Africa mod for HTTT

[BritNavFan]

This is a small mod to improve the realism and playability of Africa in a modular fashion (that is, it should be easy to use it in conjunction with other mods or with the house rules you already have). It's also intended as a resource for other modders.

*** NEW VERSION IN POST 13 ***

In particular, these mods don't change the map (to avoid cache issues) and don't add new countries (so they should be compatable with Helius' AI mod, in particular.)

I've included two versions of the mod. The first expands the cultures of Africa, gives African countries cavalry and the abilities to build forts and send traders to CoTs they know about, increases the diversity of trade goods in African provinces with "unknown" trade goods (so that something other than "grain" can be found in the deep Sahara, for example), tweaks province values, and adds forts to the provinces of African nations. It is good if you are playing a non-African country and want to make Africa a little more detailed and realistic.

The second changes the trade system a little (gold is now a regular trade good), the religion system ("Shamanic" countries are no longer annexable and all African pagans are "Shamanic"), the tech groups (mainly for mapping reasons), and the rules for "tribal" countries (extensively). It is intended for people playing African countries (although the experience of those really needs more countries, for both realism and playability, which this mod doesn't provide.)

The details are in the (very long) second post.

EDIT: and of course I forgot to mention one of the most important things. The culture file in this mod is based on one of the earlier drafts of Jordarkelf's Dynasties micro-mod, and a number of additional changes have been made to the culture file here based on posts in the "Dynasties" thread. So credit and thanks to Jordarkelf and posters .

[BritNavFan]

This post is documentation for the first version of the mod, which expands the diversity of African cultures (increasing them to 13 culture groups from vanilla's 1), adds African cavalry units, gives African countries the abilities to build forts and send merchants to centers of trade, and changes the trade goods generator for provinces with unknown trade goods to give Africa the diversity in trade goods it had in the original version of EU3 (before random trade goods were added).

Culture groups were determined on the basis of linguistic similarity (although certainly imperfect, I use it as a proxy for culture because it's well-defined and well-documented), historic relations (if an area was regularly ruled by a single country for long periods of time, I put the cultures into a single culture group, while if adjacent areas were almost always controlled by different states throughout the period, I put them into different culture groups), and cultures adapted to the extreme environments of the Sahara and the deep jungles infested by the tsetse fly.

Many provinces have been tweaked as well. Tax and manpower values have been distributed more evenly, instead of being concentrated in two provinces, and some provinces' religions have been tweaked. Forts have been added to all African provinces. This is for reasons of both realism and gameplay. The literature documents forts (and sieges), these provinces were not easy to capture, and the AI has not been taught about strategies for when there are no forts.

The Swahili have been moved into the "Indian" tech group, although they still have "sub-Saharan" units.

[BritNavFan]

And this post is documentation for the second version of the mod, which tweaks tech groups, trade, and religions, and revises the rules for tribal countries.

Tech groups determine countries' maps. Therefore I have added a tech group for the nations of the Niger river and their neighbours (two thirds of the African nations in the game) and a tech group for the nations of the Congo river (all two of them :/). These tech groups have the same rates of advance as the old "African"/"Sub-Saharan" tech group: Mali won't share maps or neighbour bonus or send merchants to Zanzibar, that's all.

Since I was adding tech groups and had to edit the "westernize" decisions anyway, I tweaked them a bit more. If a country westernizes by direct contact with a European nation, it goes straight to the Eastern (European) tech group. Muslim countries that border Muslim tech group nations get a bit of a break, with the centralisation requirement removed. (In a later version I'll probably tweak this some more.)

The change to trade is that gold is now a normal trade good. This is because, however it functioned in the rest of the world, in Africa that is what it was. In particular, since it is a valuable trade good it contributes to the values of CoT's, making Timbuktu the important CoT that it was (Timbuktu was the center of a gold trade). It also means that native countries with gold mines don't steadily get "inflation" throughout the game.

Pagan religions have been changed. Shamanist pagans are no longer "annexable", and all "animist" countries in Africa have been changed to "shamanist" for gameplay purposes. This is because the game needs the "annexable" modifier to simulate the collapse of the Inca Empire, but it was unique or almost unique in collapsing in this way. No African or Asian pagan countries did so. In fact, most of the pagan African countries would survive the EU period (because malaria made them safe from European colonization until the discovery of quinnine.) So they don't deserve a mod to make them unusually easy to conquer.

