1500AD - The age of exploration and the rise of Mughal
This is the thread to discuss and update anything related to the 1500AD on GEM scenario development.

Current release (Version 2.5)- Released: 17 Sep 2008
1) Holy Roman Empire is strengthened. Vienna (now capital of HRE) and Cologne are added.
2) Hungary is weakened. Zagreb is removed.
3) Naples is added (owned by Spain); Toulouse is added (owned by France).
4) Ottoman is strengthened.
5) Macau is added (owned by Ming); Goa is added (owned by Bahmanid).

Previous release (Version 2.2) - Released: 25 Jul 2008
Units with promotions now starts at their appropriate level.

Previous release (Version 1.2) - Released: 25 Jun 2008
Changes include:
1) Most cities have their sizes reduced to made it consistent with the city size standard used in the 1940AD scenario.
2) Mongols, Manchu are stronger than before as their knights (strength 10) are replaced by Keshiks (strength 12).
3) Tonga starts with 2 settlers allowing her to immigrant to Australia or New Zealand sooner.

Previous release (Version 1.1) - Released: 14 Feb 2008
Changed handicap setting for game balance. Changed the invasion army of Ottoman, Mughal and Japan to offensive units such that AI knows how to use them to invade the lands according to history. Added a great engineer to Spain, Portugal, England and France allowing human playing to build a second capital in the new world. Updated the map to v4.2 of GEM.


Description
The world at 1500AD is a time full of actions. While Spain and Portugal are colonizing, Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal are also expanding rapidly. Can any of these nations challenges Ming China's position as the greatest empire on Earth?

This is the first scenario released developed on the Giant Earth Map (GEM). Attached is an excel file that I've used to calculate the city sizes. (It was intended to calculate the military sizes as well but due to lack of references, it is left blank at the moment).

The playable nations are:


England
France
Holy Roman Empire
Venice
Papal States
Spain
Portugal
Union of Kalmar
Poland
Hungary
Russia

Morocco
Arab
Ottoman
Safavid
Timurid
Shaybanid

Lodhi
Bahmanid
Vijayanagar
Ayutthaya
Malacca

Mongol
Chagatai
Jurchen
Ming
Joseon
Japan

Songhay
Ethiopia
Zimbabwe

Aztec
Inca
Maya

Tonga



Instruction
This scenario comes with GEM mod. Only available in BTS version.

Screenshots group 1:

England, France, Spain, Central Europe and Southern Europe

Screenshots group 2:

Persia, Russia, Central Asia, North India and South India.

Screenshots group 3

Mongol, North east China, Japan/Korea, South east Asia and Tonga.

Screen shots group 4:

Mesoamerica, Inca, South Africa, West Africa and Egypt

Hello Genghis Kai,

the past days I haven been playing this scenario (1.1 version, of course) for a couple of hours each day, and will arrive at 1900 AD this evening.

If you're interested, I could write some feedback and suggestions for you, although I am not sure if it's all good to be put in the scenario thread, since some of it seems map related.

I've only tried a single nation (Holy Roman Empire, noble difficulty) yet, what I can say about the development of civs in the regions where I did not interfere too much is that the ming chinese became the eastern superpower rather quickly, although they did not manage to control a much larger area than the modern day borders of the PRoC.

I have to admit that I disallowed tech trading, which usually makes it easier (from my experience) for larger civs to dominate their neighbours.

Best Regards,
Ace of Spades

Surely it would be good to hear your feedback.

But the scenario is already changed in version 5.0. So may be no need to spend time commenting on something thats already changed.

I am thrilled for the next version :-)

Some feedback on how the 1500 AD scenario played out for me:

Settings: Holy Roman Empire, noble, no tech trading.

The HRE seems moderately advanced (for a european civ) in the beginning. I focused on cultural and military expansion early on, setting the culture slider to 50% and commerce to 50%, producing barracks and mostly trebuchets, combined with the occasional landsknecht (first time I ever really got to use these) in all of my cities.

After having a quick look at my neighbours, I decided Venice and Rome would be my first strategic targets, securing both the christian holy city and the mining corporation promised a financial advandtage. Neither city was heavily defended, and after some minor squabbles with Hungary (razed Zurich, Zagreb and conquered Prague) I was able to secured both these financial centers, netting me about 300 gold per turn and allowing me to redirect my funding to science (70%) and culture (30%). Units used were mainly my starting musketmen and loads of trebuchets. By 1576 Rome was flying the HRE flag.

My colonial attempts were directed at the American east coast, basically covering the entire coast with four cities and no overlap. However, they never went much further (conquered two barbarian cities and that's it) and the American colonies never played any larger role in the further game, although they managed to grow quite large (about 18 to 20 in 1890 A).

I went for a continental imperialistic strategy, finishing off Hungary in 1612 and invading France after they declared war on me while I was building up my military to invade Poland. I captured Paris in 1696, razed Calais and Dijon and conquered Bordeaux and Montpellier. At this point, I was beginning to catch up technologically and among the top 5 in score. Having defeated the second most powerful European continental power, I concentrated on conquest in the east, invading Poland and Russia (of which I only took Moscow and Novgorod) until 1800 AD. At this point, I was already using cannons and musketmen, and the Ottomans vassalized to me whil I was campaigning in eastern Europe, second in score only to the Ming.

From then on, some smaller military actions consisted of conquering continental spain and portugal, clearing the remains of the papal states and venice from the mediterranean, conquering scandinavia and finally invading Morocco and Arabia in the second half of the 19th century, being first in score since about 1820 AD.

In 1889 AD, continental Europe and the norther coast of the Mediterranean are controlled by the Holy Roman Empire, which also holds Jerusalem and is marching their riflemen and cannon on Mecca this very moment to complete its collection of western religion holy cities (which are financial powerhouses in this mod). The Black Sea region is controlled by its vassal, the Ottomans. Africa is divided between many smaller colonies from varios civilizations, without great empires of territorial integrities to be seen.

Eastern Asia is dominated by the Ming with their two minor vassals, which are opposed by the Mughal and their five vassals. They seem to have reached a stalemate in India, trading cities back and forth. Australia is colonized mainly by the Japanese and Indian civs.

The Incan empire dominates south America, with the exception of some English colonies on the eastern coast. Meso- and Northern America are spanish territory, controlled by Isabella (third in score) and Monztezuma (her Vassal) apart from the smaller HRE colonies in the east.

So much for a brief recount of events. Some more specialized feedback: Armies take a really long time to move and to react, making it difficult to reinforce the frontlines, especially in colonial war scenarios. Even ships do not seem to help this situation, since their movement speed (galleons move four squares) proves to be very low for this large a map - I've seen your changes for v5.0, however, I think even faster ships would make the game more fun to play, allowing you to put more focus on building colonial empires and making naval supremacy a goal worth pursuing.

I am slightly disappointed in the regional superpowers' inability to grow to really menacing empires, even with the vassal system - however, this seems to be a problem with civ4 itself, with the AI lacking punch in military conflicts and distributing their forces ineffciently. I'd really have loved to see the Ming empire conquer some of its smaller neighbours and maybe expand up to Australia and Persia once it got the upper hand in Asia.

I do not think I am going to finish the game, I planned on going for a domination victory, but I will rather wait for your v5.0 I guess - been playing 18 hours on this version, and had a crash lately loading a savegame which annihilated another half.

