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[Pathos]

Anything going on here?

[Pillow_Killer]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=48106.msg979296#msg979296

[Hippoman]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=48106.msg979296#msg979296

Actually. He came back. Look up. But it doesn't matter, In a different thread he announced it was over. Completely until further notice.

Probably forever.

[The Frivolous Linguist]

Any chance we can make... kool aid for our followers?

[Lord Dullard]

Cult doth return with the goods.

Where was I, again?

World - Before Civilization Spread:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

World - Post Civilization Spread:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Everything currently works just fine and dandy, and I'm ready to start getting complicated with intercivilization affairs, various religions, population issues, and the creation of new towns/cities as population increases.

Current problem:
While everything works, the algorithm to physically spread civilizations takes a LONG time (at least on my semi-outdated dual core processor). Looking for ways to reduce the time required for the algorithm to work hasn't proven particularly effective. Allowing the user to predefine (or possibly manually halt, as per the DF worldgen) the number of years/'turns' taken during worldgen and civ spreading is starting to look like a more and more attractive solution, but I'll try to find something a bit more idealistic in the meantime.

[Outcast Orange]

Yay!

*Purrs and romps in circles*

I am excited to see a good project come back to life.

[Mephansteras]

Nifty!

[Acanthus117]

As the great Balrog would say...

HUZZAH!

[Lord Dullard]

Civilizations now establish new villages/cities/castles as they spread. The castles, at least for now, are strictly military installations - though later they'll be wrapped up in world history/legends and will probably be able to eventually turn into large-scale settlements.

After some more tweaking I'm going to start on civ relationships. The 'spread' phase needs to be altered so that civilizations can begin to war with each other and conquer territory (I can't imagine any world in which 20+ civilizations remain completely peaceful for long). The relative militarism/hostility of each tribe should affect the number of troops (and thus success in conquering other civs) available to them.

I'll also want to begin tying in actual historical/legend generation to this process, which will mean getting a little more in-depth - though I'm not sure whether I should wait until after all of the actual coding processes are in before delving into this stuff. Instinct tells me it would be better to start with thematic depth as a key element, which will mean working on the randomization of history almost immediately in order to avoid having to try to decipher very complicated code algorithms later on (when I've forgotten the relevance of half of what I'm doing right now).

Some visual candy:



Despite photobucket's annoying insistence on resizing everything, you should be able to make out the small village, city, and castle icons spread across the map.

[Lord Dullard]

Just some quick brainstorming while I'm working on civilization traits. Some food for thought (suggestions are welcome though they may or may not be used).

I'm thinking that each civilization will have a set of inversely related traits/statistics, as follows:
Magic and Technology
Militancy and Culture
Commerce and Spirituality

I realize there are plenty of arguments that this is oversimplifying, but using this sort of setup carries the immense advantage of allowing me to balance (relatively speaking, at least) some of the basic traits of each civ, allowing players to choose different civilizations (if they don't start their own) according to playstyle.

[Mephansteras]

It's looking awesome.

[inteuniso]

Will civilizations be able to spread across water?

Also, will there be a constantly changing territory while you play the game? I know it's a bit much to wish for, but it would be awesome if you're converting the heretics in a town that suddenly became your nation's enemy.

[Lord Dullard]

Civilizations currently cannot spread across water. I think I'll probably keep it that way, because otherwise you start to run into problems with civilizations spreading to extremely unlikely/nonsensical locations on the world map. However, once they start to war with each other, they should start to take over territories on other landmasses - assuming the invading civilization has naval technology (which not all will).

As for changing territory during gameplay, it's likely to be a side-effect feature of the way passage of time will work in-game, but I can't promise anything yet. Too much still needs to be fleshed out.

[chaoticag]

If I could nit-pick a bit, the problem I have with militancy versus culture, is that militancy is a culture. Maybe culture should be called self expression?

[Lord Dullard]

@chaoticag: Not sure 'self expression' really fits the bill. The term 'culture' brings much more easily recognizable gaming themes to mind (i.e. cultural warfare between states). I can understand your nitpick, but I'd rather use a term that's more fitting for civilization-scale traits. Anything other than self-expression come to mind?

I've taken a bit of a detour on the worldgen process to start coding up a rudimentary 'World Atlas' that will allow players to browse information/history about each generated and saved world. I think I'll be needing it for debugging purposes soon anyhow, so it was a relatively necessary step (for the near future, if not immediately).