOD: Zulu

[quantum_mechani]

RedRover said:
QM: I haven't actually tried modding a site, but thanks for the info. My understanding has been that you can't change the site name. I thought it was possible to substitute units if the site already created them, and I thought it was possible to redefine gem types as long as the number of gems didn't change. If this is wrong, I'll just have to find another workaround.

You can modify the units the site allows you to recruit, but not the site itself (gem output type and amount, image, name, extra effects).

[Endoperez]

Have you used #addunit and #addcom -commands? Using them after #clearrec does let one to define any number of units and/or commanders AFAIK.
As five fire gems/turn certainly won't fit, I think you should see different nations' starting sites, without forgetting the themes' sites. I have listed all that seem to fit

The best ones IMO:

Lykeion and Akademeia of Golden Era Arcoscephale offer the recruitment of 4 capital-only commanders (1070,1071,1072,1083) and 1 capital-only unit(1082) without having gem income attached into them.

Man has Forest of Avalon (comm:212, unit:64,65) with 3 nature gems, Tower of Avalon (comm: 151,152,153) with 2 air gems.

Mictlan and Machaka would have some nice sites, but Mictlan blood-sacrifice-reliability can't be modded and replacing Machaka would take out the chosen enemy...

Other possibilities:

Vanheim: Vanhalla (com:948, unit:261) with 2 Air, The Halls of Andvare (comm:323, unit:463) with 3 Earth.

Ulm: Black Temple (unit:738) and The Keep of Ulm (comm: 113 unit: 66) without gem income, Black Forest (comm: 1011, 1028) with 1 Astral and 1 Nature. 1028 is Wolfherd, but to change the summoned creature you'd have to mod Wolves and change Summon Animals, Howl, the two artifacts, etc.

Pangaea: Hidden Grove (comm:516) without gem income.

Pythium: Swamps of Pythia (comm:296, unit: 91,719) without gem income.

Tien Chi: Celestial City (comm: 793 unit:791) with 1 Earth gem. Also some other sites that give Death income, but I quess those are out.


With many capital-restricted commanders, have Lykeion, Akademeia, Land of Pleasures Unattained, and either Silver Stones or Singing Stones. Both of them produce one 1 gem of both Aid and Earth. Result:
Zultu replaces Arcoscephale, start income: 2A, 2E, 1N, forced Turmoil in home province, 4 (or 2 without Akademeia) capital-only commanders, and one capital-only unit. 3 Heroes IIRC (replacing Maker of the Mace, Monster in the Mace, Son of Titans; heroes' names can't be modded, unfortunately).

Man could also work. Man's heroes work a bit different, so you could change Knights of the Stone and give them different #nametype, and they would appear with those names. There can be maximum of 13 of them at the same time IIRC.

There is a pretender god, Mother of Lions, who appears into battles accompanied with several Great Lions. They can't be modded without changing Summon Animals, but she could still be modded to be Zultu-spesific pretender. Using #resttrictedgod would limit her only to the nation you choose to replace with Zultu. She would also make a great Lion Master, but I don't think you could remove her from the pretender selection. You could still make Zultu the only nation with the new Lion Tamer as a pretender.

[RedRover]

Endoperez: Yes, I used the add commands back when I was doing the Grey Elf mod. I had to cut a few commanders/units out of that mod because it wouldn't let me build more of either than what Caelum had. On the other hand, I may not have used #clearrec, because I wanted the winged elf holy troops to have the "Fly in Storms" ability, and I think the #clearrec would have erased that.

Wow! You have put together a truly impressive list of sites! I knew you couldn't mod themes, but I thought that also meant you couldn't use the theme sites. This opens up a whole new field. Can't wait to get started.

Can you mix-and-match capital sites from more than one nation/theme? Can more than one copy of a capital site appear on the same map, or are they sealed in some arcane fashion?

I agree that Golden Age is probably the best fit overall, but, on the other hand, the Golden Age is probably a contemporary, since in theory the Zultu were wiped out fairly early.

Man is probably the next best fit. I wonder if using the Knights for the Sorcerer is too harsh. It would be interesting to have a fixed-sized wizard circle, but that might really kill the nation on a big map. Thirteen is quite a lot though--I can't remember building that many major wizards in any of my own games.

I am somewhat drawn to the Celestial City, but T'ien Chi has been modded so many times that I'm reluctant to add another mod to that list.

Great food for thought. And you are right--Death magic is definitely out for this nation.

Thanks for the heads-up on Mother of Lions. She sounds fine as is--and Great Lions are welcome, too. I'll think about a dedicated Pretender. First though, I'd like to get the core troops up and rolling.