To close this up, thank you for the great map, I had loads of fun with it, and I'm looking forward to seeing its next version :-)

Best Regards,
Ace of Spades

To: Ace of Spades

Thanks for your feedback. You know, it sometimes sounds more fun to hear how other people played their game than I actually playing it :)

In regards to the change in movements, the problem of having ships even faster is that it would make 'surprise' attack to the AI too easy. Since I am not intended to change AI behaviours, I should not make mod changes that would affect the AI, too much.

I recently started a game on the new version of this scenario, with the goal of exploiting the new merchant specialist mechanics. Therefore, England was chosen as civilization, since they have a philosophical leader and their situation on the island suits well with the expected playing style (pacifist colonization/expansion). Most importantly, they are one of the few civs to start with Constitution, allowing the Representation civic right on.

In short, specialist economy proves to be very effective with the new settings. The key to economic domination is food, since every single food surplus nets you 6 commerce (3 coins and 3 beakers) instead of only three. Furthermore, great merchants are now easily the most powerful superspecialists, a single great merchant nets you 9+6+6+6 = 27 commerce in the long run, provided that your health level is sufficient and the excess food is used to hire new merchants. Now compare that to settling a great scientist, which will only net you a third of the commerce, and you can see that if you want to settle any great people, there can really be no discussion as to which ones to choose.

Apart from managing England and Ireland, I started settling Northern America, which by now (1670) is dominated by my cities. However, this has crippled my economy so severely that I have to run at 0% science, 10% culture and 90% gold (while still having 150 beakers due to my 50 specialists) to pay for the massive maintenance. I could liberate these colonies to form the USA of course, however I am pretty sure they would break away from me sooner or later then, so I am planning on moving my capital to America ASAP, which I will probably manage to do in the early 1700s. This should cut my colony expenses and allow me to become the most productive civilization in the long run.

We'll see how this turns out... :-)

There's one little thign I noted, some of the civ adjectives ("...was conquered by the Venice/Spainese..." seem awkward to me. Is this intentional, due to these being in use at the time the scenario plays at?

Best Regards,
Ace

In short, specialist economy proves to be very effective with the new settings. The key to economic domination is food, since every single food surplus nets you 6 commerce (3 coins and 3 beakers) instead of only three. Furthermore, great merchants are now easily the most powerful superspecialists, a single great merchant nets you 9+6+6+6 = 27 commerce in the long run, provided that your health level is sufficient and the excess food is used to hire new merchants. Now compare that to settling a great scientist, which will only net you a third of the commerce, and you can see that if you want to settle any great people, there can really be no discussion as to which ones to choose.


I don't understand how food surplus nets 6 commerce and then a single merchant nets 27 commerce. Can you explain further? (I am not a good player in Civ :rolleyes:)


There's one little thign I noted, some of the civ adjectives ("...was conquered by the Venice/Spainese..." seem awkward to me. Is this intentional, due to these being in use at the time the scenario plays at?
Ace

I don't get it as well.

I don't understand how food surplus nets 6 commerce and then a single merchant nets 27 commerce. Can you explain further? (I am not a good player in Civ :rolleyes:)

Okay, I will try to explain further.

First, I assume that you are running Representation (+3 beakers per specialist), which is easily the best form of government under specialist-heavy economies.

Second, I assume that you have a city with its growth limited by food rather than health. In fact, since cities are spaced quite closely together in this scenario, it's not unusual to have a city with a health limit of 20, but producing only 24 food with all tiles being worked (the others are claimed by neighbouring cities), limiting its population to 12.

Now, add a great merchant super specialist. the great merchant adds:

(f = food b= beakers g=gold)

3f 6g 3b

Now the city has 3 more food, producing 27 food/turn and starting to grow. Once it has grown to size 13, you get another citizen. Since there are no further tiles to be worked, the citizen will be assigned to be a merchant, adding another:

1f 3g 3b

This leaves our city at producing 28 food/turn, and still growing. You can repeat this two more times, until the city 30 food/turn at size 15 and stops to grow. Now the total sum of what you gained from adding the great merchant to the city amounts to once thze output of the great merchant superspecialist plus thrice the output of a merchant specialist.

Therefore, you have gained:

a) 3 population points (due to having gained 6 food/turn)
b) 15 gold/turn (1 x 6 + 3 x 3 gold)
c) 12 beakers/turn (4 x 3 beakers from Representation)
d) 11 great people points (1 x 2 + 3 x 3 gp points)

Now, if you compare that with what you get from other super specialists, you have gained a huge advantage. For example, one great scientist - under the same conditions - yields:

0 gold/turn
1 shield/turn
9 beakers/turn
2 gp points/turn

I don't get it as well.

I just thought that it sometimes says "the Spainese" where it should say "the Spanish" or something like that, so maybe some of the civ descriptions are not entirely correct. I can have a look at the XML file later, and maybe point you to some entries that sounded strange to me.

Anyway, my English game is progressing smoothly, using a peaceful colonization strategy. I will probably finish it next week. The AI seems to put up more of a challenge compared to the last version from what I can tell now, however they still seem rather tame in some respects (as ming china not abusing their enormous starting potential for example).

Having a great time with your mod though nontheless, so thanks again for your efforts :-)

Regards,
Ace

Okay, I will try to explain further.

Therefore, you have gained:

a) 3 population points (due to having gained 6 food/turn)
b) 15 gold/turn (1 x 6 + 3 x 3 gold)
c) 12 beakers/turn (4 x 3 beakers from Representation)
d) 11 great people points (1 x 2 + 3 x 3 gp points)



I see. I didn't think beyond the instant result, thats why I didn't understand. Thanks for the explanation.


I just thought that it sometimes says "the Spainese" where it should say "the Spanish" or something like that, so maybe some of the civ descriptions are not entirely correct. I can have a look at the XML file later, and maybe point you to some entries that sounded strange to me.

Oh Ok. You meant the spelling. I will check that.


Anyway, my English game is progressing smoothly, using a peaceful colonization strategy. I will probably finish it next week. The AI seems to put up more of a challenge compared to the last version from what I can tell now, however they still seem rather tame in some respects (as ming china not abusing their enormous starting potential for example).

Having a great time with your mod though nontheless, so thanks again for your efforts :-)

Regards,
Ace
I suppose Ming is not as strong as the previous version?

I suppose Ming is not as strong as the previous version?

Yes, but he's still first in score in 1815 AD of course - the others cannot really catch up to him.

However, he did not vassalize the Jurchen, as he used to in my two games with the old version.

Isabella seems to be the big bully right now, she's third in score (with me being a very peacful second, only the French declared on me twice due to the -50 modifier) and already vassalized four minor nations, it seems she even peaked at six but they tend to break away from her.

One very funny event was when the Apostolic Palace declared war upon Ismail, who was utterly devastated as about 20 civs declared war on him, most of his core cities going to Arabia. Did you tweak anything about the Palace? I also noticed it is located in Worms now, probably to represent the fact that the Holy Roman Emperor claims to be the highest-ranking political leader of the christian nations.

One civ that seems to do remarkably well (especially compared to the real world) is the papal states, they assimilated venice due to the huge cultural value of rome and are one of the tech leaders now, controlling all of Italy and the surrounding islands, as well as some colonies.

