Island Conquest V.3 beta needs playtesters

IC v. 3.1 is out now. Look in this forum for the thread!

Island conquest V.3.0 beta is done!


Playtesters needed for this expanded scenario. Major change is the addition of 6 new civs, all alone on a rock. These 6 civs will provide a real challenge even for experienced players. There are a few things that need to be finished for it to be a complete V3.0 but they are just graphic and civlopedia things. This is a fully working version for all scenarios. If you are unfamilliar with IC go to this thread and download the latest version of the old version, you will need it to play V3.0 beta. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=106229

Download the expansion from this link!
http://www.civfanatics.net/downloads/civ3/scenarios/IC_V3.zip

Download all of the zip files to get the latest version, including last minute changes that fix some graphic uglies, lower the amount of barbarians, and should speed up contact.

Here is a short list of what I have changed and added.
-tweaked some unit stats and costs.
-new unit: Lumberjack available with iron working, specialized worker unit.
-brothels defence bonus has been removed.
-all civ-specific building now require 1 maintance cost.
-Potala Monestary no longer reduced war weariness, It now produces 1 Warrior Monk every 4turns.
-new unit: Warrior Monk 2-10-1 detect invis, Z.o.C., no maintence. Produced by wonder only.
-War School wonder now produces a tougher 'Legendary Army' every 20 turns.
-All new civilization! The Spartans.
-Added Spartan unique unit (Equals), techs, and builds.
-New Uint: Equals - pumped up Hoplite that upgrades to musket infantry.
-New Wonder (Spartan only) 'Victory at Thermopylae'
-New Gov't form (Spartan Only) Oligarchy! "it's good to be the ruling elite!"
-All New Civ! Mongols.
-Added mongol uu, Keishek.
-Added new mongol only build 'Kahn': produces golden horde units every 10 turns.
-New Unit: Golden Horde - pre keishek horse archers that enslave!
-Civil Defence fixed.
-All new civ! Egypt
-Added egyptian uu, War chariot.
-New egypt only building, Obelisk.
-All new civ! Persia.
-Added Persian uu, Imortals.
-New Persian only building, early schools.
-All new civ! France. Vive La France!!
-Added French uu, La Grande Batterie.
-New French only wonder, Tour Eiffel.
-Added final new civ, Zulus!
-Added zulu uu, Impi.
-Added unique zulu building, cattle herd.
-Mercinary units now require no stratigic resources except merc.

This screenshot is from a zulu game on Monarch.

Hello,

First post (and first bug), if I veiw the 3rd era tech screen I get a crash missing file:

Tactical_Assassin_Small.pcx

May not be EXACT spelling, but that's where there is a problem.


Gameplay is not bad, first 50 turns of playing as the Dutch went kind of slow (I was researching Writing to get my first sea-transport; It didn't take me long to fill up my Island cluster) I lost my start game transport to barbarians pretty fast; those suckers are POWERFUL (of course, they're supposed to be).

Also:

I just found the Romans, who had contact with all but 4 civs (I was playing with everyone included) whereas in my corner of the world I had only met the 4 civs Rome DIDN'T meet. I think maybe communications trading should be delayed a while; that way it becomes harder for any one civ to have contact with EVERYONE before they've actually done a lot of navel exploration (which is hard in the early game becuase of those darn prolific barbarians, and I would hazard, will remain hard unless you wipe out the pirates with thier darn prolific pirate ships)

But that's just an opinion after my first run through. I'm not sure if I'll keep playing my current game. I have an early dead-line in a sense; I know my game must crash if I reach the third era.

I'm not sure why the crash is happening. Here are the files you should have in the conquests/scenarios/IC_V22/art/civlopedia/icons/units directory. Make sure you are using the most current versions of all files.
In the latest version I gave everyone at least 1 curragh for exploration... and I cut down on the Trireme hordes rampaging the seas. I placed tougher barbs by the strongest nations. In a few trial tuns the most powerful nations were the dutch and romans. If you don't want the barbs to be so tough just turn down the difficulty.

I'll try those files

Edit: It works now that I stuck those files in the proper place.

btw the biq v 301 is the standard file for the mod right?

