Strategic map for accelerated play (100x100, 17 civs)

The zip file included has five maps in it. They are as follows:

Updated version of the original Balanced Three, v1.25
Original Civ3 Conquests version of Balanced Three
Normal Rhye's Expansion rules Balanced Three
wide map (no change)
Great lake (no change)

The updates were mostly geographical tweaks. I might change the rules for a later version, but am busy working on another map first.

original post follows

I like playing small maps, and accelerated production as well. I also like playing maps that have personality, which the small randomly generated civ3 maps generally don't have. So I made my own. I call it the "Balanced Three", since the main continent looks like a 3.

It also has a New World ripe for colonization which makes things very interesting.

I also intended for resources to be spread to create an especially strategic game.

The main scenario map was created using Rhye's of Civ Expansion graphics and base rules, but the rules have been heavily edited to account for accelerated production and certain preferences of mine, most notably, relatively equal civs, but also no travel through desert or tundra.

This map has been heavily playtested by me, but I'm interested in what anyone else has to say. If you play it through, let me know which civs are strong and which are weak.


I also included two other maps I made along the same lines, but they are not so well play-tested. They're called Great Lake and Wide Map.

Arkaeyn

as a preferrer of both smaller maps, and a big fan of rhye's X (should be triple-x, it's so hot right now ), i read this with much excitement. i've been developing a multi-player, random map mod based on rhye's pack, simply because the balance is not designed for such variations.

i've only played the first age on your scenario, and have a few thoughts

- first, i'd submit this in the scenarios forum. although it has a custom map, it is based on the rhye X mod, which requires a specific rule-set which differs greatly from C3C and full installation of ROCX. as such, it's more than just a map

- i've never played with accelerated production before. i have to say it feels really odd juxtaposed against rhye's expensive settlers and slower worker actions (not to mention later clear wetlands action). i'm not sure i'd change this, but my initial reaction is... wha.. huh?!

- i realise you've designed a mod to suit your playing style, but i for one HATE disease. there's nothing more frustrating than taking a good position and losing to random luck with lost citizens, or compounding a bad start position with bad luck! i understand the realism arguments, but my personal preference would be to set disease at levels equal to, or below, C3C settings.

- with heightened agression, close neighbors, and accelerated production putting a premium on war-mongering, i dont know if rhye's government settings are appropriate for this scenario. generally speaking, corruption is worse and/or upkeep is more expensive for ROCX governments compared to those available at comparable times in C3C. this puts a focus on economic management, which puts further stress on the vagaries of disease undermining the economy of your empire.

for my mod, i've tweaked the tech tree a bit, moving absolution up to after chivalry and education, then made feudalism and absolute monarchy the middle ages analogues to fascism/communism (feudalism better for the war-mongering civ with small-sized cities and absolute monarchy better for the war-mongering civ with large-sized cities). of course, this means shifting colonial infantry back to flintlock as well.

i'll keep playing, and feedback more as i think of it. please feel free to take or leave my suggestions, no offense meant by them at all - it is a seriously good effort!

i hope more people are inspired to develop scenarios for ROCX.

EW

The reason I play on Accelerated is that if I don't, I never build military units. In pretty much every game I have the problem of wanting to build all the beneficial buildings or their equivalent, and ignoring the military. This kind of forces the issue. You bring up a valid point about the settlers, though. My goal is not to have everything be built faster so much as the ability to create larger armies. So maybe I should raise the cost of settlers. Or if I'm feeling really ambitious, turn off accelerated production and lower the cost of military units. Or learn a way to lower my pacifistic tendencies.

The disease thing isn't actually a playstyle thing so much as a history thing. Having read Guns, Germs and Steel and Ecological Imperialism in the last six months, I'm kind of stuck on the role of disease in human history. It's big. And Civilization barely touches upon it. So I have it. But it is kind of just annoying right now, without its mobile role except as the black death.

