The Year of the Four Emperors

NEW UPDATE

Hi Folks,

Carloquillo has made some brilliant additions to this scenario!

He has worked out which Roman unit was where in the year AD 68/69, and so has placed them where they belong.
He has also corrected my *hurried* geography (I was in a rush, initially, because I had to get the scenario done in time for the conference!).

In general, he has improved the scenario's historical accuracy enormously. Remaing bugs and hiccoughs are of course my own fault. Thank you Carloquillo!

.... in the zip are all the things you need. Create a folder in your mods folder, call it 'The Year of the Four Emperors', put the config and the assets folder in that. Put the worldbuilder save in the publicmaps folder (or your worldbuilder saves; think that works too). Anyway, you should be able to start the game, load the scenario (which'll then load the mod) and you're good to go. If you get started and notice that the unit names haven't loaded up.... I don't know why that happens. But there is also a saved game in the zip, 'TYFE_DEF' that you can start up, and it will have the right names.

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(updated June 18)

Hi Folks,

I'm posting here for your consideration/enjoyment/laughter a scenario I've been trying to build. I'm fairly new to the whole thing, and have been battling with the world-builder, but I've got something that I think does the trick... I'd be interested to see what you think, and I'd be glad if somebody could make this tick over much better...

I teach intro to Roman civilization at a university in Canada. I want to use this scenario to get my students into the whole dynamics of running an empire, and the political/military side of things (I've got a lesson plan to go with it). I've chosen to model AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors - after the assassination of Nero in AD 68, four aristocrats (Otho, Galba, Vitellius, and Vespasian) in different parts of the empire were acclaimed by their troops, or bought others' support, to claim the throne. The resulting civil war was pretty nasty. So in the scenario, I've got the empire - based on the Ancient Mediterranean Mod map - divided up more or less realistically according to areas of support for the four contenders. Parthia is a threat, off to the east, and various 'barbarian' tribes loiter around the edges.

I needed a 'senate' to pass judgement on the various contenders, etc, much like how the UN wonder works in the later stages of the game - which is why you'll find the UN sitting there in Rome. Could this be morphed into a Senatus Populusque Romanus (senate and people of rome?) I don't know how to do that... I've got to fix the civics to more accurately model the Roman state in AD 68, and get everyone to have the same thing (should be slavery, bureaucracy, perhaps a police state, paganism...)

Anyway, the winner is whoever can destroy the other contenders, or form some sort of stable alliance/cultural win.

Thanks everyone!

Postscript:
I've done the slight mod that Oskar recommended, and now we've got the Senate (or rather, the United Nations masquerading as the Senate!).

Lesson plan added too. nb - this is for playing the scenario as part of a class. An even better class project - if the Dean would let me - is to create a mod from scratch, documenting the decisions made as to what to include/exclude in the civopedia, all sources, etc... I might start that as a new thread, come to think of it. Archaic Rome and the Conquest of Italy.... hmmm...

My academic research: Agent based modeling in Roman archaeology

Things fixed:

-multiplayer - should work

-UN resolutions - now more or less things that the SPQR would've been interested in...

-the map of nearer / further spain as per suggestions of Carloquillo (see below)

-add appropriate auxiliary units (archers, slingers, cavalry, etc) in appropriate places. There are maps existing indicating which legions (and their auxiliaries) were stationed where when, but I didn't have access to the library when I started pounding this out. [by Carloquillo, September update. Thanks again Carloquillo!]


Things still wonky:

Can't figure out why the scoring doesn't seem to work...

Desiderata:

-religions: Imperial Cult in all major cities, Mithraism which spreads following the movements of troops, christianity in rome, carthage, ephesus, other early christian centres

-make it so that the AI doesn't change religions - can't have Vespasian converting to Judaism...

