[MOD] Africa Plus - West Africa Update Released! 19/06/22

[Black7Emperor7]

Black7Emperor7's Africa Plus (BAP)

The goal of BlackEmperor's Africa Plus (BAP) is to bring additional depth and flavor to playing in Africa in CK3. This mod was originally a project focused on improving West Africa, as such the bulk of my changes so far are for West African culture groups. The glaring exception to this is to the area of Nubian East Africa, which has also received considerable updates.

Featuring:

• Reworked Religion set-up for Africa, with many new faiths and tenets, and heavily revised vanilla African religions.
• Overhauled African culture name lists, adding hundreds of new names, and removing dozens of inappropriate and incorrect names.
• New decisions for African cultures.
• New economic buildings including Bronzeworks, Salt Mines, and expanded placement of Gold Mines in West and Eastern Africa.
• Special buildings in West Africa, like the palace of Al Ghaba in Wagadu, Walls of Loropeni, Sungbo's Eredo.
• Special buildings in East Africa, like the Cathedrals and Monasteries of Nubia, the Fortress of Dongola in Makuria, and rebuildable Kushitic temple ruins, and more.
• New traits with new art, including a Griot trait for West African characters.
• New regional innovations for African cultures, including MAA.
• New innovation artwork for vanilla African innovations.
• Flavor events, with new event illustrations.
• Localisation update for vanilla African religions, ruler and council titles.
• New localisations for many African ruler and council titles.
• De-jure re-work of k_yorubaland, including new character histories, including a new empire title created by decision.
• De-jure rework of Nubia, including a split of nubia into the kingdoms of Makuria and Arwa, and a new empire level title for Nubia.
• A Nubian king may under certain conditions revive Kushitic Paganism in Nubia, and even declare themselves the Child of Amun! A new trait for Kushitic pagan Kings who have revived the faith.
• Traditional Tenets by fhqwhgads is integrated into this mod for their excellent modifications of vanilla tenets and doctrines.

Screenshots:

Religion Map

Spoiler

New Religions

Spoiler: Tenets

New Regional Innovations

Spoiler: Innovations

New Decisions

Spoiler: Decisions

New Kingdom Map

Spoiler: Kingdom map

New Culture Map

Spoiler: Culture map

Interesting Characters

Spoiler: Interesting characters

Available via Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2552371897
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Focus on next update:​

• Add a griot council position with localisations for various west african cultures.
• Add a queen mother council position with localisations for various west african cultures.
• Add a new faith to Sunni Islam to represent the synthesis of traditional African religions with Islam as practiced in many parts of West and Central Africa.

To-do-list:​

EVENTS:

• Annual sacrifice event chain for Bidaic characters controlling the Kumbi Chasm.
• Visit the Ife oracle for Orisan and Olokun characters.
• Visit Ogbunike cave
• Pray and make sacrifice at Dutsen Dala for Hausa pagans.
• New Yam festival for lower_niger culture group.
• More events for greater cultural flavor for African characters.

Compatibility:​

• Does not work with achievements! Many changes to the checksum.

Credits and Thanks:​

• My wife and family for putting up with me whilst I have been researching for this mod and working on it.
• Elvain for advice, guidance, information, and support.
• TheGib770, the god of localisation! Your help with custom loc, titles and localisations in general helped immensely.
• Atreides, for giving up your time to create beautiful trait icons for me!
• cybrxkhan, for advice, guidance, as well as kemetic flavor events and unique music for the mod.
• Torngasuk, for your generous help with adding dynasty COA.
• Vertimnus, for your generous help modding Nubian innovations.
• Many people in the modding PDX subforum for your patience and advice.

 

[Koyraboro]

What are the new religions exactly?

 

[Black7Emperor7]

What are the new religions exactly?

Great question, here is a screen shot of the religion map currently:

It's important to understand that in vanilla CK3 like CK2 before it, much of the religions in West Africa are placeholders to cover vast areas.

