Designing modpacks/total conversions

From AgeofWiki

In this guide, I will try to provide a guide to designing fictive civilizations for Age of Mythology, of which examples can be found [1] (http://aom.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=17,18478,,10)here. Keep in mind though, that this is a guide for beginners, so if you have designed one or two proper civilizations yourself, this guide will not be of much use to you.
In this guide I will try to put some emphasis on the why and the research part of the how, for both are, in my opinion, the most important aspect of civilization designing.

Why?

You should always consider why you are doing this, because you have to be prepared that only a few dedicated civilization designers will read your civilization design.

Although you will end up in a [2] (http://aom.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=17,18478,,10)list when you have designed a civilization, where people can vote for the best one, do not expect too much enthousiasm: there are few other civilization designs out there, and your purpose should not even be to try to make people think what a genius you are on civilization designing.

Rather, the best way to consider such a design is as a practice, a practice for doing research and learning the basic principles of translating this research into gameplay. I suggest you make one or two civilization designs, and if they are good, go on and start to make your own game ideas and try to convince a Modding Clan (or maybe a Game Company) to turn your ideas into a modpack or game. But beware! You have to be really talented and be willing to put a lot of time into your projects in order to achieve such.

But, not everything needs a purpose. It can also be plain fun to design the civilization you wanted for Age of Mythology.

Step 1: research

This is the most important part of civilization designing: research, research and more research. When you do proper research, you will find out the actual civilization designing is far less time consuming than this step. (although often both steps -research and the actual designing- take place at the same time, and not after each other)

Good research is time consuming, and can often be frustrating, but if you want to design your own civilizations you have no choice.

Before giving you some sources you could use for your research, I will first give you some general tips on researching itself. There are two ways to do research: the first way is like: go to [3] (http://www.google.com)Google, type the name of the civilization you want to design, and read the first ten hits. This, obviously, is the wrong way. The other way is far more time consuming, but gives you far better result. The most important thing you need to know about this is that your sources can be untrustworthy or biased. The Internet gives you the most and easiest results, but also the least trustworthy: everyone can say anything they want on the Internet. If you run into a two sources saying something completely different on a subject, decide which one is the most thrustworthy, or do more research.

Some good sources of information are:

• Your history teacher: he/she can give you good sources (books, websites, etcetera), and he/she will give you sources you can trust.
• Other persons you know of, that know something about history: if any of your family members or friends is a historian, or knows a lot about history, consult him/her.
• Your local library: Encyclopedias, history books, links to good websites and books on history, you can find all those in your local libray. But beware! Consult trustworthy books: encyclopedias, books written by historians, and so on. Not books like: "The Middle Ages -a children's encyclopedia".
• The Internet: As been said before, beware for information on the Internet! There are a lot of good information sources there, but even more really bad ones. Some good sites are:
  • [4] (http://www.pantheon.org)Pantheon.org: a very good site on a lot of mythologies around the world
  • [5] (http://www.history.com)History.com: a site that gives comprehensive information on world history. You will not have much use for this site when doing in-depth research, but it can give you some general ideas of the civilization you want to design and its history, and it gives really good references to books on the subject.
  • [6] (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/)The National Geographic Society: a very respective organisation, which provides lots of information on cultures all over the world and their history. If you know someone who is subscribed to the National Geographic Magazine, well this is a wonderful resource.
  • [7] (http://aom.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=t&fn=4)AoMH's very own mythology forum: this forum is visited by quite some mythology fanatics, so maybe they have some answers to your questions.
  • [8] (http://www.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=t&fn=10)HeavenGames' very own history forum: this forum is visited by quite some history fanatics, so maybe they have some answers to your questions.

Step 2: translating the research into game elements

I am really sorry, but for this, I cannot give some simple tips: you need to be creative and have talent. Just make sure you do not include some overpowered options like: God Power Apocalyps: destroys all your opponents units.

To get some general ideas and inspiration, again, see the [9] (http://aom.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=17,18478,0,all)civilization designs by others.

Keep in mind though, that you want to design an Age of Mythology civilization, so consider the following:

• A unique resource gather system
• A unique way of getting favour
• A unique way of getting heroes
• A unique Titan
• Military starts in second Age
• Fortress-like stucture and almost all military units in third Age

But the most important thing, in my opinion, is trying to 'break' the outline for civilizations as provided by EnsembleStudios: the best example of this is the multiple Godpowers for the Atlanteans in AoM's oficial expansion pack. Make sure though that your changes remain subtle: removing or adding an Age for a civilization, for example, will make that your civilization is no longer an Age of Mythology civilization.

Step 3: presentation

In this section I will deal with how you should organise your thread or website on your civilization, which can be more important than you think: if you have the most wonderful design, but a poor presentation, no-one will read it.

• Do not provide exact statistics for units, rather, indicate at what they are good (for example, say: 'high pierce armour', instead of: '67% pierce armour): you cannot tell how those exact statistics will work out in gameplay. It is just an idea.
• Use counters or weaknesess against other civilizations to make it sound fair to fit in with each other.
• When using images, use simple, conceptual images, so people can see how the unit would be like in the game. For some good examples on this, see Sp3ctres Japanese[10] (http://aom.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=17,20535,,all)civilization.
• Put in some references to history, so people can easily see that it fits with history why you gave a certain unit a certain weakness or bonus. Good examples of this can be found [11] (http://aom.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=17,15762,,all)here.
• Use colours and different letter types to organise things, but do not overdo them.
• Provide some [12] (http://img1.photobucket.com/albums/v40/Theris264/Romans/RomanTechTree.bmp) Tech Trees, preferabbly at the beginning of you thread, so people can see in one view what it is all about.

Step 4: you are never finished!

When your civilization outline is finished, expect some comments from fellow civilization designers. Use them to improve your design.