Best Regards,
Ace

Hello Genghis Kai,

here are some proposals for CivAdjective changes:

Spainese --> Spanish
Arabs --> Arabian
Safavids --> Safavid
Ottomans --> Ottoman
Mughals --> Mughal
Shaybanids --> Shaybanid
Bahamids --> Bahamid
Vijayanagara --> Vijayanagaran
Mongols --> Mongolian
Jurchens --> Jurchen
Aztecs --> Aztec
Minor Nations --> Minor Nation

Regards,
Ace

P.S.: do you prefer to be called Genghis or Kai? :-)

One very funny event was when the Apostolic Palace declared war upon Ismail, who was utterly devastated as about 20 civs declared war on him, most of his core cities going to Arabia. Did you tweak anything about the Palace? I also noticed it is located in Worms now, probably to represent the fact that the Holy Roman Emperor claims to be the highest-ranking political leader of the christian nations.


I gave the Apostolic palace to HRE because I wanted to give HRE something special, like Papal with the State religion, Venice with the Corporation and Spain/Portugal with the colonist.


One civ that seems to do remarkably well (especially compared to the real world) is the papal states, they assimilated venice due to the huge cultural value of rome and are one of the tech leaders now, controlling all of Italy and the surrounding islands, as well as some colonies.


Mmm... that wasn't intended. I thought Venice should have enough cultural buildings to protect itself as it was in v4.2. (I don't think I have change anything in there) Need to check that. Thanks.

Hello Genghis Kai,

here are some proposals for CivAdjective changes:

Spainese --> Spanish
Arabs --> Arabian
Safavids --> Safavid
Ottomans --> Ottoman
Mughals --> Mughal
Shaybanids --> Shaybanid
Bahamids --> Bahamid
Vijayanagara --> Vijayanagaran
Mongols --> Mongolian
Jurchens --> Jurchen
Aztecs --> Aztec
Minor Nations --> Minor NationRegards,
Ace

P.S.: do you prefer to be called Genghis or Kai? :-)

Thanks for correcting my poor English :p Except Arab and Mongol which I think are better than Arabian and Mongolian (these are modern terminologies I think). I will correct them accordingly.

Kai is part of my real name. But maybe call me Genghis in here since everyone else do that.

Hello Genghis,

Here are some minor bugs I found:

I noticed another glitch in the text files, due to the long civ names ( CivDesc ), which are currently used like the short names.

For example, in case of the English civilization, both CivDec and CivShortDesc are set to "England".

CivDesc=England
CivShortDesc=England
CivAdjective=English

However, this leads to game messages like "The city of Paris was conquered by the England", where CivDesc is used.

CivDesc should be a longer description of the Civilization like "Kingdom of England" or "English Empire" to fit with well with these game messages.

Another, more gameplay-related issue seems to be the liberation of colonies. I'm not entirely sure why this happens, but when the Holy Roman Empire, in my current game. liberated its colonies, I got the message that they had granted independence to their overseas colonies of Germany. However, this caused every other civ to promptly declare war on the HRE, and when I moved my mouse curser over Maximilian in the scoreboard, it said:

"Master of Minor Nations"

I'm not quite sure why this happened. It seems to work for some cilizizations at least, for example I could liberate my own colonies to create the United States of America without having all the other civs declare war on me.

Hope this helps,
Ace

Hello Genghis,

Here are some minor bugs I found:

I noticed another glitch in the text files, due to the long civ names ( CivDesc ), which are currently used like the short names.

For example, in case of the English civilization, both CivDec and CivShortDesc are set to "England".

CivDesc=England
CivShortDesc=England
CivAdjective=EnglishHowever, this leads to game messages like "The city of Paris was conquered by the England", where CivDesc is used.

CivDesc should be a longer description of the Civilization like "Kingdom of England" or "English Empire" to fit with well with these game messages.


I tried to avoid to call nations with "Republic of...", "Kingdom of ..." or " ... Empire". Reason is that I feel it is inappropriate to use a fixed name to call a nation, which can have a dynamic government form. For example, it is strange to call a nation "Kingdom of ..." while it use Universal Suffrage and Emancipation as it's civic. So United States of America is just America and Ming Dynasty is just Ming in all my scenarios. I don't know whether this is the best way thought. May be you can suggest alternatives.


Another, more gameplay-related issue seems to be the liberation of colonies. I'm not entirely sure why this happens, but when the Holy Roman Empire, in my current game. liberated its colonies, I got the message that they had granted independence to their overseas colonies of Germany. However, this caused every other civ to promptly declare war on the HRE, and when I moved my mouse curser over Maximilian in the scoreboard, it said:

"Master of Minor Nations"

I'm not quite sure why this happened. It seems to work for some cilizizations at least, for example I could liberate my own colonies to create the United States of America without having all the other civs declare war on me.

Hope this helps,
Ace

Don't know why, but "Master of Minor Nations" is strange still "minor nation" should be a minor nation in the scenario, which means it can't have any diplomatic relationship. So I don't know how it can becomes a vassal of someone else.

So United States of America is just America and Ming Dynasty is just Ming in all my scenarios. I don't know whether this is the best way thought. May be you can suggest alternatives.

I absolutely support this idea, since I share your feeling that a civ with a representation government should not be called "Kingdom of ... ". Currently, I have no idea as to how to solve the dilemma of the gramatically incorrect in-game messages under these circumstances, but I'll give it some thought, and if I can come up with something I'll let you know. I know that something like this has been implemented by Rhye, but I suppose it does require non-trivial modification of the dll.

Don't know why, but "Master of Minor Nations" is strange still "minor nation" should be a minor nation in the scenario, which means it can't have any diplomatic relationship. So I don't know how it can becomes a vassal of someone else.

Somehow the newly created colony seemed to have minor nation status. This is probably due to destroyed civilizations being used as colony civilizations... I noticed this in a earlier game, when Portugal liberated its colonies and they became Hungary, which had been destroyed some 200 turns earlier. Somehow some of the settings seem to be carried over, including the "at war" status of the civ - since everyone was at war with "Minor Nations" before they got destroyed, they seem to have declared war on the HRE when the Minor Nations "respawned" as the HRE vassal.

Best Regards,
Ace

Somehow the newly created colony seemed to have minor nation status. This is probably due to destroyed civilizations being used as colony civilizations... I noticed this in a earlier game, when Portugal liberated its colonies and they became Hungary, which had been destroyed some 200 turns earlier. Somehow some of the settings seem to be carried over, including the "at war" status of the civ - since everyone was at war with "Minor Nations" before they got destroyed, they seem to have declared war on the HRE when the Minor Nations "respawned" as the HRE vassal.

Best Regards,
Ace

This is making more sense now. Yes, I've experienced the 'carry over' diplomatic status of the new nations before. So this is something to do with BTS, not GEM (i.e. not my problem :lol:).

Some news fremom my current game (still playing the English). I'm now at 1982 AD and progressing towards domination victory, having recently finished the tech tree, I'm in a solid lead in tech, score and power.

China is a strong second, with 3800 score to my 5200, and about 80% of my power - they have 10 Vassals as well. The Spanish Empire (they were leader in score briefly, having 10 Vassals as well) crumbled in the late 1800s when I started to conquer southern america while china eliminated their asian vassal - mughal - from the game and conquered france and the iberian peninsula, while the spanish vassals - morocco, zimbabwe, ethiopia - conquered africa beneath them from songhay and portogese, breaking free in the process.

Currently, Ming and their vassals control almost all of asia and europe, with the exception of the hungarian empire, stretching from Berlin to Jerusalem (the hungarians are third in score, having vassalized turkey and arabia) and two cities in France and Portugal, which I conquered. They have just researched industrialism, but seem to run out of smaller countries to attack, so it seems the final confrontation between me and the Ming is imminent.