(and not the other biq file, or are both biq files intended to be playable?)

Oh, another thing I was wondering was if there is a duplicate of say, pediaicons.txt in the IC_V3x and IC_V3 folders which one get's taken as the "real" file? (If I try and correct any crashes myself; which I have sort of taken to doing w/ some other buggy mods/scenarios or my own buggy mods/scenarios I want to know which file I should edit)

$$$ EDIT $$$ the most current biq is IC_V302 $$$$$$$$$$$$$

the right biq is IC_V301. Yah the way i have the scenario search path it should not make a difference if there are duplicate files. The game looks for the first things in the list first.
I'm glad those files worked for you.

Now that I've been able to play for a while without crashing I have some gameplay observations:

I've noticed that the upgrade tree for units is (in my opinion) kind of wierd;

in particular the advance corsair unit upgrades to a Galleon, which doesn't make sense to me since the Corsairs are "Naval Power" type vessels while the Galleon is a transport.

Also a lot of land units seem to skip a LONG way up the tech tree when they upgrade so that something like a sharp shooter doesn't upgrade until Imperial Guards, which is a jump from a3d2 to a7d12. That seems a bit too extreme to me.

Also spearman now seem to upgrade to Musket Infantry, (unless you have a civ-specific intermediary unit before Musket Infantry), which just doesn't seem right to me, it seems more natural to me that they would go to Pikeman.

Another wierd upgrade: Longbowman upgrade to Sharp Shooters, but Sharp shooters are available in the Ancient era while Longbowman come in at Invention in the Middle era; they also are a better attack unit, although less balanced than Sharp Shooters.

Another thing that seems more than a little odd to me (this MUST be a bug) is that the Golden Horde is set to enslave le grande batterie.

On the upgrade paths: I need to refine and fix them in some cases. I will work on that today. On the enslave of the grande batterie... that probably means all unit enslaves are off by 1 on the units list. I deleted the scout unit and it through everything off by 1. I will change these asap na d get a new biq out there.

Cabbit: I have made the changes and uploaded the new biq file. Its located on the first page and its called IC_V302

i might check this out later today, after my classes. it looks fun.

You might have got this fixed already in v302, but if you deleted a unit your unit producing wonders might be off by a unit too, I mean, I know the tournament of champions produces sharpshooters instead of champions (which the civ-pedia says it produces), I had assumed before that the civ-pedia was wrong, but maybe this was because the unit list had changed.

Cabbit said:

You might have got this fixed already in v302, but if you deleted a unit your unit producing wonders might be off by a unit too, I mean, I know the tournament of champions produces sharpshooters instead of champions (which the civ-pedia says it produces), I had assumed before that the civ-pedia was wrong, but maybe this was because the unit list had changed.

Click to expand...

I have fixed this and alot of other problems in the new biq IC_V302 available now on the 1st post. Cabbit: you will have to download it agian... my bad.

any takers on playtesting?

Quote strig "any takers on playtesting?"

I'll Playtest. what do I need to do. Just post the info (civ, difficulty, ect.) on this fourm. I'll be checking in often.

Greenman1234: "I'll Playtest. what do I need to do. Just post the info (civ, difficulty, ect.) on this fourm. I'll be checking in often."

play whatever dificulty you like. I'd like you to playtest Japan or the Dutch. If you think you're good at civ you should try playing one of the expansion civs, they are more challenging.

BTW I would like a few more playtesters.

I may have to take a break from playing Civ 3 for a while to deal with the real world on more serious footing for a while. But before I laid IC to the side I figure I'll comment on what I've noticed in my games so far:

I've played around with IC v 302 and would say my general impression is pretty good; but I still have some additional observations:

The locked alliances don't really make a lot of sense to me as they've been applied. I'm not sure exactly what your reasoning behind them was. I can see why the pirates would be allied but the other alliances just seem sort of thrown together at random, also there doesn't really seem to be a real great way to figure out what the locked alliances are w/ out looking it up in the editor. I don't neccesariliy think there is a problem in terms of gameplay w/ the alliances, it's just that they don't make sense to me from a thematic point of view.