I haven't ever fiddled with governments, it's not terribly intuitive for me. How did you make those changes work?

i think i suffer from similar problems regarding smallish military and relative pacifism. for the last few months, i've been forcing myself to play a more warmongering style. but i must admit, a quiet, building game is more to my liking.

that said, my point about settlers and worker times was not to say slow them down, but rather, to speed them up! the problem i ran into was that, it was so easy to build combat units, and taking so long to build settlers, that i was very quickly running into economic problems supporting the size of my military! and then when i did build settlers, the population costs worsened the problem. similarly, the gross need for workers killed my income producing population as well (as did the extensive disease).

regarding disease, i also enjoyed diamond's book, but i dont believe there is the proper facility in civ to account for it. one of his key points was that disease gave an advantage to the colonisers, because they had resistances whilst indigenous people did not. penalising everyone with random deaths from every terrain type only slows the game.

for governments, the changes i referred to only require tweaking of two areas of the governments tab:

1) corruption levels
2) unit costs

specifically, i've set the following

feudalism: corruption problematic, cost/unit 1, free units: 5/3/1
absolute monarchy: corruption problematic, cost/unit 1, free units: 2/5/8

(i know 8 sounds high, but you wont have large cities at this stage in the game. and regardless, either fascism or communism will be superior once you reach that stage of the industrial age, so the 8 figure is unlikely to be a factor.)

most everything else in governments i left as set in ROCX. (well, except the rate caps, which i changed all back to 10 because C3C does not handle the bottom end elegantly. if you set the cap to 8, your default research level is a minimum of 20% which is annoying to reset to 10% or 0 if you are doing so for strategic reasons).

sorry, though, that i havent had time to play more. we're having a heat wave down here that is making everything just miserable. i'll let you know as i develop more opinions once i progress the game further.

EW

The military size things is one of the more interesting things about playing this scenario, I find. Your economy varies a lot more, because there's much more of, uh, everything. Do you want those cavalry to keep being churned out and knock your science down, or are you willing to set half your cities on wealth? Do you want Republic for the moneymaking, even if it means if you lose a city in war you're screwed for a few turns? It seems to make the grand decisions mean more while the smaller decisions mean less. Hmmm. I need to think about this. It adds both macro and micromanagement levels.

Also, the AI acts strangely with the accelerated production. Aggressive, militaristic civs especially will build hundreds of units, and cripple themselves economically while making themselves military juggernauts. The Aztecs do it the most. I've fought them, an entire age ahead in a losing war, because they had 200 units attacking me on this small map. No tech, but still powerful.

On the downside, there's a HUGE dead zone towards the end of the middle ages and start of the industrial age where there's no new buildings, then a rush of factory/stock exchange/hospital etc. So you end up with massive cavalry armies, waiting to invade the Korean island.

indeed. i think it's a matter of getting used to these different dynamics.

here's another idea i'll throw out there. how bout having each civ start with 2 cities, so that expansion is cut down even further?

EW

That's an interesting thought, but I'm not sure it would work with this map, because the resources are specifically placed halfway between civs. Maybe when I make another along these lines.

What I would really like is to eliminate new city building entirely, like the napoleon or pacific war conquests, except for the problem of figuring out how to do that in the epic war. I wish you could make barbarian cities like Civ2 had, and have cultural expansion be the easiest way to gain. But I'm probably going to have to make my own game to have something like that. "A local city sees that your people are happy and have plenty of food and wish to join your nation" makes more sense than "send half of another city out to start a new one."

Just wanted to say that I really like your maps, especially the "balanced 3" and "great lake" (I really like the attentiont to detail with the points were you can cross between the bodies of water if you build a city there - I just map a map (Panama) with that in mind).

I like experimenting with maps that give you only one city, and disallows settlers all together. Balance the start locations and it works quite well. Of course you can destroy your neighbours and just grow in size.

One idea might be to make your palace generate settlers every so many turns? Also, you wanted barbarian cities - create a civilization that has all of the units disabled. Give them some units, or maybe let them build some special buildings that generate a modest number of forces. Unfortunately you'd have to make the "Civ" a huge one, all across the world, though when you go to war with it you'd have no worry about it gathering forces and acting like a real one.

