Alexander's Conquests development thread

[Ozymandias]

What about the civil defence though? That doesn't disappear in large cities, and it has bombardment defence >0.

Check Walls & Civil Defense - it's the Bombard defensive value which is the trigger.

-Oz

 

[Virote_Considon]

Yeh, Walls have bombard defense (8, IIRC), and Civil Defense just has normal defense.

 

[Keroro]

Ah, thanks guys, didn't realise that. Does this mean that it is impossible to give bombard defence to a settlement that is larger than a town?

The barbarians are going to find that their larger cities are rather unproductive. Mwahaha.

 

[Virote_Considon]

Yeh, it does

 

[Ozymandias]

The barbarians are going to find that their larger cities are rather unproductive. Mwahaha.

Quick question: why allow them larger cities at all? They are barbarians after all.

-Oz

 

[Virote_Considon]

The city of Rome had a million people at its height

 

[Keroro]

The city of Rome had a million people at its height

At its height? ATM it has 2.5 million!

Anyway, it's the really 'barbaric' tribes that I'm trying to give penalties to. Roma and Carthage were refered to as barbarians by the Greeks (as were the Macedonians and the Epirotes and the Persians), but they weren't what we would call barbaric.

I guess the problem is with the many different meanings of the word barbarian - on one level it means people who act in a non - civilized way, like Conan; or it can mean anyone who is a foreigner; or in civ 3 it can mean units that wander the map that belong to no civilization.

For the purposes of this conversation I was using it to mean the following civs: Numids, Celts, Germanics, Dacians and Scythians. And I'm thinking about getting rid of the Numids anyway.

Might as well ask this now - what are the most important groups to have represented? ATM I have the Carthaginians, Numids, Egyptians, Cyrenaicans, Nubians and Merotes in Africa, but this leaves a massive space in the heart of Africa. Should I put an unconquerable civ in the middle of Africa? This would fill up some of the space and stop the Alexandrian player from wandering unopposed into the heart of Africa.
Also, the Indian continent is rather falsely dominated by Maurya ATM, I think that maybe I should bring in a further Indian civ (maybe Kalinga?) that would balance the power a bit in the east.
The problem is that I already have 30 civs in the game, so to get a further African civ AND a further Indian civ I would need to get rid of one that I already have. The obvious candidates would be Cyrenaica (give their cities to Egypt or maybe Creta) or Numidia (could give their territory to the new African civ). What do y'all think.

 

[Virote_Considon]

For a new African civ, how about another "Barbaric" civ, with Hidden Nationality units (which the AI will ONLY build ), and Impassable-to-wheeled Jungles? They could be called "Ethiopia" (the Greek "Ethiopian" just means person with dark skin). Numidia could then move to make way for them.

As for the Indian civ, I dunno what civ you could have, but I'd say go for it!

 

[Blue Monkey]

To balance Maurya use one of the southern Indian Tamil/Dravidian civs like the Cholas, the Pandyas, or the Cheras. To keep it simple you can use the same flavor units as you would for Maurya; maybe make the skin-tones a little darker. Shirou is working on a LH that would work well for any Dravidian civ . If you do decide to include one of these and want help to decide on a UU or SW let me know.

 

[Keroro]

I'm not sure if I fancy calling a civ Ethiopia - it would probably cause confusion, but I'll certainly introduce a new civ to fill that gap in Africa. I'll look into the names a bit, see what I come up with.

I think I might name the Southern Indian civ 'Tamil', rather than a specific kingdom - I'll explain the details in the civpedia. I've seen Shiro's LH, it's fantastic, I would love to include it in the scenario. The problem could be that they didn't seem to have any queens at that time, just kings. The two monarchs that I found were:

Perunar killi C. 316 B.C.E.
Kochaet Cenni C. 286 B.C.E.

These wouldn't happen to be female names would they? Or are there any Tamil queen names that I could use that you know of? Once again, thanks for your knowledge of Indian history.

Anyway, if Shiro releases that in the LH comp this month I think it's likely that it will get my vote.

