Wars of Religion or Philippe II vs Elizabeth or... PREVIEW

Played as the Netherlands, and am very happy with the new, improved strength of spain against them (tercio wise) I had some serious difficulty holding them off, but now that they are beaten back I am taking the Spanish Netherlands very slowly.

It is QUITE apparent that a human player with that kind of tercio power would easily take the Dutch out (in fact, in my Moorish game, the Spanish somehow went AROUND them and took the northern cities out... it looked really really odd) as the computer completely fails to use more than one or two in an attack. I can bomb the crap out of it, and use an army to finish the job.

While playing, I noticed something very disturbing. The AI Catholic League DEFEATED the AI French (under H IV ;p). I am certain that while this is wrong historically, it only goes to show, considering the power of the League at start. Has anyone played as them yet?

@ mrtn : thanks a lot.

@ Aeon : I think Spanish AI just went to the smaller, less defended Dutch cities in a way that made it look like encirclement (which is nearly accurate historicall speaking and was meant to be in game so this is definitely good news !).

League winning disturbing ? Why ? Depending on RNG and strategies used it is a possibility and is fine with me. I mean one of the questions in the beta-report file was actually : is the scenario too directive ?
If the civ that lost the war actually wins it just means they are balanced which is good for PBEMs. I guess that's the balance between rewriting and recreating history that is the issue in most historical scenarii. The interest of the game is more in rewriting because you can achieve a different result. On the other hand if Henry of Navarra (aka as you say the future Henry the IV) succeeds in building Paris vaut bien une messe then I don't see how he could lose (which then goes to recreating history).

Alright, latest and supposedly full version (meaning you don't need the previous ones).
Let me know if I forgot something. To install, unzip TGA (additional art files, text files updates,...) to C3C/Scenarios and choose "yes" when aked for overwriting files. TGA 0.96 (biq file) is to replace 0.95 in scenario folder.

Hopefully it is full and bug-free now but I might still have overlooked a few things. Thanks to all who showed me bugs so that I can correct it.

The biggest change in game play is probably the introduction of VPs.

Not changed yet : resources.

Then I am only missing some Cossack units (+ Kinboat's Landknecht !) and some wonders/improvements if possible. Now of course there sure are some hidden bugs somewhere...

If you could especially try capturing or bringing back treasures to the capital, it would be nice. Please try also to play until musketeers to see how they work.

Two questions : should I add :
- a highlander spawning wonder in Highlands (but making Highlander cost slightly more expensive) ?
- military harbors spawning ships ? (the AI builds less and less of it in my recent tests).

I lost the original big archive with all the graphics when I reinstalled - where can I get that?

TGA Main folder :
http://www.civfanatics.net/downloads/civ3/scenarios/TGA.zip

Unzip in C3C/Scenarios then "patch" with the files in post 83.

I think that autospawning ships is a pretty good idea, as it would make the naval aspect a little more important. However, you have to remember that ships give England a massive bonus in terms of victory points possible.

Did you get rid of the ability of some ships to pick up treasure? That was kind of a pain in the piano, as I had the boat sitting around doing zippo ;p

BUG: Only monarch is selectable as a difficulty

Monarch was not really a bug, more a setting for playtesting.

Two pictures from playtesting as the English.

The Irish destroyed Belfast but afterwards I basically started 'eating' them until the Spanish reinforced and attacked me around Chester.
The second landing (3 tercios + other troops) did capture and raze Chester then York !!!! because I did not think the AI would use his fleet properly. But as you can see in the first picture I lost the control of the Irish Sea (Leaguers and Spanish ships). My fault as I preferred capturing treasures from America (indeed with a tercio ?????? Anybody got any idea how and why and.... ?).
Spain also reconquered Irish towns in the North (where were my sea dogs ?) but the Scots sided with me (probably after being blackmailed by the Spanish) and 10 of them eventually destroyed the tercio there.

Tech pace was quite good and I even built some wonders.

The Dutch resisted well to Spanish attacks that focused only on Rotterdam (why ? no wonder,...). As you can see Flanders have been pillaged pretty badly by the rebellion.
France started good, reaching in the Med from Toulouse and capturing the small cities in SW of central hills/mountains. I landed and captured Barfleur to divert some League troops (who stopped attacking me as soon as my troops were fortified inside the town). But then defeats occured. Leaguers started to take cities down along the Loire river AND down the Rhone with the important center of Lyon.


Remain a few issues :
The Tercio/treasure one (will do some testing with other units).
Pikeman does upgrade to pikes but not to the flavor version...
Same for musketman
Some buildings, wonders, armies don't appear buildable for no apparent reason

The tech-tree works IMHO fine, some slight changes can be done about resources, tech-cost, units balance (I lowered riders' HP and increased musketeers' attack for instance).

BTW what do you think of the new art and the new civ colors ?

I'm playing a game as Scotland now, and it's quite fun. Starting off very weak is not a problem when the English is AI, but against a human opponent it would be very difficult the first few turns. I love those highlanders! I built a whole screaming horde of them and then took on the English. They're fighting back with everything they have (often using pikemen for attack), but I can just produce so many highlanders it overwhelms them. Unfortunately they have now gotten Pikes and that is bound to slow my advance considerably.

I'm also having big issues with war weariness, must be the default gov that is sensitive to that.

One thing I've noted in all the testing I've done is that the AI gets very easy promotions, definitely easier than I do, it's weird.

Small bugs: Wine imported from the League shows as fur in the city screen.

Highlander shows as swordsman in city screen.