Finally, tribal governments. I added a new government type, the tribal monarchy. which suffers from tribal succession crises but does not suffer from the new HTTT events for Hordes. Most African countries fall into this category. I removed the tribal tech penalty, partly because I don't see any realistic justification for it (Babur's "tribal" army that he invaded India with to found the Moghul dynasty was state of the art for "Muslim" countries), and partly because its original gameplay function (to slow down the tech progress of non-European countries in versions of the game where all countries started at the same tech level, 0) is obsolete (since countries can now start at less or more advanced tech levels). I split the penalty for "incompetant rulers" into two: one half occurs when you have a ruler with a skill of 4 or less, regardless of your country's size, while the other half is the vanilla version. The good Horde events can now happen to countries of less than 10 provinces; the bad ones are less frequent, and, in particular, if you have positive prestige (as a result of completely annexing a foreign country, for example) you know longer have to worry about insurgents deciding you are a "weak" ruler; and tribal countries can themselves be the victims of Horde events.

A second, multi-stage, process for leaving tribal government has been added. "Tribal despotisms" can convert to "tribal monarchies", which can in turn convert to "despotic monarchies" at relatively low tech levels.

Importantly, "Tribes" now get a new bonus: a decision which gives them free forts in provinces of their culture and which they have cores on, representing the resistance of the local people/nomads to alien rule. These forts go away if the province is controlled by a country that does not have cores in or the culture of the province. This rule replaces most of the forts added in the smaller version of the mod.

[SwedishPatriot]

Cool, I think I'll give it a try

[Kyoumen]

Very neat; nice to see Africa getting some love. Firing it up to take a look right now.

[BritNavFan]

I'm curious to hear what people have to say about it.

My playtesting of it showed that it needed more countries, and there are many candidates. (More candidates than I have tags .) For the next version, I'm thinking of adding 6 new countries to west Africa: Wolof (revolters against Mali in the Senegal), Kel Ayr (camel-riding Tuareg of the Sahara who captured Timbuktu), Zazzau (a third Hausa state, traditionally there were 7), Yao (the "rebellion" in Kanem-Bornu at the start of the game is actually a rival country), the Mossi tribes (who occupied the area south of Timbuktu), and the coastal state of Calabar. I'm also going to see if I can make the Funj tribes/Sennar sultanate (in the modern Sudan) work from a 1399 start, and to develop rules for the African countries expanding into "empty" provinces.

Historically, Mali collapsed between 1400 and 1450, and nobody seems to know what happened. (At least in the English liturature. There may be information in French or Arabic.) Songhai went from two provinces to the new Mali. This is difficult to represent in EU3 terms, where Mali play as the local equivalent of Ming.

What do you think of the new rules for tribals and the new process for getting out of "tribalism". Too easy, too hard, other requirements?

[fermun]

I've tried it a bit, and I like it. There are a couple of things I think should be changed. Namely, I think that Ethiopia, Adal, and Swahili should be in a separate tech group. East African or something along those lines. These nations had a lot of contact with Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, and even India.

Furthermore, Adal was much weaker than Ethiopia and when they did go to war and conquered most of Ethiopia, they fielded a much smaller army. I think maybe adding a bit of base tax to the Ethiopian provinces would solve this. Base tax determines the size army you can field, and in the Ethiopian-Adal war, Ethiopia was able to field tens of thousands of soldiers to Adal's several thousand.

Anyhow, I love your little minimod. I have been doing similar things for my own minimod but I had started over at the horn and was working my way clockwise, seems you took the opposite approach. Keep it up!

[Camara]

In the next update of Terra Universalis I'll rework Africa a lot, adding A LOT of new countries and surely adding more provinces than it has now. If you let me, may I pick the bits of this mod to use it there (of course mentioning you )?

[BritNavFan]

Camarra, feel free

Fermun, glad you like it. I put the Swahili in the Indian tech group (since they had ships). I didn't make a formal east African tech group, but since I removed all the west African nations from the "sub Saharan" tech group the only nations left in the "Sub Saharan" group are Adal, Ethiopia, Funj (if you play from a 15xx start Funj is in the area of the modern state called the Sudan), and Mutapa/Zimbabwe. So "sub Saharan" is effectively "east African" already, except for Mutapa. Maybe I could just add Mutapa to the Kongo tech group - ahistoric because it means they'll ally with each other but I don't want to make a one-country Mutapa tech group as well as the two-country Kongo tech group.

Regarding Ethiopia, I think you know more about that war than I - I've just read a one-page synopsis of it. Given EU3's combat mechanics how could Ethiopia ever lose to Adal if you gave Ethiopia that big a numerical advantage? Maybe Ethiopia's fort garrisons should be thought of as part of their army?