The reasons for this are mainly practical, more time is spent on developing the game structures than on research into specialist subjects such as West African traditional religion. I have had to spend considerable hours of my own free-time reading journal articles and PHDs about these topics just to glean small details or find useful sources. I don't expect game developers to do this. Not to mention the map projection in CK3 is such that Africa itself is fairly horribly misshaped and down-sized. This is unavoidable largely because of the vast Sahara desert region but the impact is that all areas of West Africa especially are far small in-game than they should be say versus Ireland in game. It's therefore harder to represent diversity as it makes little sense to include a religion for each county etc. so we get what we have in vanilla, which are sort of cultural flavours, such you have the senegambian religion, the soninke one, the mande one, the akan one, the yoruba one, the hausa one. These correspond to basically one religion for each culture group in the region - this is pretty good! And obviously a huge upgrade on CK2. But I felt like more could be done to improve on this, especially to break up the biggest blocs, as well as to improve the accuracy of existing religions present.

Even then the result I have achieved is essentially just an improvement of their approach, more discrete placeholders. In reality traditional African religions don't fit neatly within the structures of a video game, or indeed western European notions of 'religion' - in West Africa 'religion' is inseparable from life, culture - everything. Nearly all of the game systems are not really designed to accommodate cultures outside of Europe, we only need to look at the de jure hierarchy, and the global 'feudalism' vs. tribal split - again i'm not faulting PDX for this, game design is difficult - and I love CK2/CK3. It nevertheless remains true that the game design fits Europe best for obvious reasons across the board.

So anyway, back to the issue of placeholders, I'm not trying to suggest in anyway that all Zaghawa across the whole expanse of the Sahel practiced Idoism - but rather the game is only capable of a certain level of nuance and granularity, and I have attempted to improve on this with research, adding real cultural depth, to break up the large monoliths that existed before. Idoism is based on documented Zaghawa beliefs, Bashoism the same for Jukun, Oloku - Edos etc. etc. These are real beliefs, gods, flavour etc. relevant to these cultures, I hope it adds some more fun for people to experience this diversity - and most of all that it may inspire some individuals to want to read and learn more about African history and culture.

Improvements are of course welcomed. Additions too, if anyone knows of any more localised beliefs that can especially break down the larger religious blocs.

This mod doubles the amount of religions in West Africa presently,

Here is a brief outline,

• For clarity, Ammaic is vanilla Siguic renamed.
  
  
• Tenga is a religion to represent the predominantly Gur speaking cultures of the forest belt between the Mande populations to the north, and the Akan and others to the south. In these areas the use of 'earth priests' predominated, amongst spread out decentralised autonomous groups. The language and pantheon used in the mod stems from the religion of people native to modern day northern Ghana and Burkina Faso.
  
  
• Wennam is a religion of the Mossi, and in the mod exists only in Mossi controlled areas. Historically the Mossi migrated as raiders into northern Ghana/Burkina Faso, mixed with the local population, and settled as rulers/conquerors. In so doing they combined their own beliefs with the prevailing earth based cults that existed amongst local groups. In this sense they maintained the existing structures, earth priests remained - but above this system a new sort of 'state god' was introduced - Wende (a sky god, symbolised by the sun), as well as the concept of Naam. Mossi used these concepts to justify their own rule over the Indigenous
  populations, as well as the divine nature of their domination. Wennam in the mod is a war-like faith of the main religion of Tenga.
  
  
• Vodun is the religion of Eweland, and their progenitors - what would be later exported to the new world with slavery as 'voodoo.'
  
  
• Olokun or Oloku is a sub-faith of the òrìṣàn faith of the Yoruba in vanilla. It retains some of the pantheon of the Yorbua religion but includes also the distinct Edo deities, as well as maintaining a focus on Olokun (the god of the ocean) as a high god due to Olokun's supremacy in that region as a focus of worship.
  
  
• Odinala is the religion of the Igbo, also known as Odinani. I wish there was some way I could include the great complexity of Odinala in-game, if I was better at writing events and had a lot more free time I might just create some narrative event chains just to share information about it, I encourage people to do their own research into Igbo cosmology, as it's on par with anything from 'eastern philosophy' - West African philosophy in general is criminally underrated in this regard.
  
  
• Tsafi is renamed vanilla 'Bori' - Tsafi means 'ritual' - and refers in Hausa to the traditional pagan practices. Bori itself is an example of these practices. I felt that Tsafi was a better name as 'Bori' can be considered a constituent element.
  
  
• Idoism is the religion of the Zaghawa nomads, centred on ancestor veneration in the context of the natural environment - particularly hills or mountains. As well as strong belief in spirits, who also dwell in rocks and mountains. There's a practice of sand divination I wanted to introduce as a tenet, as part of a more generic divination tenet I want to add to the game - of which I would then create some localisations of, but haven't had time to do this yet. I really wish PDX had not removed the old ck2 haruspicy tenet (a form of divination) for this reason.
  