My own English Empire encompasses the entirety of Northern, Meso- and Southern America, and I have just begun to conquer Africa, eliminating the Moroccans in 1980 and currently marching on Zimbabwe, which will be followed by Ethiopia - time to absorb these currently independent Nations before China does. Warfare has become extremely swift now, with Modern Armor moving four tiles and blitzing, cutting deep into enemy territory and possibly eliminating four defenders per turn. Stealth bomber range seems to be a bit low (realistically, they have an extremely high op range), however there are rnough cities and forts around to have enough of them near a strike target 90% of the time.

Maybe I can post some screenshots later. I need 51% land and 51% population for domination, however I have currently only achieved about 35% of population and 25% of land. Hopefully adding Africa to my empire will improve these ratios... however, I think these values are rather harsh for such a gigantic map. Maybe you could lower them slightly?

A really impressive feature of a large empire are the corporations, since they scale like "cities * ressources". Currently, Cereal Mills provides 14 Food and Mining Inc provides 30 hammers... in my empire - now combine this with the really cool 1-food merchant specialists, and you can found a city in the desert, which - without working any tile - will...

...grow to pop 16
...generate 32 food [ 2 (base) + 14 (cereal mills) + 16 (merchants) ]
...generate 30 hammers (mining inc)
...generate 48 gold (without modifiers, this makes up for corporation maintenance)
...generate 48 beakers (in Representation)
...generate 32 culture (with Sistine Chapel)

Now this would almost make city spamming viable... even more so since the limiting factor to city growth for me right now is mostly health and happiness, I have a lot of cities in the 30s which otherwise could easily grow to 40+, and even one city with 52 pop (national park + globe theatre).

Best Regards,
Ace

Sounds like great fun!

I appreciate the information you are providing as it will be helpful in the game I want to play after my current one.

One key feature which is driving the merchant mechanic is the reduction in the value in playing a Financial leader caused by the lack of commerce from sea tiles. It is really crippling my Incan game atm (Fin/Ind is worthless when all the wonders have been built and sea tiles yield 1c not 3c).

I would have assumed however that using corporations would be an economic disaster unless you own the HQ. Do you own Venice and the other HQ? On such a large map I was planning on using State Property for the cost reductions.

Please also provide screens as what I have found in my game only in the middle 1600 is Hungarians are proving to be a powerhouse as well.

Some older screenshots.

a) 1826 AD: I managed to move my capital to the New World, saving me from economic collapse. Spain is on the rise.
b) 1838 AD: Europe; note the Papal Empire. Venice flipped to Pius due to Rome's culture.
c) 1895 AD: Note the impressive list of vassals from Isabella. This is shortly before England and China declare war on her.

Some more recent screenshots:

a) 1932 AD: Chinese Vassals; The Ming have taken the score lead.
b) 1952 AD: Europe; Spain has conquered Rome but is starting to get steamrolled by China, the Hungarian Empire rises.
c) 1977 AD: Southern America; I am leader in score, the custom interface is BUG mod.

more to come soon.

Some news fremom my current game (still playing the English). I'm now at 1982 AD and progressing towards domination victory, having recently finished the tech tree, I'm in a solid lead in tech, score and power.

China is a strong second, with 3800 score to my 5200, and about 80% of my power - they have 10 Vassals as well. The Spanish Empire (they were leader in score briefly, having 10 Vassals as well) crumbled in the late 1800s when I started to conquer southern america while china eliminated their asian vassal - mughal - from the game and conquered france and the iberian peninsula, while the spanish vassals - morocco, zimbabwe, ethiopia - conquered africa beneath them from songhay and portogese, breaking free in the process.

Currently, Ming and their vassals control almost all of asia and europe, with the exception of the hungarian empire, stretching from Berlin to Jerusalem (the hungarians are third in score, having vassalized turkey and arabia) and two cities in France and Portugal, which I conquered. They have just researched industrialism, but seem to run out of smaller countries to attack, so it seems the final confrontation between me and the Ming is imminent.

My own English Empire encompasses the entirety of Northern, Meso- and Southern America, and I have just begun to conquer Africa, eliminating the Moroccans in 1980 and currently marching on Zimbabwe, which will be followed by Ethiopia - time to absorb these currently independent Nations before China does. Warfare has become extremely swift now, with Modern Armor moving four tiles and blitzing, cutting deep into enemy territory and possibly eliminating four defenders per turn. Stealth bomber range seems to be a bit low (realistically, they have an extremely high op range), however there are rnough cities and forts around to have enough of them near a strike target 90% of the time.

Maybe I can post some screenshots later. I need 51% land and 51% population for domination, however I have currently only achieved about 35% of population and 25% of land. Hopefully adding Africa to my empire will improve these ratios... however, I think these values are rather harsh for such a gigantic map. Maybe you could lower them slightly?

A really impressive feature of a large empire are the corporations, since they scale like "cities * ressources". Currently, Cereal Mills provides 14 Food and Mining Inc provides 30 hammers... in my empire - now combine this with the really cool 1-food merchant specialists, and you can found a city in the desert, which - without working any tile - will...

...grow to pop 16
...generate 32 food [ 2 (base) + 14 (cereal mills) + 16 (merchants) ]
...generate 30 hammers (mining inc)
...generate 48 gold (without modifiers, this makes up for corporation maintenance)
...generate 48 beakers (in Representation)
...generate 32 culture (with Sistine Chapel)

Now this would almost make city spamming viable... even more so since the limiting factor to city growth for me right now is mostly health and happiness, I have a lot of cities in the 30s which otherwise could easily grow to 40+, and even one city with 52 pop (national park + globe theatre).

Best Regards,
Ace

Sounds like great fun!

Really appreciate how you do the math for us related to my changes on +1 food / merchant, -1 coin / sea tile etc. and how you can use the corporations in GEM. That really is eyes opening for me. I never really use the corporations myself except treating it just as modern religions.

Sounds like great fun!

And it was. I finally won, after 45 hours and 45 minutes of game time, which has to be the longest game of civ I ever played. It took me till 2005 AD to get a domination victory.

In the end, the world was just about divided between England and China, with the Ming having 14 (!) vassals. The only free nations left a few turns before the end were tiny France (which had about 5 cities left in Australia) and Tonga (they never really did anything... neither attacked anyone nor were they attacked).

The tough part of the domination victory proved to be territory - I easily got to almost two thirds of world population, but I really had to push hard for 50% of the land controlled, even founding cities way north in the ice desert.

In the end, I could avoid to battle China and its satellites for the last two percent, but instead decided to conquer France, which pushed me over the edge. To battle China would have been nasty, since combined with their vassal's armies they could match mine in power - and my territory had really long borders, which were sometimes poorly defended. Even though I had almost 300 ICBMs waiting for deployment, China had just built SDI and become a nuclear power themselves. The only two nukes I ever used in the game were against the hungarian army on my own territory, both times eliminating stacks of about 30 units that had invaded my borders.