I spent the weekend playing with the map and have a few findings. The Niger and the Volta rivers turn out to be in (slightly) the wrong places. If they were in the right places they could be used to orient the provinces. At the moment, many provinces are (very badly) in the wrong places . For example, Jenne is on the Volta river when it be on a major tributary of the Niger (and significantly further west).

Secondly, the provinces in Africa are on a larger scale than in Europe. A drastic example are the two provinces near the Ashanti state, Gold Coast and "Kumasi". Ashanti wasn't next to Mali (they didn't actually exist at the same time but let's ignore that), but with two provinces you have to place Ashanti either next to Mali or right on the coast. Actually, those two provinces represent an area the size of England + Scotland (modern Ghana), so there's lots of room for Ashanti to be near the coast (and far away from Mali) without actually being on the coast.

[fermun]

The difference in the war was that Adal had some musketmen and some cannon with a better general. I guess in game-terms, Adal hits a land tech advance and unlocks better units/cannons in about 1530 and Ethiopia doesn't reach there until about 1540.

As far as the actual effects, I've played a few games as Portugal after having giving Ethiopia a base tax high enough to give them a land support limit of 11 at game start. It seems Adal will tend to ally with Yemen and Oman quite often, resulting in a balance of power that still favors Adal. I need to play some hands-off games with my changes vs. your originals and see if they allow Ethiopia to survive to 1490, when they historically were discovered by the Portugese and gained an ally/guarantee/were under the sphere of influence.

[BritNavFan]

That makes sense.

From what I've read, Tigre province should be Christian from the start (a small difference).

Adal should really be an alliance rather than a unified state. Since AI countries like to ally with two other countries, that would result in them getting less outside help.

[fermun]

Yeah, Tigre, or Tigray, depending on what you read was pretty firmly under Ethiopian control at the time. Basically the Provinces under firm Ethiopian control were Tigre, Gojjam, Gonder, and uh... there's one more that is about direct south of those three but I can't remember offhand. Anyhow, those were the ones that were firmly the kingdom of Ethiopia, the rest were more tributaries.

As far as Adal goes, yeah, it was more the sultanate of Adal with the sultanate of Ifat as a vassal. As far as whether Ifat should be a separate tag, I would say no. Too many tags slows the game down. If there were a way to put a higher revolt risk for a time in Ifat, I think that would be the best way to solve it.

[BritNavFan]

This is a version designed to work with the HTTT beta of April 15, 2010. It has:

• the regular African countries
• a new government type for non-Horde tribal countries
• a new tech group for the countries of western Africa
• forts, merchants, and African cavalry from the start of the game
• many tweaks to the map

The Swahili are interesting in that they start with Indian tech, Ethiopia has a non-tribal government, and Mali is, of course, big.

[George LeS]

I like the idea; will test with my own mod when I've got it working. One idea I've already signed on to is the non-annexible Shamanists. In my own version, the only annexible countries are the central/south Americans, IIRC. This makes the game work much better.

[lordkestrel]

• many tweaks to the map

I didn't see a map subdirectory, where those just changes to the existing provinces?

[17blue17]

Question

Don't you need to include common country files listing the new African cavalry units so the countries will use them?

[jdrou]

Don't you need to include common country files listing the new African cavalry units so the countries will use them?

ISTR one of the devs saying that the AI would no longer strictly follow the suggested units as of HttT. Probably still would be a good idea to add them.

[dskod1]

Do not know if this topic is still active or the original modder. But I am adding this mod to the MCP modification for Divine Wind. If you have objections or want it taken off just say so.

[LoneWolfEburg]

My DW mod pretty much replicates the effects of that one, and adds some more.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...r-Divine-Wind.

[BritNavFan]

I didn't see a map subdirectory, where those just changes to the existing provinces?

Yes. (This has the virtue that it's compatible with most other mods, since most of them don't change the African provinces.)

Question

Don't you need to include common country files listing the new African cavalry units so the countries will use them?

There should be common country files in there? I did a test download, and there were.

Do not know if this topic is still active or the original modder. But I am adding this mod to the MCP modification for Divine Wind. If you have objections or want it taken off just say so.

Thank you - I am flattered. But it should go under HTTT mods not Divine Wind mods: there will be issues with buildings, and in the "Africa Expanded" version there will be issues with the game crashing.

My DW mod pretty much replicates the effects of that one, and adds some more.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...r-Divine-Wind.

Mostly, yes: it looks good. This has some details yours doesn't: e.g. the provinces in this one are rebalanced, cultural detail is added, and African and New World countries can build forts and use merchants from the beginning of the game.