[Endoperez]

#clearrec doesn't affect units' abilities, it only applies to units a nation has access to (can recruit from every castle). I think you confused it with #clearspec, which would take all special abilities away from a creature...
Also, if you hit some kind of a maximum value, I don't think it was from the nation. When I made the Unit Replacement/Null Mod series, the different nations could replace each other almost any way. If Ulm can replace Abysia and Abysia Ulm without there being any chances I could notice, there should be no problems with adding units.

You can't use different nations' sites, but you can match sites from the themes. If you modded e.g. Warlocks of Smouldercone, you would change Abysia's capital-only units too. Also, I think only Abysia (or modded nation replacing it) would be able to recruit the units from Smouldercone, regardless of who starts with it. However, there are few annoying restrictions to using themes' sites. Man has two other sites in its Last of the Tuatha theme: one is named "Forest of Avalon" (the same as the base theme one), the other "Avalon". Only Avalon can be added as a site, because Forest of Avalon finds the first FoA, the one for the base theme, and there is no way to make a difference between them.
Also, you can't actually have the Zultu appear as a theme. You can use the Golden Era's sites as you can use any other site in the game, but you can't mod a theme with the nation modding commands.
You could replace all the units/commanders with modded ones, but it's not worth it, as modding normal nations using the theme's sites gives you much finer control over the result. However, I think Golden Era would still show up as a theme under the chosen settings... It'd be an interesting theme if themes were moddable, though, because it has forced Sloth scale.

I quess using the Knight heroes as a template for Sorcerers would be all right. The sorcerers needn't be much better than your normal ones, though. The chance to get them isn't very big even with Luck 3, but 13 Angerbodas or even Blind Ones would be a bit much. And remember that some people use forging Clam of Pearls, massing up Astral income of hundreds and chain-casting Wish as a strategy on the big maps... Some people do recruit more than 13 high-tier mages.

[quantum_mechani]

Endoperez said:
... Some people do recruit more than 13 high-tier mages.

I would even say almost everyone does.

[RedRover]

I just wanted to post a quick update here. Things are going slowly. I'm putting together an alpha .dm file and will be checking stats carefully with that before putting them up here. I will be using #clearrec and putting the Induna and Scout leader types back in.

I've decided (reluctantly) to go with an Arco overwrite for the Dom2 version. The current starting sites are planned: "Land of Pleasures Unattained", "Singing Stones", and "Lykeion."

After looking closely at the way shields are structured, I think I may have given the Zultu Shield too much. The first test version will use Prot 2 instead of Prot 3. It looks to me like any sort of nonmagic Hide/Leather/Wicker shield should have a protection rating of 2 and no more if historical baselines are to be observed. I think good history anchors good fantasy, so the tweak.

Also, I'm changing some weapon names: all "Guardian" become "Magic." The latter is both more accurate and shorter. Two virtues. Purely cosmetic? Ultimately utilitarian, IMO.

The name files are up to 135 male/140 female. I'll quit at 200 each.

The more I look at the Leopard Cult, the weaker they look to me. I'm changing them to Sacred for the first version. If it doesn't work, I can change it back.

I have gone over the gods with an eye toward matching the CB 5.0 mod. This mostly affects encumbrance, but I'll leave all these changes marked red next time I post stats. There were a few changes in point cost, and some alterations to base stats/skills. Also, all the lion-heads get the new Roar instead of Bite, except the White Lion, who gets both. Also, the CB changes to the Crone pretty much took the niche I put the Leopard Warlock in, so I had to readjust this Pretender more than others.

I had some ideas about how to get decent graphics for the mod, but they have all fallen through. For the time being, I have Oceania sprites plugged in...

[Oversway]

The research and themes of this mod are great! I think that is something that many other mods are missing, they don't have the 'depth' of the standard nations.

[RedRover]

Oversway: Thanks for the compliment.

I've paused on this for a few days. The other Credo Mutwe book finally arrived: Induna, My Children, and I have been immersed.

The story is fantastic (it reads a little like the best of the fiction AARs on this site). It is drawn from the oral traditions of The People (Bantu speakers), and covers their migration from sub-Saharan central Africa to what is current day Natal.

It has a huge cast of characters, some of whom are more than human (a fair amount of the narrative is a first person account by the Lost Immortal). By the time the saga ends, two warriors named Qwabe and Zulu are young men. They are founders of their respective tribes. This book is as close to an heroic tradition for the South African region as we are likely to ever get. Highly recommended, even if you have no direct interest in the subject. If you ever wondered about doing an African mod, I consider it essential reading.

For more recent history, I have been looking through Stephen Taylor's Shaka's Children, which is an impressive work as well. This nonfiction popular history starts with the rise of the Zulus in the 1820's, and continues their history to 1990. Good stuff.