All in all, it was a game of truly grand scope. I attached some screenshots:

a) The largest city I ever built in civ... size 60, and almost 100,000,000 inhabitants. It could have grown to size 79, but there simply was not enough time for that.

b) Financial Advisor; showing my commerce in detail. Almost all of the city maintenance derives from corporation payments.

c) Corporation Advisor; displaying the insane amount of corporation gains... 49 hammers and 21 food per city, turning even the most unproductive sites into powerhouse cities. Cereal Mills is actually much better than Sushi in this Scenario, since there are more Rice/Wheat/Corn ressources.

d) Info Screen; you can see I have almost 10 times the GDP of the second, which is because I run corporations while the Ming run state property. Same for production and food, of course. 1.3 billion population is also the highes number I ever got in any game, as well as 40 million soldiers.

e) Score Graph; the rise and fall of several great powers. Especially Spain and Hungary did exceed my expectations, while China was not so much a surprise.

f) Replay Map; shows me controlling all of America, Africa, most of Europe (I had six cities flip to me there from culture) and some territory on the southern tip of India as well as eastern Australia.

g) Final Score; i'm amazed it is that high even though it took me till 2005 AD to win.

Now, as this took up most of my spare time last week (and some of my sleep, too) I guess I will take a break from actively playing civ this week. However, It was great fun and just the kind of game experience I was looking for... vast empires and epic battles.

Best Regards,
Ace

And it was. I finally won, after 45 hours and 45 minutes of game time, which has to be the longest game of civ I ever played. It took me till 2005 AD to get a domination victory.

In the end, the world was just about divided between England and China, with the Ming having 14 (!) vassals. The only free nations left a few turns before the end were tiny France (which had about 5 cities left in Australia) and Tonga (they never really did anything... neither attacked anyone nor were they attacked).

The tough part of the domination victory proved to be territory - I easily got to almost two thirds of world population, but I really had to push hard for 50% of the land controlled, even founding cities way north in the ice desert.

In the end, I could avoid to battle China and its satellites for the last two percent, but instead decided to conquer France, which pushed me over the edge. To battle China would have been nasty, since combined with their vassal's armies they could match mine in power - and my territory had really long borders, which were sometimes poorly defended. Even though I had almost 300 ICBMs waiting for deployment, China had just built SDI and become a nuclear power themselves. The only two nukes I ever used in the game were against the hungarian army on my own territory, both times eliminating stacks of about 30 units that had invaded my borders.

All in all, it was a game of truly grand scope. I attached some screenshots:

a) The largest city I ever built in civ... size 60, and almost 100,000,000 inhabitants. It could have grown to size 79, but there simply was not enough time for that.

b) Financial Advisor; showing my commerce in detail. Almost all of the city maintenance derives from corporation payments.

c) Corporation Advisor; displaying the insane amount of corporation gains... 49 hammers and 21 food per city, turning even the most unproductive sites into powerhouse cities. Cereal Mills is actually much better than Sushi in this Scenario, since there are more Rice/Wheat/Corn ressources.

d) Info Screen; you can see I have almost 10 times the GDP of the second, which is because I run corporations while the Ming run state property. Same for production and food, of course. 1.3 billion population is also the highes number I ever got in any game, as well as 40 million soldiers.

e) Score Graph; the rise and fall of several great powers. Especially Spain and Hungary did exceed my expectations, while China was not so much a surprise.

f) Replay Map; shows me controlling all of America, Africa, most of Europe (I had six cities flip to me there from culture) and some territory on the southern tip of India as well as eastern Australia.

g) Final Score; i'm amazed it is that high even though it took me till 2005 AD to win.

Now, as this took up most of my spare time last week (and some of my sleep, too) I guess I will take a break from actively playing civ this week. However, It was great fun and just the kind of game experience I was looking for... vast empires and epic battles.

Best Regards,
Ace

Wow! The numbers are impressive :goodjob: I wonder anyone EVER achieved this kind of populations and income in Civ 4!

You are earning $18000 per turn! So I suppose you can almost build anything you like instantly? (With the correct civic that allows you to buy things).

And what kind of waiting time between turns is needed for your game towards the end?

You are correct, I could have probably switched to universal suffrage in the late game to make use of my huge cash pool. However, I was still running Representation for the beaker bonus - I guess I would have lost about 10000 beakers if I had switched.

By the time my income skyrocketed that much, there was not much left for me to buy... I was producing Wealth/Research in most of my cities, and military units in some, while developing the infrastructure in the smaller and newly captured cities. With even the smallest and most undeveloped cities having 50 production/turn due to corporations, there is not much need to rush things... so I basically got lazy and just let the cash reserve build up. Too bad there's no economic victory like "Get 1.000.000 in Gold reserves" ;-)

Since I have a savegame where I just have to hit "end turn" to win, I might just try and change it to get more accurate numbers.

The civics I ran for the whole length of the game were:

Representation/Free Speech/Caste System/Free Market/Pacifism (second half: Organized Religion).

Especially Caste System proved difficult sometimes, as I got up to 15 unhappy faces in my cities from not running Emancipation. It is, however, absolutely crucial, as it allows me to run unlimited merchant specialists. That's one reason my culture slider is that high, it basically never went below 60% since the 1700s, sometimes I even set it to 80% when I had to fight a longer military campaign. Most of the research and gold comes from specialists anyway, and I never found espionage that helpful.

Waiting times were about 60 to 180 seconds on my machine, at least that's what it felt like - I did not use a stop watch though. Some turns - especially those with extensive warfare - took me about 20 to 30 minutes to micromanage my armies and production though.

I experienced a lot of crashes, but I guess this was basically due to my graphics settings being to high - at least that's what the game kept telling me. In the end, the game crashed every 4 or 5 turns. I will probably have to install some low-res textures for the next game.

Keeping autosaves from every turn does sure help, I would advise everyone playing this mod to do so, since the turns take really long and it's not funny to lose an hour of "work" if something unforeseen happens, because it took you just that long to play the last four turns.

Best Regards,
Ace

I am in the middle of a game atm too. No crashes on my machine Pentium-D 3ghz Geforce 7800 GTX (except MAF).

Playing on Prince which I think I regret and may start over today on Monarch as the AI is not aggressive enough toward me.

Hungary is a power in my game as well (only in the 1700's atm).

Key note: Playing a financial is really crippled in this scenario. The reduction from 2c to 1c in water really hampers financial civs early game. Cottages being so vulnerable also limits there widespread use. Combine this with no "bonus" on any building makes it very rough.

I too am choosing the Freemarket/Pacifism route in my game, cost of Pacifism on military units is minor as it does not scale to the size of yoru economy. Corporations + Phil leader is very powerful in this scenario.

Tried Ican on noble first (technology handicapp is too large).
Currently playing England on Prince, my game is trending like yours (own all Ican lands "very powerful", 40% of the Americas, etc.. and I might restart with a different country.

Another thing I did was research Chemistry first and deploy 20 Privateers. The AI really struggles with this strategy, Bristol's Dock made it easy.

I do think a "fix" is needed to help Financial civs a bit.

I do think a "fix" is needed to help Financial civs a bit.

I absolutely support this. My ideas would be to either increase total commerce in all cities by 15% or add +1 trade to each plot with at least 1 trade (instead of 2).

This would preserve the bonus from sea tiles as well as adding it to river tiles and windmills. Cottages are kind of useless now, anyway...

Best Regards,
Ace

Playable Civilizations in 1500AD?

I know I should not beat my head against a brick wall :wallbash: but I can't help myself. Yes I could make almost any country work if I shifted down to Chieftain, but then it would be no challenge. Right now playing this map on Prince.