The "small civs" do pretty bad in the game (civs like zules, mongols, france)

England doesn't seem to do as well as it should either, which might be becuase they start on the smallest landmass of all the civs.

Carthage also seems to make a dissapointing showing of itself when played by the AI, I mean looking at thier starting location it seems like Carthage should do well, but they seem to lag behind the other civs for some reason in most of my games.

The other "major" civs seem to be reasonably balanced.

Besides relative AI balancing:

Tech progress is very slow in all my games, while $ is very abundant. High tech cost is the main reason for research being slow (in fact it seems to me that, on lower difficulty levels at least, once you get writing you're better off trying to get the remaining Ancient Era techs from goody huts, rather than actually researching them) while you get lots of $ because numerous improvements let you get plus 50% tax.

War is inevitable and when it comes it gets REALLY ugly. It seems like things are peaceful up to the point where you have colonized most of you're home continent and as you start to expand to neighboring islands you soon find that somebody declares war on you. After this initial declaration either you;

1) sign allainces w/ everyone you've met agianst whoever just attacked you, then watch your allies begin to go to war with each other

2) attempt to fight solo and watch the WHOLE WORLD declare war on you, one civ at a time.

So peaceful mid-game stategies don't work all that well. You've really got to prepare for early warfare

Another observation:

Resource control is VERY important in this mod, a lot of times if I've managed to get a tech lead I find that it actually does me little good since I haven't managed to get my hands on the proper resources to build the better units.

This is something that a human player really can deal w/, making the scenario more interesting, but I don't think the AI manages resources as well as humans. The pirates attack me with some uglier stuff, but I've found that many "normal civs" simply attack with hordes of archers and spearmen. (although carthage at least builds tons of Numidean Mercenaries)

Some Observations on Units:

I think that the Heavy Gaelleas Unit may be a bit overpowered, it's certainly the best warship of the Middle Era, and it's also a good transport, and it's also on a tech that you can research before you get navigation. In fact I think that you need the same techs plus Chemistry to research Magnatism as Metallurgy, so the Heavy Gaelleas is cheaper technologywise compared to the Magnatism ships. I therefore see no reason why you'ld ever build a frigate, although Galleons ARE better transports (still, the Gaelleas is a transport the can defend itself, making it a great unit)

Now the Heavy Gaelleas IS a really expensive (sheildwise) unit, but I still don't think this evens the field quite.

I think that there should be a generic defense unit available in the anceint era that is better than the spearman. I say this because there are a number of great offensive units (tactical riders, aggressors, mermidon) available in the ancient era and these things can make mincemeat out of spearman.

A brief note on wonders:

I originally though War College and Sun Tzu's Art of War did the same thing, they DON"T but I should probably check the pedia to see if this is noted in there.

More on Technologies:

I've noticed that, particularly in the middle era, there are a bunch of technologies that aren't required for era advancement that are prerequisites for other techs that ARE required for era advancement. That just seems a little silly to me.

Barbarians:
Well, they're everywhere. They make early exploration/offshore settlement really hard. Depending on who you are they make settling your OWN continent hard. But this difficulty drops off steeply as you drop in difficulty levels because of the combat bonus you get vs. barbarians. I, personally, don't like that. I think that difficutly in a game should be determinant entirely on the production bonus that the AI gets. (of course this isn't unique in anyway to Island Conquests, it's built into CIV III and tends to show up, for that reason, in everybodies mods/scenarios) But in Island Conquests the Barbarians seem to be a really important element of gameplay, and that role really hinges on if you're playing on a high enough difficulty setting that you can't just take the barbains out with a warrior or a spearmen (or a galley or currough in the case of the naval barbarians) So I think that maybe the combat bonus against barbarians should be fixed at all difficulty levels, or at least evened out a bit.

One other general note: Workers will not automate for all jobs. You can get a worker to automate for "build trade" and "clear damage" but not the general "automate" or "automate this city only". (I haven't tried clear forest or clear wetlands) I have no idea why that is, the button shows up for "automate worker" but when you press it, it does nothing (same w/ the keyboard command).