-fix the UN graphic so it looks a bit more roman like

-allow galleys to cross the mediterranean, instead of hugging the shore - at least for major routes like Rome - Alexandria (change the graphic too so these things look roman - ramming prows rather than those viking things)


-ramp up the tendency of cities to switch allegiances (a frequent occurance during many roman civil wars, as the local worthies tried to get the best deal for their own city by backing -they hoped- the winner)


(I had 217 views of the zip file before I uploaded this update. I mention this only for my own sense of self-worth!)
(322 before second update).

looks good, I am DLing, but you cna never have too many screenshots you know

DoctorG, I'm happy to be able to help you with your novel educational project

You can set the civics for the civs by editing the worldbuildersave file itself. It sounds like you've only been using the worldbuilder so far; it's useful enough to place cities, improvements and units on the map but many other things are better done by editing the .WBS file directly with notepad.

So, find the .WBS file for your scenario - most likely it's in Civ4Saves/WorldbuilderSaves (I may have the directory names slightly wrong, I don't have Civ installed on the computer I'm using).

Now, open it with Notepad. The file starts by defining some basic parameters such as the start year, the "calendar" (how fast the game progresses; probably you will want CALENDAR_MONTHS or CALENDAR_WEEKS). After the teams are defined ('BeginTeam' - 'EndTeam' x number of teams), there is a section for the 'players' (the civs), each starting with 'BeginPlayer' and ending with 'EndPlayer'. There you can change the civic options for each of them by replacing keywords like, say, CIVIC_BARBARISM with CIVIC_BUREAUCRACY. Just be really careful not to misspell anything because for the computer, CIVIC_BURAEOCRACY might as well be CIVIC_ASDFOZXC.

You would like to change the name of 'United Nations' to 'Senatus Populusque Romanus', understandably. To do that you will have to make a mod for your scenario. That's no big deal really, except you have to load the mod every time before loading the scenario to make everything work.

To make the mod, just go to the Mods directory and create a new folder with your scenario's name, I'll make it 'FourEmperors' for this example. Now go to Mods\FourEmperors and make a folder named 'Assets', then in Assets add 'XML', then in XML add 'Text'.
Now, go back the Civ4 root directory and from there to Assets\XML\Text. Copy the file Civ4GameTextInfos_Objects.xml and paste it into Mods\FourEmperors\Assets\XML\Text.
Once the file is there, edit it with Notepad (or an XML editor if you have one). Search for the TXT_KEY_BUILDING_UNITED_NATIONS tag. In the line below it, where it should say "<English>United Nations</English>", just change the text to 'Senatus Populusque Romanus'.
If you completed all of this, now just start the game, load your mod and then load your scenario. Check the wonders in the Civilopedia... did the name change?

One final comment... I suggest you make all non-Roman players into minor nations, so that they won't be diplomatically active and therefore won't participate in the "UN elections". This is done in the WBS file by setting "MinorNationStatus=1" if I recall correctly.

HR_Oskar

Thanks! I've been trying to suss the way the mods folders worked... I'll try what you suggest. I'm presenting this scenario at a conference next week, so if I can swap 'SPQR' for 'United Nations', that'd make these academics a little less skeptical...!

I've also posted a screenshot to the original message, above.

if there are other things you are interested in modding for this scen (to impress those other stuffy academics) just post it and I will see what I can do to help you.
Great work with this scenario by the way,
Cheers,
Near Eastern History and Civilization student at the U of C

Thanks! When I present this, I imagine that there will be many who dismiss this as mere 'game playing' - but when was the last time an academic book sold as many copies as Civ?

I'm having a devil of a time trying to get the 'dawn of man' screen to read some of my background info on the events of AD 69; I've found the relevant tag in the relevant file, swapped my info.... yet all the same, it doesn't seem to find it. Which is doubly annoying since I once managed it, but had the wrong title - which, when I tried to change it, I managed to nuke everything.

