The idea behind this game is still in the works, so bear with me.

Civ: Any Conquest Civ, but I'd love to try out Austria. :)

Level: Monarch, Emperor, or Demigod, with Emperor being my preferred level.

Enemies: Max.

Map: Pangea or Continents

Version: Conquests, obviously.

Rules: I'm willing to take suggestions here, but here goes:
- We will use Locked Alliances, set up in the Editor. I have a few ideas for this:
- Organizing one side of the Pangea versus the other in a locked alliance. (Am I wrong in thinking that you can lock multiple Civs against each other?) This would make one or two civs being the frontline civs, and the others sending their troops in support. We could choose to be a frontline civ or a support civ.
- Organizing the locked alliances evenly, but randomly distributing them, giving the war many, many fronts.
- Making several locked alliance parties against each other. For example, we could have 3 civs versus 6 civs divided into teams of 3. And then have the other 3 against the other 6, and the final 3 against the final 6. Basically this idea could be any combination of civs into any combination of allies.
- A Continents game, with 2 or 3 continents against each other. This isn't my preferred idea because it would make for a very peaceful Ancient Age and we all know how bad the AI is at D-Day invasions (unless they improved this).

Roster: Me
Belial
(Open)
(Open)
(Open)

Essientially, this game is just going to be having fun with locked alliances and getting a new twist on the always war game, where it would be us and some AIs versus them. I need a little more info on how locked alliances work, and then we can get some more ideas, and then we can start. :)

I'm interested in joining, but do not have the game yet.

If you can lock alliances, perhaps there is the ability to lock MPP? That would make it all work out just right.

I haven't got the game, yet, but will pick up tomorrow (hopefully) and get a new feel for the expansion pack. One of the new civs would be good.

Will you join when you get the game?

BTW, locked alliances put the civs in the alliance eternally at war with the enemy civs. A locked MPP would let two civs go to war with whoever they want, which is not what I want for this game. :)

I'm still not sure on how locked alliances work, I could use some other info.

Sure, shouldn't be much of a problem of getting it unless the nine computer stores that are located locally are old sold out which I highly doubt. ;)

So you're looking at an AW with, say six civs with three allies? Sounds like a neat concept.

You do realize that a locked alliance will mean that you are at "always war", don't you? It works fine in a Scenario setup with a limited time scale, but over the course of an entire epic game??? Republic and Democracy Govs would definitely be out.

I will lurk on this one and see how the AI handles this type of setup.

BTW, I loved Intro Scenario #3 in Conquests. What a bloodbath!

Well, there are a few ways we could do it:

1. We could do x civs vs. x civs vs. x civs, with each alliance against the other two.
a. This could be done on a Pangea with the alliances grouped together.
b. Pangea with the alliances randomly spread out (to make a multiple front war).
c. Continents, with each alliance on the same continent.
2. Or then we could have x civs vs. x civs, with the whole world divided into two halves. And then we can divide this one into two parts:
a. The Pangea divided into two halves.
b. The alliances spread out randomly to make a multiple front war.
c. Continents, with two continents, one alliance on each half

I'd prefer 2a or 2b, just because it would be less complicated. ;) And I'm leaning towards 2a. :)

@ rubberjello: Its called an Always War game, its not that new. :) This is just a new take on it.

locked alliance = locked MPP

edit: locked alliance does NOT mean locked wars unless you highlight the teams you want an alliance to be at war with during setup. For example, you can choose team 1 to be at war with team 2 and team 4 by highlighting those two teams in 'at war with' box.

I just played a 6 vs. 6 (one continent vs the other) on Monarch and wasn't happy how things turned out.

1. When one civ on your side signs a peace treaty with the other side, every other civ in you alliance signs a peace treaty automatically.

2. My settings of large, continents, 60% water didn't work for the following reason. My AI allies were not too good at taking out cities on the other continent and keeping the ones that they actually took (especially since that whole continent was against us).

3. I had to do 95% of the military work (took out basically the whole continent myself).

4. My allies were trying to place spys in my capital rather than helping out with the war.

5. My allies were signing peace treaties when the only victory condition enabled was conquest.

6. The so called allies were still stingy about trading techs when I had coalition victory condition enabled.

7. There were instances in which a lot of my allies were annoyed with me because (1) I struck back after Celts nuked my capital and (2) deals were broken due to the locked alliance/MPP when war was declared. They refused to sign GPT deals due to broken deals when it was not me who started the war.

On the other hand, the enemy AIs were good at defending their home continent and not letting me advance after I took out the first 5 cities on their continent.

I hope this helps when you're setting up your game.

Yeah. I know. I was spacing. :scan: I was thinking of another strat game that allowed locked MPP (as Belial was asking about), and then I realized that you would always be at war with your variant and posted without thinking. :D

The one thing I learned with the games I've played is that for some reason your AI partners ALWAYS do poorly compared to the Enemy AI. Thus the challenge, right?

@GR8Madmax. Thanks for the info! That is very intesting, and actually the results of a ruined rep is fairly precitable with "mpp" enabled for so many civs.

@ gr8madmax: None of your points bother me (they add to the challenge) except for the point about the group peace. It MUST be possible to set up an eternal war with allies - think the Rise of Rome scenerio with Rome vs. Carthage - I just need some advice on how to do it.

That's basically what I want in this game: an Always War with allies, like a World War that lasts 6000 years. :D

I edited my previous post re: locked wars and yes, you can setup locked wars in the editor. Just highlight the alliances you want your or other alliances to be at war with in the "At war with" box .

And then peace is impossible? Good.

Now we just need three more players. And some input on the civ. And some input on the setup (pangea, continents, 2 alliances, 3, etc).