On more other general note: For me gameplay starts to take a long time between turns around the same time that everyone starts declaring war on me. I know that this is a generic problem with civ III but you can cut down on this time by:

1) making expansion more expensive

2) making a version on a tiny map

So I would like to see a vs. on a tiny map if you get around to it.

My overall feeling on this Scenario is that it is a lot harder than average CIV III, certainly my normal play strategy doesn't work, even on lower difficulty levels (although it's failure is significantly less spectacular)

That isn't neccessarily a bad thing though... it makes it a challenge to be defeated, which I hopefully I can get around to doing sometime later when I have some more free time.

Cabbit:
-On the locked alliances: my reasoning was to give you some partners for your conquest, to help you in tech and brute force. I tried to give alliance partners different civ traits, uu combinations, and resource availabality. In the civ forign advisor you can select a locked alliance button that will show alliances. alliances.

-The small civs should do bad... there an extra challenge.

-England is an underperformer but the man o war is a good uu and when it counts. I thought englands sefaring trait would help it expand... i am currently tweaking the build commands of the civs, maybe this will help.

-play with carthage and you will know they are good.

you said, "Tech progress is very slow in all my games, while $ is very abundant. High tech cost is the main reason for research being slow (in fact it seems to me that, on lower difficulty levels at least, once you get writing you're better off trying to get the remaining Ancient Era techs from goody huts, rather than actually researching them) while you get lots of $ because numerous improvements let you get plus 50% tax."

-maybe I should adjust the tech costs, agian.

-On the inevitable war: The only way to win is by conquering everyone else. This should be your all consuming goal I am very pleased at how the war goes and how the barbarians are. I designed the scenario default to be monarch dificulty. Oh, I recomend either 1) sign alliances with everyone you've met, or 2) declare war first when you're powerful. You also commented, "You've really got to prepare for early warfare. So peaceful mid-game stategies don't work all that well." The way I designed this scenario you have to concentrate on 1. building a solid production base of cities and resources. 2. build a diverse army of troops and naval units. Don't neglect bombardment units, they upgrade through all techs.

-On the resources: I've also noticed the AI's poor resource managment... its a problem I hope they fix in civ 4.... "Resource control is VERY important in this mod" , in a word YES.

-on the heavy g.: it may be too powerful. you do need jade to build however.
-on the generic defence unit... this is a good idea... i will include this in the first v3x release.

-I will have to check on the tech required paths. what else can i say about this, oops.

-On the barbarians: buid a force and kill them. Try playing on monarch.

-I am also thinking about chainging the advanced barbarian units to foot units with 1 move. This will speed it up some. You said, "making expansion more expensive" what do you mean by this.

-I am working on a tiny map now You said, "So I would like to see a vs. on a tiny map if you get around to it." what to you mean, 1 on 1? or only 2 alliances or what?

-I am glad you spent som time on it Cabbit. I'm also happy that you found it chalenging. Oh, I think you should focus more on playing for the scenario's victory conditions. Full on war.

What I meant by make expansion more expensive:

This is not something I know about, but looking at the thread for "Rhyse of Civilization" and some other threads I've seen it suggested that loading time for a given turn is directly proportional to the total number of cities on the map. So you can make settlers more expansive and then load times will drop, simply because there will be less cities on the world. There is a plus side to this, actually, It makes a player really THINK about where he sends that settler that cost, say, 100 shields. It means you really have to concentrate on using cities to get resources.

That said, I'm not sure that this really has it's place in Island Conquests, since a lot of the game really has to be about expansion.

So I think the better solution is simply to have a version of conquests on a Tiny Sized Map. (I guess you might have to remove some players to get this to work) You've already said you plan to make such a map, so I'm happy. (by writing "vs." I was just abreviating "version", since I'm lazy)

Personally, I'm going to play this game w/ only pirates as a locked alliance, since I think the game makes more sense this way. (other people can choose differently)

Anyway, this is a great scenario, although I can't offhand explain why, it seems a lot more polished than the IC v II. I hope you get some more player-testers lined up. But personally, I think that if you make sure your civ-pedias complete/accurate you could call this a "full version" instead of a beta.

scratch the playtesting

greenman1234 said:

scratch the playtesting

Click to expand...

whats ur deal, pony up.