  
• Muneism is the religion of the Kanuri - or sedentary Zaghawa who conquered Kanem. In game it's a sub-faith of Idoism, and differs only by replacing one tenet with the unique tenet of 'Mune.' Little is known about pagan Kanem, beyond the centrality of a relic referred to as Mune. Historians have speculated a lot as to what this represents, or what it was - what we know is that worship/protection of Mune was a significant aspect of the pagan Kanem state religion. And that after Muslim conversion began within the empire, a dispute broke out between rival dynasties and the Muslim house set out and destroyed the Mune in an attempt to eradicate the old faith, and legimitacy of the pagan rulers. After this the empire fell in to civil war.
  
  
• Bashoism is the religion of the Jukun, and will cover other areas of middle belt Nigeria in elvains map mod when I make the two mods compatible.

 

[Katana500]

Mod looks really great!

Cannot wait to try it!

What are the icons for the new religions?

 

[Black7Emperor7]

Mod looks really great!

Cannot wait to try it!

What are the icons for the new religions?

This is actually something I need some help with. I have used some assets from ck2, as well as icons the community have developed... overall I'm fairly happy with these, but completely unique ones would be sweet!

I'm not at home currently but will post some more images when I am.

I'm tweaking some Tenets currently as I felt Idoism was too close to Tsafi, so I've removed the Tsafi localisation of the sacred deserts tenet for now.

 

[Black7Emperor7]

What are people's feelings about the Faith icons? Adding so many religions into the game that require new icons is a pain as my efforts to add my own hasn't worked well, not displaying correctly etc. Do people care about reusing icons? Recolouring vanilla ones etc? At least in the interim? I'm hoping to find someone to help with this.

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Just a small update on progress, I was holding back alpha release for 1.3 update and Elvains own update of his mod. Now both are done I will make the necessary change to get my work up to speed. I aim to release an alpha soon, but being unhappy with the Faith icons is making me hold back.

Recent progress on the mod include:

-Made the mod compatible with Elvains mod which should be loaded before as a 'base.'

I will release a stand alone version of the mod later that doesn't require elvains mod but as I have always intended to combine my work with his (as it expands the map and gameplay potential hugely in my focus area), and will play this way in my own game for now you should download elvains mod too. This allows for things like the Nri, Benin and Kwararafa kingdoms to be present in a better state.

-Readded my council position localisation for some African cultures (was previously bugged). Yay!

-Added a decision for Igbo characters practising Odinala religion who have committed taboo (criminal offence such as Adultery etc) to pay to undergo ikpu alu, or ritual purification to remove taboo (for a cost). This will remove a criminal trait from the character on a cooldown.

-Adjusted de jure structure of Yorubaland and Borgu, creating a new duchy Sabe, shrinking Oyo duchy to reflect its lower significance in the game period, enlarging Ife duchy to reflects its high significance in the game period.

-Added Lower Niger Empire to de jure structure of Yorubaland, Benin, Nri, and Banzaland. I am however working on a decision to replace this change so that the Empire is formed only by decision rather than being default de jure.

Would people prefer a decision?

-Working on a revive Kushite paganism decision for Nubian rulers wanting to reconvert the kingdom of Nubia to the old faith. This is just for my own game really, and something for fun rather than realism, as I enjoy playing as a pagan.

-Expanded my list of buildings to add to the continent of Africa. This is sort of like a sub project of mine. I want to add more special buildings and natural places of significance to Africa.

 

[elvain]

sounds good.

I myself would be okay with slightly altered (color or whatever) vanilla icons.
Perhaps try sending me what you have and your planned icons. I appeared to be lucky enough to manage stuff for the Savanna terrain, maybe I might be able to manage the icons?

PS: let me knw when a releasable version of your mod is ready, I will add links and recommendations in Ibn Battuta's Legacy. This sort of kods is exactly what I intended to serve with my map groundwork.

 

[Black7Emperor7]

Big progess update/current change log in the OP!

I couldn't help myself and I have expanded the mod focus to also include parts of East Africa, namely Nubia.

I intended to release some Nubia focused changes as a separate mod later after WAP, and may still split these changes off and release separately down the line but for now they are a part of WAP.

