Fauna requests

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, Alexandermb said:

Cattle could be an altered version of the zebu with new textures:

 

It would also be good to have Sanga cattle for the Kushites. DE currently uses the Zebu actor for this, but there were a couple of prominent differences between the two.

 

[Alexandermb]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone a modified version of the zebu too could work ?

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Edited May 28, 2018 by Alexandermb

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Not a bad start, but I would make the body a little leaner and the horns a little more outrageous.

[Lion.Kanzen]

6 minutes ago, Alexandermb said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone a modified version of the zebu too could work ?

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Wowget... have right, son muy pequeños esos cuernos, debe ser más cornudo 

[Alexandermb]

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[Lion.Kanzen]

Just now, Alexandermb said:

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Ahora esta bien.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Alexandermb said:

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There ya go!

[Nescio]

2 hours ago, Alexandermb said:

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Perhaps you could make the horns pointing outwards, rather than have them approaching a circle?

[Alexandermb]

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[Sundiata]

@Alexandermb Really nice! 

Of course, I have to add some of my traditional nitpickery, but its just details (not so important):

For a Sanga bull, the throat should have some noticeable floppiness (thin flap of flesh). His lower stomach should be pulled in just a tad, to give the look of a more robust chest. Maybe a penis? The reddish colour is much more common, and should be the standard colour (if you provide me the texture I could try adjusting the colour).   

[Alexandermb]

6 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

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Textures remains unchanged, they are the zebu ones in public folder:

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Edited May 28, 2018 by Alexandermb

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

12 minutes ago, Alexandermb said:

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Textures remains unchanged, they are the zebu ones in public folder:

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The actor can simply give the brown texture a "frequency" of 5 or something, compared to 1 or 2 for the others.

[Sundiata]

@Alexandermb & @wowgetoffyourcellphone, to match the "Nubian" spearman's cow-hide shields, perhaps we could use 1/5 black and white, 1/5 brown and white, 3/5 full brown:

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1/5 black and white:

 

1/5 brown and white:

 

3/5 full brown

 

IDEA:

Most civs in-game had cattle, and it was very important to them, both for meat as well as spiritually, especially the bull was a powerful symbol to most cattle rearing cultures in history. So, most civs should be able to train cattle. The "civilian" and economic aspects of the game really need some attention. Being able to train cattle from the town- or city-phase, for example keeps things a little more varied and interesting. Animals being trained at a cost of 50 food (just an example), and fattening up over time to become the worth of 100 or 200 food is fun, logical and intuitive.

Animals that have been killed should "spoil" overtime, so that you need to gather from an animal as soon as its killed. If you leave it for a certain amount of time, it "rots away". This adds another level of tactics, as killing of an enemy's herd is a serious loss of investment to that enemy, because he can't easily gather all that meat at once.

The corral should train a herdsman. All cattle should automatically roam within a certain distance from the herdsman, following him around. Perhaps "herding" should be rewarded, by increasing the speed of the cattle fattening in relation to the distance they travel. So task your herdsman to walk around your town (cattle follows automatically) and the cows fatten up twice as fast as when you'd just leave them in one spot. Units can already "guard", so maybe such a mechanic could be used here, mixed with the roaming/herd mechanic. The cattle would "guard" the herdsman, by roaming within a set maximum distance from the herdsman.

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maybe killing an enemy herdsman renders the herd capturable by your own herdsman. How much fun would that be, stealing the enemy cattle!!!  Some civs/units like Gauls and Iberians (even Nuba mercs) could be cattle thieving experts 

This kind of mechanic seems natural, simple and intuitive. 

[Nescio]

37 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

Most civs in-game had cattle, and it was very important to them, both for meat as well as spiritually, especially the bull was a powerful symbol to most cattle rearing cultures in history. So, most civs should be able to train cattle.

All true, but there is more. Nowadays we keep cattle primarily for milk and meat, and secondarily for their skin, to make leather from. Historically, however, their primary function was to provide oxen for ploughing the fields; their faeces were also used as fertilizer. No oxen meant less crops and smaller harvests. Cattle also represented wealth, especially amongst Germanic peoples, but also elsewhere in Eurasia. It is hardly surprising cows and bulls feature prominently in many mythologies.

[Sundiata]

@Nescio Exactly, I forgot about milk/ploughing/fertilising/leather production, all very important even in our timeframe...

Lets not forget they were important sacrificial animals as well...

Edited May 29, 2018 by Sundiata

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, Sundiata said:

 

Lets not forget they were important sacrifice animals as well...

Indeed. In depictions of the Panathenaia you can see sacrificial bulls being led with the procession.

[Sundiata]

39 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Indeed. In depictions of the Panathenaia you can see sacrificial bulls being led with the procession.

Indeed... 

Bulls (and cattle in general) where important enough to be depicted in official state art of most of the civilizations in-game:

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From friezes on the Parthenon:

 

Spartan:

 

Thracian Borovo Treasure (looks very Persian)

Geta-Thracian:

 

Achaemenid:

 

Kushite

 

Roman:

 

Maurya:

 

Han Chinese:

 

Seleucid

 

Ptolemaic:

 

Celts

Hallstatt celts

 

...

