After the End - A post-apocalyptic America mod

[mpjama2]

Forgive me if this has been answered before, but I don't have the time to sift through several hundred pages of the After the End threads. Why do the AI atomicist rulers I encounter have several thousand gold? None of them have particularly high incomes. Some of the Atomicist rulers I've encountered with insane amounts of money are mere counts. Why is this the case?

 

[EmperorG]

Forgive me if this has been answered before, but I don't have the time to sift through several hundred pages of the After the End threads. Why do the AI atomicist rulers I encounter have several thousand gold? None of them have particularly high incomes. Some of the Atomicist rulers I've encountered with insane amounts of money are mere counts. Why is this the case?

They had Japanese invaders attack and fail conquering the West Coast, then move into their courts and die, leaving their money in whoever they moved to's hands. That's my best guess at why they have that much money.

 

[Xykon]

Russian invaders, not Japanese. The Japanese are Shinto, which is in the Pacific religious group. The Russians are the atomicists.

 

[Voyent]

Russian invaders, not Japanese. The Japanese are Shinto, which is in the Pacific religious group. The Russians are the atomicists.

I once saw the leader of a failed Russian invasion inexplicably become the Atomicist duke of Apache. Strange times.

 

[SacredDatura]

Going back to a discussion from several pages back:

I seem to remember seeing talk of earlier start dates before, and I agree it would be really interesting. I think the Holy Columbian Confederacy is at least a couple hundred years old in 2666, and I have no idea what the map might look like without that. The main things that seem likely that I can think of, at least for the Midwest, include less feudalism, more tribes (and possibly nomads), and more Revelationists.

What about a start date later than 2666 instead, if we want to see a franctured South? The HCC in 2666 is ostensibly unstable (a recent emperor assassinated by his wife if I recall correctly) even if the game mechanics make the HCC quite stable in practice. A full breakup of the HCC into constituent kingdoms is easily justifiable.

 

[ju44]

Constituent kingdoms? Well, there'd be two. That's it. Its not that fun, I don't think.

 

[Xykon]

You could split those kingdoms up into their constituent duchies. Last I checked, the HCC doesn't have any king level vassals at the start.

 

[pteroid]

The issue isn't knowing what these things are, the issue is not being able to make them. Making things like cars, gun, computers, etc requires a whole lot of infrastructure; you need mining equipment and drills to get the raw materials, you need roads, railways, and planes to transport the resources to the factories in a decent amount of time, and you need factories with complex equipment to actually make the thing you want. All of these things require resources and power that just wouldn't be available. If you went back in time to the middle ages (or into the universe of this mod), and showed a relatively educated person a diagram of a gun or an internal combustion engine, they would be able to make sense of it, but they wouldn't be able to replicate it without the proper resources and infrastructure.

In the words of the musical 'Assassins!':

It takes a lot of men to make a gun
Hundreds, many men to make a gun
Men in the mines to dig the iron
Men in the mills to forge the steel
Men at machines to make the barrel
Form the trigger, shape the wheel

Etc.

 

[Immortal Impi]

Creating modern guns requires creating modern industry. There is no stopgap between these two; there is really no coincidence that the percussion cap, the breach-loading cannon, the bolt action rifle are all products of an age of industrial production and precision.

It is the same, for example, of the hellenistic steam engine, the aeliopile. Theory cannot translate into practice because there is a gap between the theoretical knowledge and the practical ability.

 

[Niko92]

I would say that making a gun isn't that difficult. All you need is a pipe, a projectile and something to launch the projectile with. Modern guns are out of the question obviously, as most of the parts require some detailed machining (the bolt especially).

Making a pipe, even out of metal, would've been possible with medieval technology. It doesn't even have to be metal, the Chinese built guns out of bamboo in the 11th century. Finding a projectile and a propellant might be more difficult. You might be able to use old bullets (if they survived that long) but manufacturing them would be pretty much impossible. Especially if you have no knowledge of the principles of gunpowder. You'd probably have to resort to musket-like weaponry (with the balls of bearings as projectiles?).

Mass production would be pretty much impossible but I don't see restoring an old gun that far fetched possibility. If it is even in relatively good condition (like stored well oiled in a sealed bunker), you might be able to work it out with the help of a couple of books. Guns are rather simple in essence, and with possible folk lore about ancient firesticks it shouldn't be that hard to understand what they do. It would be incredibly rare and would probably take years to get one working. I mean, even today people build weapons based on descriptions of really old texts, it comes more down to whether a certain item is possible to manufacture.

 

[Immortal Impi]

Okay, so how are going to get new springs? While Medieval Europe had primitive spring technology, the kind of springs that modern guns use requires advanced metallurgy.

Modern guns that people in After the End find are pretty damn different from the fire lances and matchlock muskets used in the high and late medieval ages.

You can maintain a gun but building a new one? Questionable to the extreme.