I'll continue as the Scots later.

ironduck said:

...Small bugs: Wine imported from the League shows as fur in the city screen...

Click to expand...

Lou: You have to have the gfx in the same order as you add the resources in the biq.

Played a bit further as Scotland. The English menace will soon be forgotten!

The English pikes look great! Oh, and England landed a Tercio on my shores outside Leicester as you can see

In case someone wonders - I don't think the Scots are overpowered, at least when I played as the English I could have taken them out (slowly) if I focused on them. Maybe the highlander could be made slightly more expensive if you want the Scots to play a more marginal role, but if you want them to have a good chance against the English it's fine the way it is. The early golden age is quite a boost though.

Since I'm more interested in multiplayer a weaker Scotland would not be much fun to play since they could be overrun from the start by a skilled human.

Oh, and I was just one hp from taking London this turn, darn!

Small bugs: Wine imported from the League shows as fur in the city screen.
Lou: You have to have the gfx in the same order as you add the resources in the biq.

Not really a bug, nor something I had forgotten but rather something I am keeping for the last minute (I have some resources I might add if WW is too high or to balance the different countries or to create strategic areas). Sheep, fruits and liquors are possibilities.

Highlander shows as swordsman in city screen.

No icon in Zulu's file. I will probably end up adding the to my own file though.


@Ironduck ; how come your civ colors have not changed ?????
Mine are pretty different. Did you use v0.96 ? You might want to redownload it.
I am extremely interested in knowing how long it takes for Scots to research Late XVIth century tech so that they can join the other "advanced" civs (later techs can be traded).
Do you think "Raising the Highland clans" highlander-spawning wonder (while buidlable highlanders are more expensive) is a good idea/a necessity ? Remember Scotland is not part of the main fight.

Navy strength : in my last test as the English you can see the League and Spain still have strong navies so I am not sure ships-spawning improvements are necessary (I think this kind of building is dangerous for the overall balance). Now a human Spain could have beaten the h**l out of me with that force. Good the Ai is not too smart with ships.

Help : can anybody help me about the followings (probably something stupid I forgot...) :
- why when you choose your civ do you have Henry of Navarra as names for all leaders ?
- why don't pikeman or musketman upgrade to pikes (or flavor units) and musketeers (and flavor units) ? I fear it might be caused by the large number of flavor units...

And I would really love some opinions on tech, units, improvements, wonders costs (shields) and units strength (relative to others and to what they represent (cf civilopedia explanations).

BTW I realized I haven't completely solved the Maghrib leaderhead bug, as well as for the coastal fortress pedia icons. But I think we are approaching public release and "real-time" testing in PBEM.

You have to change the civ colours in the Scenario Properties/Players screen too (silly, I know ).

Musketman upgrades to Musketeers, which only Spain and the League can build... you have to make a chain of upgrades; My advice would be to delete some more units (like the C3C Musketeer), and get the biq in order with C3MT (i e sort the units in some sort of order...).

I dunno why the colours haven't changed, I only downloaded the patches yesterday and installed the whole thing..

Scotland seems decently balanced to me - I wouldn't worry about a wonder, works nicely enough this way. When fighting England I'm using big stacks to take on their progressively harder units, so I guess

I set the tech slider at 0 first, then put it up high after I got my golden age.. at that point I could get it in 8 turns or so (by draining cash reserves), so a total of 20 turns for 16th century tech is probably possible.

About cost - most stuff is really rather expensive because you can't improve terrain due to the lack of workers, and they cost so much to build - and you need to use those shields to get more millitary asap. Also, I didn't see any settler option, can you build them at all? If not that's a problem since a lot of city burning would leave a lot of wasteland.

I think the addition of victory points made Spain MUCH more aggressive with its navy. I would say that making a change (RE: addition of ship spawning harbors) would be very bad. VERY BAD!

Played as England, and kept in a few Sea Dogs, thank God, because there ACTUALLY WAS a Spanish fleet that attacked me too! In fact, it looks to have been composed of the same ships, and a little look in the editor tells me that those are the ones from the tip of spain.

I got two tercios from treasure raiding! Made me VERY HAPPY, and Ireland VERY DEAD!

The Spanish attempted to land tercios in Ireland, they are fighting the Dutch (and captured a small city, Breda, which they held in yours).

I like the new colors, but shouldn't England be red? Seems to be a better color for them than bleu. The Spanish could be a darker red, or they could be yellow (seems like a good color for them).

RE: Henry of Navarre, I mentioned that before, but I still have no clue why it happens either. I looked around a bit, didnt find out why (although I know too little about scripts for that to mean anything).

BUG: I cannot open my save file; says I am missing the image of the civil defense building... dur... all other save files for other games seem to be working fine (including ones WITH civil defense buildings)... so I have n...o... clue what is going on.

The victory points definitely seem to have made the AI do more interesting things in general. Nice little encirclement of the Netherlands by the Spanish here too..

There was a bug with the Irish (they could not build anything). They can still reach the new techs after spending 45 turns or so (1603) researching Late XVIth century tech.

Corrected a few other things. Normally upgrades work fine. A few changes as well.
Next version will be the last before the PBEM test so please check as much as you can.
Still have the tercio capturable issue.

Text part updated, please upgrade both biq and txts.

Just make it so that Tercios cannot capture. If they cannot pick up the treasure, the AI will not foolishly use them to do so and we will not be able to capture them.

I think they need the capture flag so you can put them as offensive/defensive.

Edit: Lou, you know that in the upper right corner of every page you see if you have a new PM, don't you?