Three alliances would make it much more interesting, especially to see the AI vs. AI and get a better feel for them.

Definately pangea, I really hate AI in the waters, not sure if they have been fixed since it is really hard to code a smart AI vs. the human in terms of sea warfare.

As for civ, well any is fine for me, we'll still have trading partners so we should still be abe to keep up in tech. I would suggest military, those leaders might come in handy for armies and rushing a lot of heavier shield buildings.

You want military? Austria is military/industrious with a 7 attack cavalry, the Hussar. :)

Now, if you want a 3 alliance game, I assume you want the Civs grouped together for protection?

I am still leaning towards a 2 alliance game but I have no problem doing 3. We just need other players. :p

EDIT: This would be the layout of the 3 alliance game, just to make it clear:

US, 3 AI

vs.

4 AI

vs.

4 AI.

Each group would be against the other 2. Just to let you know this would probably result in a very defensive game, since each power is outnumbered 2 to 1 offensively.

I would imagine us grouped togethor. What size map and number of civs are we going? The more we can get against us with three AI, the harder it will be to keep them alive too.

Which we should try to do as well. ;)

I made up a little test scenerio, to try it out. I set up Large map and used the default 12 civs, with the 3 alliances grouped into 4. The alliances were organized by location on the pangea.

The next part was a little confusing. I went to the Locked Alliances screen, and I had to put in the actual Civs, instead of "Player x" so it was random. This won't be that bad, it just means I'll have to see what civs are in each alliance (although I'll roll a die so its fair and I don't stack our team). After this I checked "At war with" so we, Alliance 1, was at war with 2 and 3, and 2 was at war with 1 and 3, and 3 was at war with 1 and 2. Next I checked the human civ as having embassies, just to make sure it worked. I loaded up the game and we knew 5 civs, 1 in our alliance and 4 of another alliance. The other alliance refused to acknowledge our envoy and we were at war with them, so I think it worked.

This presented a few problems, however: For some reason the two other civs in our alliance didn't show up, and the whole third alliance didn't show up. I'm not going to select embassies in the game, but this meant that I couldn't prove if we were actually at war or not. The last thing I want to happen is play out a whole age and then notice that we aren't at war with the third alliance. :mad:

I realized another problem. Would the alliance and war system work if we hadn't yet contacted the other civs? Or would we have to know them from the beginning? And how can I make sure all civs know each other from the beginning, if we need to?

Hope that made sense. :)

All the civs in your alliance show up when you start a game so I'm assuming you made a mistake in your setup. You can contact your allies without an ebassy. I didn't use ebassies when I played so I'm not sure how those work.

At the in-game civ selection screen, you have to setup the civs in the correct order...ie, you're player 1, next civ you pick in the in-game civ selection screen would be player 2, and so on. So, after you pick your civ in the game, make sure to pick your allies (the one you assigned to alliance 1) as 2, 3 & 4 civs. The next 4 civs you pick (in the in-game civ selection screen) should be the ones in alliance 2.

Hope that helps.

I think I get it.

So if I have all Random selected for the in-game selection, it doesn't matter what civs I selected for the Alliances screen in the editor, as long as I have the right number?

I think you have to have selected your allies as the in-game civ (can't pick random).

Thanks...I'll try another test. :)

EDIT: I selected the other AIs in the proper order and it worked out fine, with our 3 allies and our 8 enemies coming up in the Diplo screen. So for the real game I'll roll some die in real life and choose the civs randomly that way, then put them in in-game.

Now the last thing to be addressed is our Civ and to get some more players.

I ve never beaten emporer (but i haven beaten Monarch) I don't have the game yet :cry: But i'll join it would be intresting to try out this locked alliance stuff.

This is more than just an emporer game, btw. It's an AWE against 8 civs and we have three allies so it's a little bit tougher than emporer, imo.

Its not as tough as an AW Emperor (I've never tried that :eek: ) but it is still harder than regular Emperor.

Let me try out an AW on Monarch i'll tell you how i make out.

But i really want to join this game. :(

Its not like im a bad player. But if you don't want me ill lurk in this one.

Part of the learning experience is playing with top-notch players and even making a mistake occasionally. ;)

I wouldn't mind having someone around myself, but it's up to cgannong64.

Sure, you can come on. As long as you understand the challenges involved.

Normally I'd start with three players, but I see you don't have Conquests. Are you going to get it soon?

EDIT: My Editor is so ****ed up. Going into C&C for some help. :mad:

Finally an SG that is using Austria :D
:hammer: :hammer:

EDIT: Got it to work, now I just need to figure out how to add Austria. :o

Last time i checked my copy of Conquest was in Pennsulvania and I live in Arizona so it might take a few days.

OK, we won't start until we get another player then. That is, if I can figure out how to add Austria. :mad:

To add Austria you must *turn off* one of the other civs. The editor & game have a hard-coded limit of 31 civs for some reason. (They probably used a signed half-byte field, which has a range of -31 to +31 to store the civs...)

So, in the editor, I think you have to 'remove' one of the other civs and then enable Austria. So remove a civ you definately don't want in the game, like those pesky Americans ;)




So, Firaxis has it up to 32 civs now, and still they haven't added 'Canada' by default? sheesh....we'll have to send them some beer, back bacon, :smoke: , and toques to get them "in the spirit" for the next expansion, if ever there is one.

I know that, but do I have to add Austria by hand or are they somewhere in there?

SuperBeaverInc has made a mod that adds the Ausrtians in place of the Koreans. Click Mayan Melee in my sig below.

Note: its on the Second page and dowload the second file!!!