 

[Blue Monkey]

She's Kuveni, queen of Lanka circa 500 BCE, prior to conquest by Indian invaders.

If you want I can try to track down queens of the period.


I don't remember, do you have Porus in there as leader of a separate civ, or just Chandragupta Maurya?

 

[Keroro]

Kuveni sounds OK, though if you can find any queens closer to 300 BCE they would be better. I'm happy that I can finally get a female LH into the scenario.

I have 4 Indian civs - Taxilas (leader Ambhi), Pauravas (leader Porus), Maurya (leader Chandragupta Maurya) and soon the Tamils. Cathay is also lurking at the edge of the map, generally being unconquerable, trading silks and researching the timer techs.

I doubt if these new civs will be added by the time beta testing gets underway, too much work needed and I haven't got the time to sit down at my comp and do it. They will be added before any public launch though - I should have some free time between Christmas and New-Year since I'm not at work at that time.

The African Civ will be a combination of Nok and Berber, Tuareg and Garamantes. Should be interesting finding any historical info on these groups - though Herodotus mentions the Garamantes so I can get some Greek-centric info from there.

 

[Virote_Considon]

Is there any other kind of info?

 

[Blue Monkey]

Kuveni sounds OK, though if you can find any queens closer to 300 BCE they would be better. I'm happy that I can finally get a female LH into the scenario.

I have 4 Indian civs - Taxilas (leader Ambhi), Pauravas (leader Porus), Maurya (leader Chandragupta Maurya) and soon the Tamils. Cathay is also lurking at the edge of the map, generally being unconquerable, trading silks and researching the timer techs.

I doubt if these new civs will be added by the time beta testing gets underway, too much work needed and I haven't got the time to sit down at my comp and do it. They will be added before any public launch though - I should have some free time between Christmas and New-Year since I'm not at work at that time.

I'll search for other queens over the next couple of days. Let me know what else I can help you with for the Indian civs, like city lists, great leader names, etc.

Will you put placeholder civs in the first beta (Firaxis civs with similar traits, for example)?

 

[utro43]

hey Keroro.....
if you want to make things a tad more accurate....
call the "Celts" 'Keltoni'.

that's what the greeks called them.
it means "the hidden people".

 

[Keroro]

hey Keroro.....
if you want to make things a tad more accurate....
call the "Celts" 'Keltoni'.

that's what the greeks called them.
it means "the hidden people".

Keltoni - I like that. You don't know a Greek name for the Germanic peoples do you? At the moment they're just the Northern Barbarians.

I'm getting hangs IBT on my latest test. Anyone know any ways to get rid of them? It seems to be linked to the Phoenician navy.

BTW - Playtesting Thread is here.

 

[Virote_Considon]

As I just said in your development thread, it could be to do with the amount of Barbarians. OR, it could be to do with the "allows water/air trade" flags for improvements, come to think of it.

 

[Keroro]

As I just said in your development thread, it could be to do with the amount of Barbarians. OR, it could be to do with the "allows water/air trade" flags for improvements, come to think of it.

I had the same problem with my Greek scenario the other night. About 1/2 way through with Mycenae. Getting rid of all the land barbarians seemed to do the trick, though...

I'll bring this discussion over here.
I knew that the trade routes could cause problems with game speed, but I dodn't know that it could cause a hang. I've already got rid of some of the port improvements that could have caused problems, but I'm reluctant to do away with sea/air trade altogether. And I didn't know that the barbs could cause that much trouble. I guess that my blocking the AI's route to the barbs must have been a bad idea - better to have them chasing accross the map rather than causing the game to hang. Is there a way to completely disallow barbs from the map - I thought that Sedentary was the lowest possible level.

Thanks Virote - I'll try a few things out tonight.

 

[Virote_Considon]

Getting rid of Barbs is easy, although you will get the occasional hut:
1. Go to the "General Settings" tab in the editor
2. Change "Basic" and "Advanced" barbarians to "none".

 

[Quinzy]

hey Keroro.....
if you want to make things a tad more accurate....
call the "Celts" 'Keltoni'.

that's what the greeks called them.
it means "the hidden people".

is it not Keltoi?