Asking for advice concerning new MP era

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Xalzar
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Joined: April 4th, 2009, 10:03 pm
Location: New Saurgrath

Asking for advice concerning new MP era

Post by Xalzar »

Hello everyone!
I was wondering, has anybody made a pure mythological era for Wesnoth? To my knowledge there is none, only factions.
So I was entertaining myself with this idea, and I started scavenging art and assembling frankensprites to compile such era (I'm not an artist! I do sometimes dabble with the code though - and keep getting stuck in ideas too big to finish them in reasonable time).
An era could represent a project sufficiently little to sate my creative hunger for a bit, and maybe find new willpower to try to finish my other, biggest works.

My idea is: an era comprising factions each ispired by a different mythological tradition from cultures around the world, containing human units (more on this later) and mythic units.
Another feature, less fleshed out, is some sort of "powers system" depending on which deity from the faction pantheon the player decides to venerate. In my plans every faction should have between 12 to 15 gods to choose from, which grant those special abilities and unique mythic units.

Have some examples of unit sprites, you should recognize some blatantly borrowed sprites and some bizarre frankensprites (luckily mythology is rich of hybrid creatures). In order (left-right, up-down)
Vizir and Phoenix (Arabic)
Nuckelavee and Kelpie (horse form) (Celtic)
Pixiu (female form) and Sun Wukong (Chinese)
Hieracosphinx and Ammit (Egyptian)
Harpy and Chimaera (Greek)
Matsya and Kamadhenu (Indian)
Kappa and Onryo (Japanese)
Bas Celik and Psoglav (Slavic)
Lamassu (Mesopotamian)
Berserker and Sleipnir (Norse)
Rooster (Eastern Zodiac)
Capricornus (Western Zodiac)
Roc and Manticore (Persian)
Feathered Serpent and Ahuizotl (Pre-Columbian)
Legionnaire (Roman)
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Now, I have some doubts on the suitability of the Hindu faction... Should I avoid it or not? I'm deliberatedly ignoring Christian or Islamic, or other current religion mythologies (I still want Golems though, any idea on how to include them in one of the factions?), and I can understand if that faction or some other units are a no-go (looking at you, Sun Wukong...)
Second, the Roman faction has much in common with the Greek one, any idea how to differentiate them? For now all that I can think of is using Roman-only gods, and maybe granting the faction the "sincretic" ability: Romans can "steal" other gods' powers for their own gods (obvious example: Jupiter can use powers of other sky deities like Zeus and others)
The Zodiac factions are not real factions per se at the moment, I'm undecided what should I do with them. They're too cool to pass, though. Maybe they'll be common units.
Medieval mythology is difficult to allocate, I don't know if I should add another faction or use others, like the Celtic and Slavic ones.
African mythology is not present at the moment, and I don't know where to focus my attention.
I'm considering splitting the Greek faction in Greek proper and Atlantidean (focused on a Titan pantheon), to cut less gods from it.
Then, I have an embryonic idea about "modern mythologies" factions: Cthulhu Mythos is the obvious example. Could be that interesting? And most importantly, feasible (I don't know how difficult could be finding the necessary images)?
Finally, for some factions it could be difficult to find suitable human units, if you know where to find Mesopotamian-like, Indian-like and Mesoamerican-like sprites in particular, thank you!

For answers and other ideas, feel free to post in this very topic!
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