A_Jay - great idea on palace generating settlers. it gets around the "half my city goes and starts another city" silliness, and gives the mod/scenario builder control over expansion, whilst giving the players a completely different stratgic outlook (lose a settler, and you'll just have to wait 10 more turns for your next)....

regarding barbarian civs, one of the modders playing with Rhye's civ (camber) has an idea to use 4 civs as barbarian civs, with slowed tech trees, and restrictions on units and what they can build. there's actually quite a bit you can do with the civilisations tab to control this. and by using several civ slots for barbarians, you get around the potential lunacy of a world war with those suckers

ark - sorry to hijack your thread, still too hot to concentrate on a game, but i will be sending more feedback shortly...

EW

Andrew_Jay, I'm especially glad you're enjoying the Great Lake, because I gave up on it fairly quickly but thought it had potential. It's just too big to play on accelerated production, at least on my computer, I was getting significant load times well before the middle ages finished. It would probably be fine non-accelerated, but I was stuck in my ways. If you want to do something with it, feel free, I'm probably not going to be updating it.

Interesting thoughts on barbarian cities. Deleting settlers and having every civ start with a city is an interesting solution, but has two problems: they can get to you just as easily (and I, like most people, loathe being rushed) and the Razing problem. Can razing be turned off?

The crippled civ solution is one that I've thought of, but diplomatic penalties for land grabs makes things annoying, and it seems that if you lock groups in wars, then they're locked as allies, and there's only four different team slots.

The palace producing settler idea is brilliant for a human player, but I think it would absolutely cripple the AI. I'm sure we've all seen games where an AI civ simply stops research, because they're forced to fund all their settlers that they have no place to put.

The crippled AI civ might work if cultural conversions occured more regularly, which is something I kind of want to experiment with, but the cultural tab in the editor seems geared towards encouraging propaganda campaigns more than the simply cultural flip. Which I've only ever seen occur after a military campaign or when a weak city is completely surrounded.

How about the Flavor tab? It seems to be a potentially powerful tool for influencing all kinds of behavior. Could it be used to make "barbarian" civs declare war early and often, or make certain civs much more likely to have a cultural conversion?

i'm cruising along as the arabs and doing all right. russia, to my east, won the landgrab, amongst the locals, by a wide margin. looking at the territory it's easy to see why. by comparison, the arab's start territory, loaded with marsh and mountain, is a nightmare.

fortunately, worse off than me was the japanese. their complete lack of shields meant i could easily outproduce them for settlers and turn that into a military advantage. after grabbing their three cities, i was tempted to go after russia, and pick off the others in piecemeal, but the mongols had designs on my territory. i've taken their three core cities, but they've got a couple of loose cities out there somewhere.

in the meantime, research has really slowed down. somehow, carthage has the tech lead, and more cities than me. i havent seen their territory yet, but based on the city names i dont think they've done any conquest to achieve this. this suggests to me that their start location is waaay too good.

it's done exactly what you designed it to: it's forced me to play an aggressive, militaristic game, where i'm playing a pyramid scheme of needing new cities and more citizens to support an ever larger military. on the other hand, rhye's slowdown rules on settlers and workers and worker jobs is really crimping my civ. i'm producing tons of workers just to get my territory up to scratch, but even then, i'm hampered by the inability to deal with marsh and jungle. i'm just not sure rhye's base rules are the right basis for this style of play.

it also looks to me like the start locations still need some attention for balancing. one thing you notice in rhye's world scenario is that pretty much everyone starts with 4-5 cities. not always contiguous borders, but certainly with an equal opportunity.

all in all i'd recommend this for people to give it a go, and look forward to a version 2 that tweaks the map and rules a bit.

EW

Actually, it may be easy to see why Russia won the landgrab for you, but when I played, usually all Russia did was survive, and either Rome or the Aztecs won the initial rush. The Arabs typically only survive as well, while Japan does tend to get eaten alive. I'll work on them.