 

[Haghog]

Okay, take two on what I posted a while ago; to add more flavour to the Evangelical's, I have been coding a few events

The Evangelical Reformation
Evangelicalism is described as a faith where the doctrinal divisions that used to exist in Pre-Event Protestantism have been set aside in the face of the post-deluge world. Part of this was the establishment of the Ecumenical Council's, with its seats in Atlanta, Chapel Hill, Washington, St Louis and Chicago. However, only the first two remain at the time of the games start. This flexibility in doctrine, once a feature and strength, becomes a weakness in the face of heresy

After an amount of time (50-100 years maybe, though I've been testing it with the year 2667), an event fires about a monk who has discovered a document on the ancient Westphalia Treaty, and from there they write a document claiming that the Emperor's subjects have the right to choose whatever religion they wish. Heretic priests, such as Charismatics, use this to start preaching that they have the right to pick whatever faith they wish. Wanting to stop it, the Emperor holds a council in Augusta; but instead of calming things, the council results in the monk's words spreading even further, resulting in a massive hit to moral authority.

From there, various events would follow on; counts and duke's choosing to convert to different heresies of the Evangelical faith (I'd want to add at least 3 more to break up the amount of Charismatic's appearing, so there's less chance they'll become the new orthodoxy), revival meetings for both heresies and Evangelicalism, etc. Alongside this, I'd add it so that all of the heresies have a variety of events and abilities that Evangelicalism doesn't have-Charismatic's could have ceremonies where they can gain either good traits or become possessed, Antinomian's would get less negative opinion from bad traits such as Lustful (if possible), etc.

However, none of the heresies would be able to remove the proliferation of heresy-possibly not even be able to hold the title of Holy Columbian Emperor-which an Evangelical Emperor would be able to choose by decision; after gaining a large amount of piety, and retaking all five seats of the Evangelical Convention, the Emperor would be able to create a new Imperial church, where the Patriarch of Atlanta would hold power as the Primate of the Imperial Church (name? not sure); they'd have a variety of new abilites, such as being able to excommunicate, call for crusades, etc.

I've coded some of this, but some of those files have disappeared on my broken hard drive, so if people are interested I'll do my best to keep coding the events.

Spoiler: Images

 

[Neoman]

Again I would like to say that my idea wasn't to have the re-production of modern guns, but rather engineers/monks/scholars/rust cultists/leaders using the salvaged pre-apocalypse gun as inspiration to build an tech-appropriate arquebus-like weapon when you reach "light infantry level 6" that can be built for characters via a decision and a large sum of money and would give them a trait, small combat bonus, and a nice prestige boost AND/OR there could be some sort of small recruitable retinue or something of arquebus infantry.

If anything the arquebus would be an endgame symbol of high-status for a character and kingdom/empire that really wouldn't give an edge over other units and would add flavor by adding a sense of progress. I didn't intend for my idea to spark a big debate.

Also remember this from the OP:

Yeah, it's a post-apocalyptic setting, but that's mainly just an excuse to have knights and castles and stuff in North America. We're not really trying to make a serious and wholly accurate representation of what things would be like after an apocalyptic event happened. We're also trying to restrain ourselves and not go nuts with wacky silliness either, so don't start going on about how some pop culture reference needs its own kingdom implemented right now.

Now another question. Where is the mod leader at? It's been a little quiet recently.

 

[1930sman]

This looks awesome, I'd say keep it up man!

 

[modernwhofan]

Now another question. Where is the mod leader at? It's been a little quiet recently.

Going off the Github, he's still "Desperately trying to get rid of colonist bugs".

 

[LordInsane]

Going off the Github, he's still "Desperately trying to get rid of colonist bugs".

Given that using (not linking to, but using Github in a way the public could find) is prohibited by forum rules the development may have ended up stuttering or moved to a more obscure location.

 

[Xykon]

Why is the use of github prohibited by forum rules? Is there a safety concern around using it?

 

[brucepm]

Why is the use of github prohibited by forum rules? Is there a safety concern around using it?

In a bid to maintain extremely tight controls over who is allowed to install mods to their games, Paradox has strict rules regarding where mods can be hosted and how available links to them can be. Their ideal is that mods can only be available on this forum and the Steam Workshop, both of which require a legitimate copy of the game to use. So offsite "forums" (which apparently includes Github now?) are verboten, with the sole exception of the Game of Thrones mod, since it predated the strict modding rules. I'd describe what I think of the wisdom and efficacy of this course of action, but I've never been clear what exactly falls under the "no questioning staff actions" rule.

 

[Xykon]

Makes sense, it discourages piracy and encourages people to get legitimate copies of the game. The developers of the mod haven't posted in a little while, so it might be a good idea to get in touch with them to see what the status of this is.

 

[Cyrahzax]

The Council of Augusta chain looks amazing, keep at it! The HCC is in desperate need of flavor (and instability) and this should fit the bill nicely.