There's tonnes of additions to the change log, but the Nubia stuff specifically is:

-Nubian empire title (inherited edition from elvains' mod).
-3 new Nubian special buildings.
-2 new Nubian MAA.
-A decision to unite kingdoms of Makuria and Alodia (in elvains mod k_nubia is split into two kingdoms, Makuria and Alodia).
-A revive Kushitic paganism decision for Nubian characters holding kingdom titles and other requirements.
-New ruler titles for Nubian characters to display the greek influence.
-New council position localisation for Nubian characters to display the greek influence.
-Nubian rulers now wear Byzantine clothes as they did in this period.
-Localisation changes for baronies and counties in Nubia.
-New religious tenet, 'Blood of Amun' for Kushitic paganism.
-Gold mine added into Bejaland (not Nubia but adjacent).
-Access to the 'African Sacred rulership' tenet for Nubian characters in early medieval period which unlocks primogeniture.

 

[manble1234]

Is the any way to download a beta for the mod?

 

[ajokitty]

• Idoism is the religion of the Zaghawa nomads, centred on ancestor veneration in the context of the natural environment - particularly hills or mountains. As well as strong belief in spirits, who also dwell in rocks and mountains. There's a practice of sand divination I wanted to introduce as a tenet, as part of a more generic divination tenet I want to add to the game - of which I would then create some localisations of, but haven't had time to do this yet. I really wish PDX had not removed the old ck2 haruspicy tenet (a form of divination) for this reason.

What do you plan for the effects of the generic divination tenet?

 

[Black7Emperor7]

Is the any way to download a beta for the mod?

No beta yet but not too far away, I have a bad habit of adding in more things all the time and then having to Iron out all associated new bugs and polish it! Gonna restrain myself so I can just have something as a baseline for everyone.

 

[Black7Emperor7]

What do you plan for the effects of the generic divination tenet?

Main features:

-localised name for the tenet based on culture, I.e. ifa, afa, baga, awaid etc.
-seek divine guidance decision (I.e. visit a diviner). Initially one flavour text centred on lower Niger cultures (the main focus of my mod) but decent for lots of cultures of the forest zone, then later one for Sand divination (Zaghawa), and one for mande.
-mystic as virtue (possibly witch as well not decided).
-cynical as sin.
-Learning Education may also grant the Wise Man (mystic) trait.

Re the decision, the finished decision should also have some options at the diviner only applicable to certain conditions, such as:
-character who doesn't have kids but want them
-people with illness seeking cures, or someone depressed etc.
-yoruba or edo characters who have taken the patron deity decision already (ie. Choose personal orisa cult), to seek guidance of that specific deity.

Outcomes should not be 100%, with sometimes adverse or different affects, as I dont want it to just be a straight buff for anyone that uses it.

A long term goal is always more events etc., so a future goal would also be some flavor events related to having this doctrine in general, dealing with divination or diviners in the community. At this stage though my priority is to finish the divination decision. In my initial release I may just reskin astrology though as the work on the decision is quite time consuming and will delay things.
--‐-----‐-----

Just a side note about decisions and events, I'm simultaneously working on a decision and event chain for rulers of Wagadu undertaking the Bida sacrifice, which should flavor to this area, including a few random flavour events squeezed into the chain to make taking the decision not the same each time. Options include pissing Bida right off by marrying his bride to be yourself, or switching the sacrifice for someone else at the last minute, and then keeping the maiden for yourself. Both options lead to massive debuffs in county opinion and prosperity though so not to be taken lightly!

 

[Trudon21]

Suggestion could you add the culture and religion of Guanches, the Indigenous people of the Canary Islands. They currently have Siguic as placeholder.

 

[neodymius]

is the mod ready?

 

[Black7Emperor7]

Do you have any sources for this that you could share with me please?

Suggestion could you add the culture and religion of Guanches, the Indigenous people of the Canary Islands. They currently have Siguic as placeholder.

 

[Black7Emperor7]

is the mod ready?

Not yet! Doing some testing this week. Trying to iron out bugs etc. If everything goes well I hope to have a release some time next week

 

[Black7Emperor7]

I'm happy to announce i'm finally at first release, please see the first post which has been updated

Thank you everyone for your patience.

 

[Guaire123456789]

the mod looks great

 

[Black7Emperor7]

African Folk Islam is on the way!

 

[Guaire123456789]

Cant wait to see it