Sea Kings playtest

Thanks for the great report McM!

The Sea People should not have been able to be at peace with you at this point. The negotiator event must be broken.

Regarding Phalanxes and Parashim, maybe I will add a minimum bribe amount. Would 175 shekels each be too much?

I don't want shieldbearers to be able to one shot 'picked' maryannu, I think I may just proportionally weaken the disposable siege units, to make them more viable in comparison. I think I may remove Kikulli's Academy as well. Most of the time it seems like the other great power gets it, but the player may become simply unstoppable with that wonder.

I will remove the canals from most Egyptian cities.

You seem to be in a much stronger position in your game than I usually am in mine at this point in the game. No doubt a testament to your strategic mind. At this point in the game I want the player to be loosing their grasp on sections of their empire, forcing them to make difficult (and fairly permanent) choices about how they devote their resources to maximizing their score for the endgame, but you seem like you could take on the world at this point. Should I add more help to the AI, and tweak them to be more aggressive? Should I lower the denominator for revolt events, and make them bigger? Are there way you can think of that would make trade more difficult?

In my last turn (1192 BC) the Sea People landed in south-eastern Turkey and I was at war with them and could not negotiate so it looks like the event is working. They offered me peace in 1196 BC at the same time they were attacking Crete.

As far as I remember it was not possible to bribe the Parashim. The Phalanx cost around 260 shekels which I was happy to pay. I would either make them resistant to bribery or put the price over 500 sheckels. As it was I had to sell off a lot of improvements to bribe them.

I must confess that at one point early on there was a rebellion near my capital which I assumed was a timed event (rather than a random turn one) and I re-loaded to move a few units to protect the capital. Obviously when I re-loaded the random turn event didn't trigger. I'm a cheat This rebellion would have set me back massively as I had very little to protect my capital with at the time and my progress would have been slowed!

The end of the bronze age events have slowed down my expansion and it does feel like my empire is in decline with the Sea People arriving. That said, I think you could up the frequency of rebellions and the strength of invasions to make the scenario more challenging. Early on it is a struggle, but more rebellions and invasions in the middle and end of the scenario combined with the decline in the Hittite Empire would make it much more challenging. Should be easy enough to alter a few figures in the events. I think the AI needs a little more help.

Trade is about right. The routes to the west are not so profitable and maintaining trade with Egypt is problematic. I have had to send shipments from Cyprus to the delta and inevitably some of my ships are lost on the voyage.

I think with a few tweaks the Hittite events are ready. It is a very fun scenario to play. I look forwards to trying out the other nations!

Is there someone here who is hexedit wise willing to help me with a small problem?

I can probably handle any required hex-editing.

Please check your PM for my e-mail address.

Thanks! Reply sent!

McM, I'm think of making king unit deaths permanent after the start of the migration era at the end of the game. What do you think of that idea?

If you want the scenario to follow a more historical path then that is probably a good move. Most scenarios end with the player in an unassailable position. To play a scenario where your empire flourishes then declines would be an interesting new challenge.

McMonkey said:

Most scenarios end with the player in an unassailable position. To play a scenario where your empire flourishes then declines would be an interesting new challenge.

Click to expand...

That's definitely what I'm striving for. Apocalypse and ruin were midwives to the iron age's birth.
By comparison, if the ancient marble columns remain untoppled in an twilight age where Germanic tribal hosts make war through out the wearied land then it must mean that the Legion's battle was worthy indeed!

Anyway it is an age old problem in civilization scenario design I think, it worries me that I have to be so heavy handed to force a decline upon the players.

There are lots of ways to increase the difficulty in mid-scenario, although I agree it's hard to attack a position of strength:

Changing the rules.txt file to increase costs for construction, lower unit capabilities, or meddle with basic game engines like the tech rate or amount of food consumed/raised;

Using Leonardo's Workshop to promote units into weaker ones;

Events.txt commands to sap money from the treasury.

Since the scenario is designed for 5 potential protagonists rules file changing is too much work, as is implementing Leonardo's scheme. IRC there is a bug where events remove a gold amount greater than what is presently in the treasury. So basically I set the game up so that players are trade dependent, then use events to squeeze their jugular veins latter in the game, plus massive event created sea people invasions, and the obsolescence of nearly every wonder simultaneously. Like I said earlier, kind of heavy handed but hopefully it won't feel to unfair to players.

Speaking of heavy handedness, McM did you happen to get to the big Mushki event that is triggered by the Sea Peoples getting the migration tech?

To be honest I can't remember now. I probably still have my saves if you want to check them.

Damn, where was I when this came out! Gz Erin, this is fantastic news, and well done on all the hard work completed.

Hey Gareth, long time no see. Are things treating you well?

Still something of a work in progress I'm afraid. Drew gave me lots of excellent feedback, but implementing it has depleted my events memory budget. So presently I'm trying to squeeze a few bytes out of the damn thing.

Not wanting to probe or push on this EZRhino, but has there, perchance, been any progress on this? I've sure you've very busy, and your last few posts indicated running into problems making things work quite as you'd envisioned them (a very common issue on these forums). I have been wanting to try this, but I didn't feel confidant in my abilities as a player to volunteer as a playtester. I imagine this project's still dormant in the shop, but hope springs eternal.

Hi Patine!
The ToT patch project resolved many of the outstanding issues. There are still a few things I'd like to take care of but I'm a Mechanical Engineering graduate student and I haven't had as much free time as I'd like lately. Still, I do have some free time coming up in the near future, perhaps I can make more progress then. I've been working on this project off and on since 2007, which strikes me as kind of insane. Would you be interested in playtesting the next version?

As I had basically said to McMonkey about his recently released Spanish Civil War reduxe (which he ended up releasing without outside playtest, in the end), if you're willing to accept my mediocre, rusty playing skills, I'd be more than happy to.

Sounds good! I can probably have a new version ready for playtest early next week. As I said before ToTPP resolved many of the outstanding issues, but there are a few tweaks I'd like to make first.

Bump!

How's this coming along, if at all?

I'm looking forward to seeing it, if it'll see the light of day. *knock on wood*

Hey!
It's in stasis currently. Ironically, I last set it down trying to refactor the events file to free up some space. Since then TOTPP has basically made that problem obsolete, but I haven't had time to set it back up properly. Most everything else is done. Unfortunately I just haven't had time recently to tie off the loose ends. Graduate school is like this all-consuming, and rapidly growing, black hole into which I shovel time and energy. Civilization is currently playing the second fiddle to my thesis. Somewhere in the scenario files I made a joke about Odysseus's journey home taking 10 years (the context being that single turns take decades, but crossing the Aegean takes several turns; we all know that this is unrealistic but I hate 'ancient blitzkriegs' even more for game-play reasons), but it seems this scenario will take me ever longer to bring to completion!

Hi EZRhino,

I was just looking at your gorgeous screen shots last week and thinking how our little community is eager to have a chance to play your scenario one day, hopefully in the not too distant future .

I think we certainly all understand your need to prioritize your studies. Good luck!