On the other hand, since you mentioned Carthage and the Mongols, you seem to be playing with civs that I didn't intend to put in the game, which is a problem I've occasionally had. It only gives me the 17 options I've chosen, but if Random is chosen, then it will pick different ones. Confusing.

You're right about the marsh and jungle problems. It might be a good idea to move Clear Wetlands up the tech tree, though I'm not sure what would make sense (not that Electricity really does). What would you suggest? Cheaper workers? Multiply the time to make improvements by 75%. In my last game, I got most of my land irrigated or mined during the middle ages, and had my workers wasting time planting forests until I got Steam Power and Electricity, but then again, I was playing as India, which has the best starting location (which I keep trying to nerf). They're probably where Carthage is in your game, especially if the game gets confused over colors.

I would disagree about Rhye's. China, my favorite, tends to get about 8 good cities, and Russia has 6-7. Most of mainland europe and the middle east gets 2-3, and then sends their settlers across central europe to settle wherever they can, which is really annoying (and the original impetus for me turning movement across deserts off, actually). When the Spanish founded Santiago somewhere near Chengdu in China, I was not impressed, and it probably didn't help the Spanish, who were crippled every time I played Rhye's.

I've worked on two other versions of the map. One is original Civ-style, and the other has normal Rhye's expansion rules. Haven't playtested them, but I will upload them soon.

yes, instead of going with defaults in the game setup, i ticked the "all random". so that probably explains the unusual civs i'm playing with.

according to some historical records i've read, the sumerians drained the swamps between the tigris and euphrates, which would go back to ancient age times on the C3C tech tree. for my mod, i have it set for construction, which is reasonably late in the ancient age, but clearly earlier choices are reasonable for game play purposes without messing with history too much.

regarding worker times, i'd be tempted to put them back to standard C3C times. really, the thing about rhye's mod is that it's all tuned to creating an historical timeline that matches our earth. realism, reasonableness, or anything else is a consideration, but only secondarily. as such, there's absolutely no reason they would be appropriate for any other map/scenario.

on rhye's, yes, china and russia get an advantage in open space (and gimped mongols). on the other hand, the european civs who grow through non-contiguous cities can be long-term powerhouses. i had one game where portugal had only two cities, but stockpiled settlers so when the age of ships arrived, settled several colonies in africa and most of south america and the caribbean. in another, france took a scattered set of cities across europe, scandanavia, and central asia and turned them into a commercial empire. they led in tech without doing research and eventually had to be violently subdued.

EW

See, there, you say it's intended to be historical, and then say that france had an empire from calais to turkestan and I just get confused. Hmmm. Maybe if the Turks got moved to Turkestan it would stop it from becoming a Greek province. Hopefully I can play again after downloading the recent version, though I've been fairly happy with Age of Wonders Shadow Magic.

Anyway...is there any way to force the same civs to appear in the same place, even though it says All Random? It seems there must be, but I can't find.

Also, I use the Rhye's rules because it just seems more attractive. Maybe all I really love is Snoopy's terrain, but Rhye's seems consonant and original civ3 seems dissonant.

re: your scenario ==> i've played into the middle ages now, and the mongols and rome have fallen. spain's got quite an empire to my southwest, and the russians have declared war, only to lose their two closest cities (so far) to my east.

i see now how the combination of rhye's rules and your map, accelerated production, and heightened agression works. it takes some getting used to, but i reached this point where i put my entire western empire (west of the arab mountains ) on wealth to support the war effort in the east, and suddenly a light clicked on. now that i've got the feel, i'm enjoying it quite a bit more.

i found carthage's territory, it's on the continent due west of my (arabia's) start location. a quick tour of their capital, after making an embassy, showed my just why they're doing so well - sugar, cattle, wheat, extensive grassland...! gimping that start location wouldnt be hard, just take out one or two of the bonuses and change some grassland to plains!

i also notice that the hebrews start location is suffering the same problems as japan: not enough shields. in both cases, you should consider changing some of the desert tiles away from the flood plains to either plains or bonus grassland.