 

 

Edited May 28, 2018 by Sundiata

[Alexandermb]

we will end having this on random maps with the new goats ?

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@Sundiata its possible that you make changes on zebu textures to look like a cattle? i have some on the file i'm using for them and looks like this:

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[Lion.Kanzen]

I'm note dure about cows.

http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2016/02/cattle-domestication-from-aurochs-to-cow/

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Quote

Besides aurochs, other wild cattle have been domesticated in the last 7000 years. For example, banteng may have been domesticated in Southeast Asia about 5000 years BC (Felius 1995). Gayal or mithun, the domestic form of gaur (Bos gaurus), it is distributed in Assam and Myanmar and it is used mainly for ceremonial purposes. About 2500 years BC a domestic form of the wild yak (Bos mutus) was selected and now occupies a large region on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and adjacent areas above 3000 m (Wiener et al. 2003). The modern swamp buffalo derived by domestication of wild water buffalo (Bubalus arnee). Recent mtDNA analyses (Zhang et al. 2011), combined with archaeological evidence, indicate buffalo domestication in South China and/or Indochina around 2000 BC. The domestication of the swamp buffalo coincides with the start of the rice cultivation where a strong animal for ploughing the rice fields was necessary (Lenstra et al. 2014). Finally river buffalo, another phenotype derived by wild water buffalo, has been domesticated about 2500 years BC in the Indus Valley (Kumar et al. 2007). It seems that these animals were not known in the Roman Empire, which indicates that river buffalo arrived in the western regions after its domestication (Lenstra et al. 2014).

The distribution of cattle in different regions of the world led to the development of several ecotypes adapted to their local environments (Lenstra et al. 2014). In addition, human selection generated many different “agrotypes”, which preceded the formation of breeds that differ in coat colour, horns development and docility. In the last 200 years, cattle diversity has been increased by systematic selection of isolated populations that became the present breeds. When dairy production (Barker 1985) started many cattle have acquired, for example, large udders. The process of the domestication resulted in a decrease of size, which continued until the Middle Ages but it was less pronounced in long-horned Italian forms and draught cattle (Lenstra et al. 2014).

 

[Stan`]

Yeah cows could definitely use horns. With male and female variants.

I don't know how bells were common but if they were itd be nice to have them. Ah and also collars  with player color when convert unit is implemented

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, stanislas69 said:

Yeah cows could definitely use horns. With male and female variants.

I don't know how bells were common but if they were itd be nice to have them. Ah and also collars  with player color when convert unit is implemented

Very desirable feature.

[Sundiata]

2 hours ago, Alexandermb said:

@Sundiata its possible that you make changes on zebu textures to look like a cattle? i have some on the file i'm using for them and looks like this:

I think the textures you have there are pretty nice-looking... So do you want me to make more of them, or? 

 

1 hour ago, stanislas69 said:

I don't know how bells were common but if they were itd be nice to have them. Ah and also collars  with player color when convert unit is implemented

Check this out:

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Kushite silver (cow?) bell in the museum of fine arts, Boston, from a Meroitic tomb:

 

Kushite cow with a bell, depicted on an bronze bell (for a cow?)... I love this kind of "subtle humor" in Kushite art... From a Meroitic tomb

 

This one is Roman:

 

3 hours ago, Alexandermb said:

we will end having this on random maps with the new goats ?

Maybe goats could be allowed to walk on even the steepest inclination?

[Nescio]

4 hours ago, Alexandermb said:

That black-and-white pattern looks nice, but I'm not sure how common it was in Antiquity. The modern Friesian Holstein breed, now widespread, did not exist back then.

2 hours ago, stanislas69 said:

Yeah cows could definitely use horns. With male and female variants.

As you probably know, "male cows" are called bulls; castrated ones are called oxen, bullocks, or steers. Ideally every bovine in game should have calf, cow, ox, and bull variants.

53 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

Maybe goats could be allowed to walk on even the steepest inclination?

There are many different species of goat, all are used to rough terrain, but not all can scale steep cliffs.

 

 

[Stan`]

12 minutes ago, Nescio said:

 As you probably know, "male cows" are called bulls;

Yeah. I think too much in term of game contents where it will make no difference unless we create one template per type.

[Nescio]

24 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

Yeah. I think too much in term of game contents where it will make no difference unless we create one template per type.

Yes, that's exactly what I want. We already have separate templates for the lion and the lioness (no lion cubs yet, unfortunately), and I think we should have separate templates for the bovines too, e.g.:

gaia/fauna/cattle_bull.xml
gaia/fauna/cattle_calf.xml
gaia/fauna/cattle_cow.xml
gaia/fauna/cattle_ox.xml
gaia/fauna/sanga_bull.xml
gaia/fauna/sanga_calf.xml
gaia/fauna/sanga_cow.xml
gaia/fauna/zebu_bull.xml
gaia/fauna/zebu_calf.xml
gaia/fauna/zebu_cow.xml

(And ideally also mithun, yak, banteng, water buffalo, aurochs, gaur, wild yak, kouprey, and the wild Asian water buffalo.)