Dev Diary 35: Fezzan, Wonders rebalance + Spanish update
Salvete!
Today we'll be talking about a mission tree for the Fezzani tribes, rebalancing of al the Wonder effects and custom modifiers for historical wonders and finally we'll have a little update about the Spanish translation (which as you may understand takes a long time as it is a lot of work.)
Fezzan Mission Tree presented by Aerozona:
The Fezzan Mission Tree focuses on the tribes located within the newly created region of Fezzan, namely Garamantia, Nasamonia, Machylia, Psyllia, Makae, and Phazania. Of course if you start off as Psyllia, you will need to break free since you do start off as a tributary to the Nasamonians. This mission tree will help guide you towards uniting the whole region and forming the united tribe of Fezzan. While the mission tree is common to all of the Fezzani tribes, it is slightly different for each tag.
Here is a quick look at the mission tree in its entirety (from the perspective of the Garamantes):
The tree provides the player two different options in uniting the region. (Note: Once selecting one path, the other path will become unavailable). The first is through conquest and annexation of the neighbouring tribes. This path will provide multiple tasks, that each provide unique bonuses to your army, allowing your tribal armies to dominate the opposing armies with such bonuses as increased morale, manpower recovery speed, and increased starting experience.
The second path allows you to go through and unite the Fezzan region through vassalizing the other tribes rather than annexation. This path will provide bonuses to improve your subject's opinion, loyalty, income, and provide the option to upgrade any tributary subjects, to feudatories, giving you the ability to integrate them into your nation at a time of your choosing. This path of the mission tree also provides a huge unique bonus to desert combat ability, manpower and aggressive expansion impact, allowing for the domination of other armies within the region of Fezzan and other desert provinces.
Both paths of the tree guide you towards the same end goal, a united region of Fezzan, however it is up to the player to decide which unique bonuses will suit their playstyle best, both in the short and long term, since a lot of these bonuses will be permanent.
Once the player begins to expand into their neighbours, there will be optional mission tasks that have you develop and improve the infrastructure of the newly conquered land, providing certain bonuses to that province.
Once the region of Fezzan has been united under a single tribe, the mission tree gives you the ability to expand in multiple directions. You have the option to go east into Cyrenaica and Egypt, west into Carthage and eventually towards the Pillars of Hercules, and finally you will have the opportunity to expand northward into the region of Magna Graecia.
This expansion into Magna Graecia and beyond will set up an eventual conflict with the major power in the area (whether it be Rome, Tuscia, etc), which at this stage of the late game, will be quite powerful. However, the final task of the mission will guide you towards adding the prestigious Metropolis of Rome to the great nation of Fezzan.
Wonders presented by Olivenkranz
Recently, we also rebalanced (read: nerfed) the wonders and their effects. We deemed that the amount and strengths of certain modifiers were not very fairly distributed and while some modifiers didn’t get touched (education f.ex.), here below are a couple of the worst offenders after we trimmed them down - and this is entirely Snowlet’s merit.
As you can see, the beloved commerce income modifier has been halved - a significant reduction. And the very strong modifier of ship repair at sea has been reduced to a fourth of it’s vanilla strength. That one may surprise you, as it had already been nerfed once after the first release.
In addition to that, we have also given every vanilla wonder a unique modifier so as to set it further apart from what you, as the player, may build. Hopefully they will be more interesting and desirable than they were previously. We now present to you a handful of the revamped tourist traps of antiquity.
No descriptions have been written for them yet, but this may come in the future. As always, the numbers are subject to change. The modifiers are still Work in Progress and if you have a balanced suggestion, you can provide it below, we do read everything that is suggested to us. For most of them you’re gonna have to wait until the next update droops, soon +2 weeks.
Status of the Spanish Translation:
Hello everyone. My name is Juanen and I’m the one working on the Spanish translation of the mod. Today I’ll talk a bit about the difficulties of translating a mod for a PDX game, the progress of the Spanish translation, and what I’m working on right now.
So, first of all, translating is not easy. Or fast. And PDX games don’t make it easier. Their code is made to work in English, and when we translate we have to work around the limits of the engine. This creates some limitations for localizing languages like Spanish. Mainly with articles and adjectives, but the code, in general, is not made to work with words that don’t have genres in English.
So, if you find a female character being called “El Griego”, the main reason is this one. I know is not the end of the world, and it’s not impossible to fix this kind of issue. But it makes translating a pain in the ***.
If I had the time or more people to work with on the translation, I’d try to make the tools so we can have a perfect Spanish translation, but most of the time don’t have the time or the people to translate the mod and make the translation tools work better…. Even so, I’m trying my best.
Now, to the important stuff. What’s the state of the Spanish translation?
The people who play using the “DEV” versión of the mod will know already. But for the rest, I’ll tell you that the Spanish translation is perfectly playable. I try always to at least have the English locs put in place for the new stuff my colleagues are implementing all the time. But I can confirm that most of the mod is localized in Spanish. The missions for the Greco-Indian, Bactrian, Bharat, Punic, and Tamil are done. And I’ll continue to work on the rest until the next updates. Half of the Deity’s religions are also localized. And the rest of the mod is (like 90%) in Spanish.
I have also incorporated the “Improved Spanish Translation” from Vityviktor (who I thank a lot for letting us use it). And I’ve also tried to improve the vanilla translation of the game (quite easy to improve as it was not so good) as much as time lets me.
Right now, I’m working on localizing the new content for the next update, and localizing the many (many) countries of the game and its adjectives to Spanish. I’m also in need of feedback, so I’d really appreciate any suggestions from the Spanish community for ways to improve the localization of the mod and the vanilla. As my end goal is to not only localize the mod, but also improve the main game.
In case anyone wants to join the team and help with the Spanish translation, or any other translation of the mod, feel free to join our discord and contact us in the recruitment channel.
forum.paradoxplaza.com
steamcommunity.com