On the side of "Christ" there are several playable civilizations (English, Spain, HRE, Poland, Russia, France, Hungary) England is easily the most powerful because it can expand easily without having to defend its borders from attack and is Phil + Redcoats.

For Mohammad we may have only two possibilities, Arabia (have not tried yet) and maybe Ottoman’s (I tried on Prince stalemated pretty early).

To the East, there is only China. Poked around Japan but the colonization rules of Civ 4 make starting on an island ugly. My Japanese possessions in South America (Inca) and Australia quickly crippled the weak Japanese economy.

Now I know historically this is accurate, but from a game play mechanic what few tweaks can be done to permit a chance of success.

I think the Ottoman’s could prove quite a bit more robust without being overpowered, with a few changes (more barracks, some upgraded Janissaries, a couple of workers etc..).

Anyone have experiences with the underdog Civilizations that could provide a rewarding game play experience?

For fun… I may tweak the Ottoman’s a bit, not sure if they can possibly survive the eventual squeeze between China and the eventual “western” leader.

Well, what about Mughal or Vijaynagar? I guess one of the stronger Indian civs could prove to be interesting.

Sadly, I did not get around to trying them yet, it just takes so much time if you really want to finish a game. It would probably take a year to play them all till the end :-)

Best Regards,
Ace

I am playing the Babur as I type. I will let you know how it goes. It is still very early, Big early tech disadvantage, some offset by the excellent early army + Janissariers and capture of two Holy Buildings.

Just a quick follow up... It is still very early 1550ish, I have wiped out the minors and three bordering civ's.

In 2 turns I will revolt for my civ change to OR.

I have a huge army atm of 29 Jan's and 12+ Knights. I can continute East into Arthura and the Minor but run the risk of waking China .... GULP, I can attack my friend Ismail, or attack the Red Keshick to the North, hit Russia or chill.... Build my economy.

Biggest challenge is the Babur Tech deficit. I am debating my economy choices, I might go with cottages or maybe make the assumption I will miss all the corps and go State Property. Ponder....

A tiny suggestion:

I think Prague should belong to the HRE in this scenario. As far as I know, it even was the capital of the HRE from 1355 AD to 1558 AD (when it was moved to Vienna).

Furthermore, I noticed in some autoplay games, it seems that the HRE has some troubles from cultural pressure, especially from Venice... maybe this could be changed by adding some more culture to Salzburg, so that the Border is not pushed north of the mountains.

Another thing... last time I looked, the HRE started without Gunpowder. I'm not sure if this was in v4.2 or v5.0 - if it's still the case, is this intended?

Best Regards,
Ace

Quick update on my Prince game as Babur.

I have taken out everything east and south from the indian ocean to the pacific. Five civilizations have fallen to the Babur so far and at 1642 we are number in score China is 2nd. While still behind in tech by a lot, by researching Nationhood first we were able to trade that for three needed techs.

While the Babur's begining land is poor, the powerful starting knights combined with 7 exp Janissaries has allowed me to plow through everything.

Unlike the Ottoman game I tried to play, the Babur are by far the largest military force is the area. The Ottoman's get bogged down pretty quickly and progress is slow. While I like the Ottoman's traits Phil/Imp better in this scenario than Babur Exp/Org, is quite good.

Up till now it has been very easy. Now I know that can change, China could decide to attack Babur (I am trying hard to make sure that does not happen), or the armies of Christ could decide to turn the -50/-100 into a war against Babur as well (helping Ottomans and Arabs without going to war, atm).

I think Babur might have too many upgraded knights or too much of an upgrade to start with?

Quick update on my Prince game as Babur.

I have taken out everything east and south from the indian ocean to the pacific. Five civilizations have fallen to the Babur so far and at 1642 we are number in score China is 2nd. While still behind in tech by a lot, by researching Nationhood first we were able to trade that for three needed techs.

While the Babur's begining land is poor, the powerful starting knights combined with 7 exp Janissaries has allowed me to plow through everything.

Unlike the Ottoman game I tried to play, the Babur are by far the largest military force is the area. The Ottoman's get bogged down pretty quickly and progress is slow. While I like the Ottoman's traits Phil/Imp better in this scenario than Babur Exp/Org, is quite good.

Up till now it has been very easy. Now I know that can change, China could decide to attack Babur (I am trying hard to make sure that does not happen), or the armies of Christ could decide to turn the -50/-100 into a war against Babur as well (helping Ottomans and Arabs without going to war, atm).

I think Babur might have too many upgraded knights or too much of an upgrade to start with?

Same problem again: not enough for AI but too much for human players.

It is funny... The Ottoman's are just now starting to collapse in my game. The AI would do better if they would build their unique unit instead of silly Pikeman. It is as if they do not know that their unique unit is better.

Hello Halt,

could you post some screenshots? Or a savegame maybe? I would very much like to see your Babur empire :-)

Best Regards,
Ace

Here is two screens and a save game for Babur.

After a good night's sleep, even though I am atm behind in tech, I am not sure I can lose this game. I am about to take Australia, plan to take two Incan cities that are powerhouses when built up, a north American stronghold in the NW, will also start taking a few of the better island locations as well.

I think Prince is too easy for Babur. Not sure if Monarch will make a difference.

What I am trying to find is that civ that will allow me to struggle to victory on Monarch/Prince (I play Emp normally but think it maybe too much on this map).


I might try Japan again

I'm currently trying Japan, and it proves to be quite fun. Conquered Honshi (japanese mainland) first, then Korea and currently (1562 AD) plowing through China, already conquering three cities.

I guess the key to victory is to attack China and its vassal, Korea as soon as possible. China starts out at war with Japan, Jurchen, Mongol and Chagatai - if you play any of these, make sure the other three keep attacking China. I gave them all technology, supplied them with ressources and bribed them into attacking China again as soo as possible whenever they sued for peace.

Effectively, I am still slightly behind in power compared to China, but my units have superior promotions, one thing the power graph does not take into account. As a human player, I am also naturally more adept at warfare than the AI... so my chances are rather good to conquer China entirely.

If I had postponed the assault, they would have eventually become too powerful for me to tackle. I guess Japan will be a quite fun civilization to complete, I am especially curious how the world power balance will turn out to be without (or with a significally smaller) China.

Best Regards,
Ace

Quick update: 1580 AD, and already I am first in score. When I first landed in Korea, the Chinese demanded my cities from me to make peace. Now they offer me their cities for peace.

I attached a screenshot of the assault route I have taken. I could probably have skipped Beijing and gone straight for the second holy city, but I wanted to have the cultural pressure removed from my first conquests.

Best Regards,
Ace

Months ago, I played Scenario twice, once as China, and then once as Spain.

First - yes corportation on GEM is WONDERFULL :D Use them.

2nd - an Idea for those who might play as Spain - this is how I did more or less:

1 - captured as many cities in the Americas as possible - which was fairly easy. Producing units in spain to defend them.

2 - moved many attacking units from America back to Europe - build up an army there with one purpose....capture Rome for the money.

3 - build the secret palace in europe as soon as possible - and used the great engineer to help build the new palace in the new world.

4 - In Europe I only had one objective - keeping my current number of cities + Venice when culturally captured (again for the income). All culturally flipped cities (in Europe) I rejected, which effectively means they are razed ;) This could keep my colonial expenses to almost a minimum in Europe :D

In the America - one goal, capture it all as soon as possible. As a result I never vassalised the native americans - I needed to be able to attack them later.