Anyway, I've managed to mod things sufficiently so that 'United Nations' now comes up as 'Senatus Populusque Romanus', files are uploaded to the original post. I wonder how I can get 'research' to stop during this scenario? No great technological improvements took place during the year in question, so no need for hammers into research. Culture, well that's another matter...

Great idea!

I wish my professors would give me assignments that involved playing Civ IV. I'll have to give this one a shot and give you some feedback.

Yep, I second. Great idea.....I also wish my professors would've given me assignments for Civ 4. The best thing we ever did was a game of Diplomacy between the History and Poly Sci departments...It really could be a great educational tool for all areas of history, and in particular military history. Again, great idea.

DrG.
" I wonder how I can get 'research' to stop during this scenario? "
you can go into the Civ4techinfo.xml file in xml/technologies and adjust the cost of everything to be prohibitively high(i.e. more than possible in # of turns provided). There's probably another way, but that's the easiest I can think of.

Why do you want to disable research? Why not just customize the tech tree for the time period of the scenario? Technologies could allow new improvements to architecture, culture, military units, etc. that are indicitive of the period.

Well, I'm open to suggestions! My initial thought was that, since my *educational* aims are narrowly targeted at getting my students to see -however dimly- the enormous achievement of Vespasian in pacifying the empire, the continual 'What do you want to research now?' pop-up would get in the way. But in terms of game play, research is integral. And maybe the contrast between the game where research is a major part, and the Roman psyche where technological innovation did not really occur (overly much) might be instructive too... By the way, Vespasian once dismissed an engineer who'd come up with a new lifting device, saying 'how will I then feed the mob?' which some argue shows that the Romans had something approaching an employment policy (inefficient methods = mass employment = pacified population).

If anybody is in Toronto next week, go to the Canadian Classical Association Conference, and I'll be talking about all this. Thanks to everyone so far for their comments, you can be sure I'll be talking about this discussion we're having, and giving credit to all you guys!

DoctorG.

If you permit me some suggestions about the geographical aspect of the Empire. I would comment that the locating of cities in Hispania are a little displaced.

In these two images you can see my opinion. In the first one I have placed the cities that you propose in a more approximate situation. In the second I offer you, also so approximately as permits the civ-map, the location of important cities of the Roman Hispania (AD 68). The ones that appear in capital letters are the capitals of the "conventus iuridicus", the other are interesting cities. (number 1: Hispalis, number 2: Astigi).





It is interesting also to comment that the city Legio does not take this name (and its importance) to the final stationing of the Legio VII Gemina (constituted by Galba in the AD 68). This stationing does not happen to the AD 74. Also I would say that Numantia was, in that time, a city without too much importance.

Another interesting aspect with relation to Hispania in your scenary, is that you assign Gades to Otho and Emerita to Galba. Perhaps this should be upside down, Gades belonged to the Province Baetica and Emerita was the capital of the Lusitania.

A last comment, about the cities of East. Dura, Babylon and Petra did not belong to the Empire in the year 68. Although I think that perhaps this be necessary to balance the power of the players.

In any case, these comments perhaps do not have a lot of importance because this is a great scenary and I think to play it as quick as be able.

Post edited by unnecessary

Hi i like what you are working on and will try it asap
Guys if if you can mod please help the professor
Though my assitance will surely be limited to
feable knowledge in programming i will try to contribute
as much as i can
Although it may be too late for that sometimes allready built
mods help alot though its never a custom package
i was thinking about the
ancient mediterranean mod
but ill help as much as i can when i stop what i am currently doing

Hi!

Responding to carloquillo... My bad. There are indeed one or two screwups in my placing of Spanish geography... I was working from what I had readily to hand, which was a general map of Roman geography for the first two centuries AD. As you guess, I was trying to go for a more or less balanced distribution of cities throughout the empire. When I get a moment, I'm going to try to correct the spanish geography.

