I'm just getting this post out here to introduce this project and, eventually, to try to advertise for someone to help with the more artistic side of things. Currently, I'm haphazardly using whatever icons/anims/sounds take my fancy, which doesn't really work for any kind of finished product. As an example, every tech icon is currently the champion khopesh icon, which is not particularly thematic for any tech that isn't banana-related.
So, onto the meat of this.
tl;dr
A Cthulhu Mythos-themed culture. Current progress is (almost) full archaic age plus proof of concept for the more tricky bits in later ages, along with some random additional features.
Overview
I got it into my head that I should do a culture replacement mod around Christmas, and as the real pantheons I was familiar with were already taken to some degree, I decided to go for something I knew no one had tried yet and, moreover, would likely never make its way into any sort of AoM DE or AoM 2: the Cthulhu Mythos. As I hadn't done any modding before, it was a bit of a slow start, but progress is pretty fast at the moment, hence this post.
Characteristics of the Culture
I designed the overall gameplay of the culture around the following themes:
Going from this, these are the main distinguishing features of the culture:
Civilizations
Currently, the major gods (and their available minor gods) are:
Azathoth
Yog-Sothoth
Shub-Niggurath
I'll most likely give a full description of all of the major gods in a follow-up post later this week, once I've nailed down exactly what Yog-Sothoth's attainted town center tech will be. Some teaser information is:
Azathoth's god power, Schism of the Void, creates a ring that contains land units for twenty seconds.
Yog-Sothoth is focused largely on scouting, and can create two different kinds of eyes in the sky.
Shub-Niggurath's cultists can gather food from herdable animals without killing them and can do so at a reasonable rate, though they're still worse than a cultist at it.
At the moment, there are some problems I've looked at long enough to know they're pretty hard. Nothing here is a critical issue for the mod, but they are things I'd like to be able to do.
So, onto the meat of this.
A Cthulhu Mythos-themed culture. Current progress is (almost) full archaic age plus proof of concept for the more tricky bits in later ages, along with some random additional features.
I got it into my head that I should do a culture replacement mod around Christmas, and as the real pantheons I was familiar with were already taken to some degree, I decided to go for something I knew no one had tried yet and, moreover, would likely never make its way into any sort of AoM DE or AoM 2: the Cthulhu Mythos. As I hadn't done any modding before, it was a bit of a slow start, but progress is pretty fast at the moment, hence this post.
I designed the overall gameplay of the culture around the following themes:
1. Quantity over quality. Especially with classical age military, units tend to be cheap, quick to train, and weak.
2. Variety. Each minor god in particular has significantly more distinguishing characteristics than in other cultures, and further adjustments are possible through researching Rituals (more on them later).
3. Divided economy. There are two kinds of villagers, townsfolk and cultists. Townsfolk are like normal villagers, and cultists are awful at gathering any sort of resource, but are crucial for everything from construction to favor generation. Over time, cultists get improved, and will overtake the Townsfolk more and more as the game progresses. Eventually, townsfolk will be entirely replaced.
4. Age progression. Each age up, you get three new military units, and you have to build a new temple to get the most out of your new minor god.
5. Food over gold. Gold is much less important for this culture than average, and food is much more important.
Going from this, these are the main distinguishing features of the culture:
1. There are many kinds of cultists. One "normal" cultist, and one for each major and minor god, and all of them are trained at various temples. All cultists can worship at temples for a (very) slow favor trickle, which does become somewhat improved with later ages' temples, but the main way to get favor is to sacrifice normal cultists. Every cultist has a form they can permanently transform into, and the normal cultist's is a form that grants five favor over five seconds and then dies. This does mean favor is much more scarce for this culture than other cultures, and must be planned out more. In order to get the cultists of a major or minor god, you must first research the proper tech.
2. The heroes are called "voices", and you get one kind of voice for each major and minor god. At first, you'll only be able to train one each of them from the proper temple, but after you research the proper techs, you can train more and more of each kind. Each has its own special characteristic, of course. All voices have both a ranged and melee attack, with the melee being slightly more powerful and, for convenience's sake, the only attack voices have against buildings.
3. Temples also allow you to train more charges of your god powers. In keeping with the first theme, this culture's god powers are generally weak, but can be purchased infinitely. Currently, I have to use a trigger for this, so if anyone knows a better way, I'm all ears. I have heard of infinitely-researchable techs, but the method I tried was incompatible with only being researchable when the god power has been used.
4. At your library (a culture-specific building), you can research one ritual per age past the archaic. Each age, you get three choices: one standard, one from your major god, and one from your minor god. This means you can get three rituals total. Rituals are buildings constructed by cultists, which trigger god power-like effects upon one of the following (depending on the ritual):
These god power-like effects are much more potent than the god powers of the culture, but they do need to be built by fragile cultists, are expensive, and do not distinguish between friend and foe. Once the ritual is triggered, whatever happens happens, unlike most god powers which deal less damage to you and your allies.
A: Completion.
B: Transformation toggle.
C: Enough cultists enter the area.
These god power-like effects are much more potent than the god powers of the culture, but they do need to be built by fragile cultists, are expensive, and do not distinguish between friend and foe. Once the ritual is triggered, whatever happens happens, unlike most god powers which deal less damage to you and your allies.
5. Cultists can build "occult buildings", which include more aggressive versions of town centers, watch towers, and fortresses. They all also deal crush damage at range, making them effective against other buildings, but have shorter ranges, are expensive, and (respectively) give less population, can't garrison units, and can't train units. These are mostly useful in rushes, but attainted town centers do train unique (and powerful) technologies, including one from your major god.
6. The culture's scout is called a dream. It can't attack, has only an ok line of sight, moves decently quickly, is extremely fragile, and you get four of them to start. You can train more for one favor apiece, and they cost no population, making them effective at cheap damage sponges, though they're not that good at it unless you're playing against an AI or your major god is Azathoth.
7. The culture's resource dumps are the mill, which is food/wood, and the safehouse, which is gold. They also have two unique tech buildings, the library (which aids in discovering rituals and improving cultists) and the town hall (which just improves cultists).
Currently, the major gods (and their available minor gods) are:
Azathoth
Atlach-Nacha, Tsathoggua
Nug and Yeb, Yig
Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu
Yog-Sothoth
Ithaqua, Tsathoggua
Dagon, Nug and Yeb
Cthulhu, Hastur
Shub-Niggurath
Ithaqua, Atlach-Nacha
Dagon, Yig
Cthulhu, Hastur
I'll most likely give a full description of all of the major gods in a follow-up post later this week, once I've nailed down exactly what Yog-Sothoth's attainted town center tech will be. Some teaser information is:
Azathoth's god power, Schism of the Void, creates a ring that contains land units for twenty seconds.
Yog-Sothoth is focused largely on scouting, and can create two different kinds of eyes in the sky.
Shub-Niggurath's cultists can gather food from herdable animals without killing them and can do so at a reasonable rate, though they're still worse than a cultist at it.
Current Questions
At the moment, there are some problems I've looked at long enough to know they're pretty hard. Nothing here is a critical issue for the mod, but they are things I'd like to be able to do.
1. Is it possible to create a pool of water with a god power? I can find tools I can code with as triggers, but they're not working so far.
2. How do you add a culture and gods like The Return of the Gods (the new Aztec WIP mod) does it (without replacing a culture entirely)? I probably should just message them and ask, but I'd like to give it a shot myself first, just with a hint or two as to how I should proceed.
3. Is it possible to make a unit appear different to different players, so two different units would look identical to an enemy, but different to you?
4. Is it possible to use trig functions in the trigger file? I tried standard c++ methods of doing trig but they didn't work at all.