I ended up being on sure path to win, and never got to finish the play :mad: Someone reinstalled the game, and deleted the saved games in the process :rolleyes:

I ended up being on sure path to win, and never got to finish the play :mad: Someone reinstalled the game, and deleted the saved games in the process :rolleyes:

Who dare to do that? your wife? Your mother? :lol:

I started a game at 1500 AD and i like it!Even the seperate Mongol tribes are in it!
Im going to look at the 200 BC Mod also.Very nice GK!

Joshua

I have to say: I've admired this mod for a while, but sense I've downloaded it (And it's senarios) /i've been utterly at it's mercy. I decided to take Ace's advice and start a game as Japan. Much like Ace, I quickly moved to take Korea, and after their weak defenses were shattered, I moved to China. Thankfully, I had allies. Ayutthaya became my vassal early on, before I was finished with Korea. Towards the middle of my conquest of China, Fuman became my second vassal, and after converting to Buddhisim, we had no problems. Sharing China with Khan, and Fuman was fine, and soon after China fell, Mongola was added as vassal number 3. Currently, I'm in 1710 AD and am building up forces for te conquest of Malacca. I just figured I'd thank you for this wonderful mod, keep up the good work, and thats all. Now, World of Warcraft is calling me, so farewell. -Lean

Last night I started a game as Russia, and it's proving to be quite difficult actually in some respects. My cities produce hardly any commerce, so the research rate is incredibly slow! I'm in 1638, and still researching the same tech (Economics) that I started in 1500! This is on Prince difficulty. Moreover, 80% of my raw commerce comes from trade routes.

Despite this (and the fact that I have to wait 1-2 min between turns), it's really good fun! I've expanded quite nicely - taking all the surrounding Barbarian and minor nation cities, and I'm now taking on the Ottomans together with the rest of the Christian world. It's an official dogpile!

Elsewhere in the world, China is dominating and has vassals even in Africa. What's also funny is that what's left of Maya is now Confucian! France has mostly been carved up by Spain and Germany, and has been vassalized by Spain, while the Pope has taken over all of Venice's continental cities. Now Venice is exiled to Crete and Cyprus and is a vassal of the Pope.

It's also nice to see a lot of colonization going on. Spain, Portugal, England, France, Germany and even Poland all have founded cities in the Americas, while France is beginning colonization of Australia.

Great map and scenario, but here are a couple of minor inaccuracies which I noted:

1) Having browsed the map in worldbuilder, it seems there is no coal in eastern Ukraine. This is inaccurate because there are major coal deposits in the Donets basin.

2) In particular for this scenario, it would be more accurate to have Kazan rather Bulgar. In 1500 the Kazan khanate was one of the important pieces left after the break-up of the Golden Horde.

3) Also, for this timeframe, it would be more accurate to rename Tana to Azov (or Azak).

4) The Russian cities Perm and Petrozavodsk weren't founded until the 18th century, so technically don't exist in 1500. Maybe would be better to change Petrozavodsk to Olonets, because that's the oldest Russian settlement in Karelia. Perm probably should stay though, because even though the city didn't exist yet, the actual Perm region was under Moscow's control in 1500.

I have made some changes to the scenario for the next release. The biggest change is adding a few more cities in Europe + Macau and Goa. Take a look at the first post for a bit more details.

I am currently playing Venice. Working out a strategy to grow in the short term while being able to defeat China long term.

Very interesting scenario and challenge, having great fun.

One thing I noticed in my games is how "quickly" Mecca falls to the Portuguese.

In the three games I have played as Venice (not long only till the middle of the 17th century, Mecca gets taken over by Portugal each time. Looking at the units in Mecca I can kinda see why. Is this what you intended?

I did gave Portugese a large fleet with loads of units for them to conquer Asia (Goa, Melacca and Macau just to name a few). But I didn't intend the AI to use it on Mecca ;)

Mecca shouldn't be coastal (since it isn't), especially on a Giant Earth Map, I think. (Alternatively, Mecca might have better defense.)

Portugal starts at war with Arabia, I think. Therefore they always use their army to attack Aden, then Mecca (land route from Aden with Curassiers). I have observed it in almost every game, like Halt. It seems logical from an AI point of view (Mecca is an economic powerhouse beause of the holy city money) - but of course it is completely ahistorical.

Best Regars,
Martin

Could you mabye make a native american civ? I find that as a european civ (spain especially but really any of the ones given colonising galleons) that you can take most america very quickly, the barbarian cities only have archers, you can penetrate too easily.

And then we can have dog soliders raiding workers from the rifle bearing spanish in mexico ^^

Apart from that minor quibble, great mod and scenario. It takes a while for the other civs to get moving but in my most recent game as spain, france and britain have started racing to colonise eastern america(I've already taken the rest of it)' they both have 2 cities each currently. The germans and papal states have set up colonies in brazil, the indians are working on indonesia/phillipines; and the light blue(most southern) indians have started to settle austrailia, russia's started expanding eastwards, and the hungarians have somehow become 5th in score, taking the balkans from the ottomans(I think the papal states and venice sent some suicide missions against the ottos, softening them up. Hungary is currently at war with poland, who hasn't colonised but did a good job improving their lands. All we need now is for russia/the HRE to declare on poland so they can partition it =]

Babur didn't go very far into the lodhi, he took lahore and stopped, they capitulated but they recently rebelled, there's a new war there so hopefully the mughal empire will get bigger soon :]

I took the aztec/maya lands very quickly, them split the guys up and sent the more promoted ones to attack the inca, the rest(mostly from the small caribbean cities) took the little barbarian cities.

After I'd taken over the readily available cities, I sent as many conqs back as I could, and took venice for myself, they're still around in the med though, there are a few privateers I think belong to them : p

Portugal took meeca and aden as per normal, but after I took venice I wheeled around and took their european cities, so they shouldn't be a rival now.

IN east asia, the koreans held on, it doesn't look like japan really did much other than unify themselves. The mongols seem to have done best, they took a fair chunk out of western china, my explorer noted that xian had 1% mongolian culture in it(china no doubt asked for it in return for peace) the jurchens haven't done anything important =\

Malacca seems very weak : [ thailand vassled themselves off to china already. CHina is pretty much intact apart from the north west/mongolia area.

In an odd twist, the french declared war on the central asian turks, took 2 of their cities and vassalised them, after that the turks founded a new city in siberia but have been quiet since.

Im currently wondering where the danish/swedes planted their settlers, must go get a new world map...


Great game :D

Thanks for sharing.

May be adding a native American civ is interesting to play. But I don't think it will help a lot stopping the European civ from colonizing the Americas.

HI, i been playing this secenario but there is too many civs for me, can someone explain how i would remove some of the civs to make the game run faster.

thanks

Hi nice mod and secario, 2 questions

1. why has the netherlands been replaced by venice?
2. how do change them back to the netherlands?

thanks

1.) Because there was nothing like the Netherlands in 1500 AD.

The Netherlands (including Belgium, some french regions and Luxembourg) had been part of the east-francian realm since the partition of the francian realm in the 9th century. When the east-francian realm developed into the Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality (yes the HRE was to be centuries later then Charlemagne / Charles the Great / Karl der Große), the lower lands, the Netherlands where still part of it.

Charles V of the hapsburgian dynasty was at the same time emperor of Germany and king of Spain. He resigned in 1556, and his titles where divided between his successors. The Netherlands where from that time on called the "spanish netherlands", and soon afterwards a movement for independence started. Only 80 years later in 1648 the Netherlands became truly independent.