re: ROCX ==>
i agree, rhye's rules are a step above standard C3C. whilst still not being perfect in achieving a "true" historical outcome, i think they do a great job delivering an epic game close to history within the limits of the C3C engine.

the thing to keep in mind is that the ROCX scenario is balanced so that key events happen near to their historical time, when played by all-AIs. for example, europe should discover "the new world" around the late 15th century. and in an all-AI game this will virtually always occur, whilst in player games, despite the player's interference it will occur more often than not.

i agree with your criticisms, such as france's empire in turkmenistan and siberia. but these problems are impossible to fix within the C3C game engine - any large-sized map will ultimately result in AI's owning jigsaw-like territory around each other. and there's almost no impetus for contiguous borders, whether from cultural forces (which, i agree, flips are much too uncommon) or AI-aggression (contiguous borders appear not to be a motivator, but resources are).

separating what the modder can control from what C3C does on its own, i find it hard to criticise some of the non-historical elements of rhye's scenario, and appreciate all the more just what he, and his beta-testers idea people, were able to achieve.

EW

The thing with Carthage, if they're on the central island, is that they start in direct competition with another empire. I'm not sure who it is for you, in my game, it's Korea and Persia on that island. They've got a really good island and really good starting locations, they're just right next to each other. Whichever one gets the jump or wins the war becomes a power, usually. And I've noticed that, happily, whichever one wins seems to be fairly random.

Don't get me wrong, I like Rhye's. Obviously. I'm using it as my base rules. But I think there are things that can be done to make it better. Making desert impassable by wheeled units is my favorite. I also had a version where I deleted 11 civs, which gave a bit more breathing room.

My map tends to have an AI with contiguous borders.

ah, yes, the old disappearing civs trick. i must admit, i made a similar variation in my personal version too - mostly because i cant stand managing diplomacy with 30 neighbors - not with this clunky interface.

i think if your power island is so dominant, you really need to gimp it - either by adding another civ, or gimping production on the whole island so that the winner doesnt get such an extreme advantage.

EW

The winner on the island will become a superpower, but I have no problem with that. I hope with this game to have the game progress so that the weaker civs get weeded out and there are 3-5 superpowers. The central island is one. The winner in the expansionist corner is another. And the northwest part of the main continent is really, really one, regardless of wars. But the thing with the island is that that means that they don't have much of a base to invade the mainland. My goal is not so much to make sure that some areas aren't really good, but rather, to make sure that there are different results every time the game is played. What I want to see most is a superpower in one game turn into a Fledgeling destruction the next.

I've edited the map slightly to take into account some of your suggestions and some flaws I saw. Israel has had its starting location pumped up a lot, Arabia got rid of one marsh and fish in the other, and Japan got some cows instead of wheat, Korea(Carthage to you) and I've nerfed India (to the far northwest) and some other spots. I started a new game, was crippled in the start due to disease, and decided to turn that way down as well. It's more annoying than historical.

These changes caused one of the stranger games I've played, though. Despite playing on maximum aggression, as usual, there were no wars of note on the mainland, where usually the AI disposes of at least a couple of its own without my help. Instead, everyone seemed to be progressing at roughly the same pace...which was weird. Very weird.

it's funny that you mention that, because i was thinking to myself, as i eliminated all but one outlying russian city, that i couldnt see an AI wars of note!

crazy thought, but maybe if the AI's are too balanced, they wont fight - only if they feel a good overwhelming chance to beat someone around them will they go for it...? in other words, have a couple of nerfed civs around (like japan and israel in the version i'm playing, or the losers of expansion on the island) gives the other civs a target that they can go after early and use as a springboard to hegemony...

It's possible, and certainly intelligent for the AI. It also could be that they do fight, but with no major effects, maybe a city swap or two. They also seem to have a knack for attacking me when I'm weak, but the way they treat the human players seems to be much different from the way they treat each other.

On the other hand, the Aztecs were pretty well crippled by Roman expansion in my game and the Romans didn't take advantage of it. Since I've seen the Romans destroy the Aztecs before, I don't know why it didn't happen here.