What I am finding very interesting about this whole process, is trying to balance playability against historical accuracy. I figure a few inaccuracies are permissible, in view of the larger aim of giving my students the flavour of trying to end a Roman civil war - but I'd be interested to know what everybody thinks. Is this a playable, enjoyable scenario, neverminding my teaching aims? Or do goofups such as I have made undermine the exercise? In the lesson plan for all of this, I direct students' attention to trying to spot the inaccuracies, and assess their role in the outcome of the game...

Hi DoctorG!

Without doubt, my bad use of the English does not permit me to express correctly. I'm sorry. At no time I have wanted to deface your work. Do neither you think that I am a chauvinist that be altered because some locating of Hispania are slightly moved.

I know the great diversity of materials that is necessary to handle to create a scenario or a map for the CIV. And also I know the fact that those materials are contradictory too many times. Therefore I simply wanted to indicate you those inaccuracies. Without intention to do a criticism, but because I thought they could be useful and with the desire to help.

I agree fully with you, I also find very interesting to balance the historic accuracy with the playability (Something absolutely necessary in a Civ-scenario) and I think that the inaccuracies only are not permissible but also they are inevitable.

In my opinion your scenario is playable and enjoyable and, as already I have said, I am going to play it as quick as I be able.


P. S. : Sadly I do not understand the word goofups and I do not I see it in my dictionary. But if it signifies what I imagine.. I do not think that your have done any goofups in your work.

Hi Carloquillo,

No offence was ever taken! I don't speak any spanish, but I do speak Italian, and I know how difficult it can be to capture the nuance of another language. I am glad that you took the time to suggest improvements to the scenario; I apologise if I seemed abrupt in my prior posting. "goof-up" - to make a mistake.

On another note, I have been having an interesting discussion with some other people about the role of religion in the game, and how it might be affecting the scenario (there might be implications for the UN/SPQR part of the game, too...). I played the other day as Otho, and was interested to see Vespasian convert to Judaism. Vespasian should be turning in his grave over that: he and his sons destroyed the Temple, and carried the treasures to Rome to pay for the construction of the Collisseum! So perhaps the tendency of the AI to convert religions should be tuned down a bit. Also, an interesting mod might be to throw in some other 'mystery' religions - Isis, Mithras (which ought to spread following troop movements)... just a thought for anybody out there with more skill in this than I!

Carloquillo said:

Hi DoctorG!

Without doubt, my bad use of the English does not permit me to express correctly. I'm sorry. At no time I have wanted to deface your work. Do neither you think that I am a chauvinist that be altered because some locating of Hispania are slightly moved.

I know the great diversity of materials that is necessary to handle to create a scenario or a map for the CIV. And also I know the fact that those materials are contradictory too many times. Therefore I simply wanted to indicate you those inaccuracies. Without intention to do a criticism, but because I thought they could be useful and with the desire to help.

I agree fully with you, I also find very interesting to balance the historic accuracy with the playability (Something absolutely necessary in a Civ-scenario) and I think that the inaccuracies only are not permissible but also they are inevitable.

In my opinion your scenario is playable and enjoyable and, as already I have said, I am going to play it as quick as I be able.


P. S. : Sadly I do not understand the word goofups and I do not I see it in my dictionary. But if it signifies what I imagine.. I do not think that your have done any goofups in your work.

Click to expand...

Hi DoctorG!

I am happy that you have not taken my words as somewhat rude. I was a little worried about that.

Anch'io parlo un po' italiano, forse sarebbe meglio tentare di capirci in questo idioma. B&#232;... &#200; uno scherzo.

It's funny to be imagined Vespasian reading the Torah in a synagogue.

To avoid the problems of the AI with the religions, you would be able to predefine, since the start of the game, the religious options for each player and each city. The AI does not be accustomed to make changes, except if with it obtains some advantage.

So I presented 'The Year of the Four Emperors' at the conference yesterday. Generally, a very good reception. So perhaps a few more academics will lurk around here now...

As a history enthusiast and person interested in innovative educational methods, I commend you on your effort, DoctorG Hope the students liked it!