So Basically in 1500 there was nothing like the netherlands, there where german realms bordering France, with people speaking a german dialect and being more or less loyal subjects of the HRE.

i see, since i never knew that, i would still like to replace venice with the netherlands since they played a huge role in colonial times, thanks for your reply.

Yeah, that would be interesting. Also, the 80 Years War (as the Dutch War of Independence is usually referred to) actually started in 1568 and from 1609-'21 there was a 'cease-fire' agreed upon.

Some general remarks on 1500 AD on GEM:

- Bristol is located whereabout Plymouth might be
- Medina is located NW of Mecca (should be NE)
- Judaism seems to have been virtually obliterated in Europe and the Middle East
- the Tonga king is referred to as Tu'i Tonga (says Wiki, although all known names are of a later date)
- it would be nice if a smaller lettertype could be used for the civ list on the right of the screen (as soon as contacts reach 24+ civs, the top names overlap the top right buttons and even run off the top of the screen; I believe MaxRigaMod uses a smaller lettertype to reduce the space needed).

Otherwise: great job!:goodjob:

Yeah, that would be interesting. Also, the 80 Years War (as the Dutch War of Independence is usually referred to) actually started in 1568 and from 1609-'21 there was a 'cease-fire' agreed upon.

Some general remarks on 1500 AD on GEM:

- Bristol is located whereabout Plymouth might be
- Medina is located NW of Mecca (should be NE)
- Judaism seems to have been virtually obliterated in Europe and the Middle East
- the Tonga king is referred to as Tu'i Tonga (says Wiki, although all known names are of a later date)
- it would be nice if a smaller lettertype could be used for the civ list on the right of the screen (as soon as contacts reach 24+ civs, the top names overlap the top right buttons and even run off the top of the screen; I believe MaxRigaMod uses a smaller lettertype to reduce the space needed).

Otherwise: great job!:goodjob:

Just checked the scenario (I haven't opened this scenario for ages :)

- Yes Bristol is not located in it's most appropriate location (should be 1 tile NE of where it is now). I was trying to separate the cities with 2 tiles away from each other. But I understand it is quite annoying to see, especially if it is an area you most interested.

- Medina should be almost directly North of Mecca. Probably due to the distortion of GEM, it looks fine to me for where it is located now.

- I didn't do much research on Medieval Judaism when I did this. If you got some more reference, I would be glad to see.

- Yeah, Tu'i Tonga is a nice name instead of Leader of Tonga.

- In regards to the leadername list, I don't have a problem because I am using 1680 x 1050 resolution (in fact, 36 civs would perfectly fit into the space with this resolution). I would be happy to see someone else can provide an enhancement to fix this problem for lower resolutions, but I am not the right person to help.

- I am working on the 1860 scenario at the moment and aim to make a release may be in the near future. I can have minor updates on these other scenarios with the next release.

hI, i'm new to these mods and I was really interested in playing this one and I cant seem to get it to work. i downloaded the GEM mod and placed it in the BTS folder (it came with the 1500 scenario inside), everytime i try to play it though it crashes. I'll open up Civ 4 then load a mod, and it will exit, load into the mod, and then crash right away and back to my desktop.

I've got 4 gigs of ram and AMD phenom processor so i doubt its a computer thing. does it only work with certain versions of BTS or something?

hI, i'm new to these mods and I was really interested in playing this one and I cant seem to get it to work. i downloaded the GEM mod and placed it in the BTS folder (it came with the 1500 scenario inside), everytime i try to play it though it crashes. I'll open up Civ 4 then load a mod, and it will exit, load into the mod, and then crash right away and back to my desktop.

I've got 4 gigs of ram and AMD phenom processor so i doubt its a computer thing. does it only work with certain versions of BTS or something?

Hi, have you got the latest patch (v3.17)? Sounds like this could be the reason. The latest scenario will only work with 3.17, which is free to download.

Quick question, is Aleppo supposed to have mining? It seems to be the only city with mining and there is no capital for it.

Hi, have you got the latest patch (v3.17)? Sounds like this could be the reason. The latest scenario will only work with 3.17, which is free to download.



Yep, that seemed to have been the problem. Thanks a lot, dunno why i didn't think of that myself :mischief:

Btw, there is no mining there at first, but some time when the first round is over, it does.

Right from the start, the mining corporation is impossible to achieve I think.

That's weird. I will have a look. Thanks for reporting.

Religion and Corporation seems to be buggy sometimes when editing. Especially the headquarters, they disappear once a while after editing.

Thanks for taking a look and Merry Christmas.

Some comments:

- the city of "Gothenburg" is called Göteborg in Swedish
- several city names refer to areas rather than cities (for instance Sylvania, Crete and Cyprus instead of, say, Szeged, Candia and Famagusta)
- at some point, playing as France, I got DOWed by Incas and Aztecs, but not by their master Spain, because the civ score list is too large for the message to appear:crazyeye: (I think I 've suggested this earlier somewhere, but a reduced-size civ score list - like in MaxRigaMod - might solve this)
- another suggestion is to make Jungle/Marsh terrain unusable until Biology (like in RFC), to prevent early city crowding in South America (Incas!) and Africa.

Otherwise: great fun to play!:goodjob:

BUG: Several Polish cities begin the game with duns instead of walls.

Cities without duns cannot build new ones, but cities with duns can build walls. These cities then have -100% siege damage making them effectively untakable by the computers as they will fire with the siege weapons every round without any effect.

I was playing a game where Poland was getting piled on but surviving multiple sieging stacks per city with only a handful of troops. Once I corrected the duns to walls they only lasted a couple of rounds.

BUG: Several Polish cities begin the game with duns instead of walls.

Cities without duns cannot build new ones, but cities with duns can build walls. These cities then have -100% siege damage making them effectively untakable by the computers as they will fire with the siege weapons every round without any effect.

I was playing a game where Poland was getting piled on but surviving multiple sieging stacks per city with only a handful of troops. Once I corrected the duns to walls they only lasted a couple of rounds.

thanks. I will check.

I iwll try this scenario today or tomorrow, but a question, does Portugual actually have lands in Brazil in this scenario?

I am not sure if it makes sense or not, seeing as Brazil was "discovered" by Portugual in 1500AD.

Link with a fast history of Brazil's first 50 years:

http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/samerica/brazil150049.html

Discovery is different than having a settlement. Discovery is simulated in my scenarios as those visible lands (as compared to black out areas). If I remember correctly, ONLY Portugal starts with visibility in Brazil.

Discovery is different than having a settlement. Discovery is simulated in my scenarios as those visible lands (as compared to black out areas). If I remember correctly, ONLY Portugal starts with visibility in Brazil.

Aha, nice!! That is actually a lot better as it is only 1500AD! :goodjob:

Is there a way to change Portugal's color? Blue, white or even red would be more accurate than green.

Btw, great scenario. GEM is one of the best mods out there for sure.

Is there a way to change Portugal's color? Blue, white or even red would be more accurate than green.

Btw, great scenario. GEM is one of the best mods out there for sure.

It is quite easy.
Just open the WBS file and find Portugal, then type in the new color.
FYI, considering the high amount of civs in the mod, civ might automatically change other civ colors as well, once you change Portugal.
I learned on my own mod that often changing one color trigger a chain reaction of changes.

If you dont want to do so, just change Portugal color and give green to another civ.