Romulus, King of Rome

[DoctorG]

*****PROBLEM REALLY SOLVED*****

I think.

Ok, there were some issues. Techs were added, different options were tried out, and the combinations - it seems - were causing Civ to explode. I think I've got it sussed now - I've just played each player for about an hour without anything bad happening. So download into your public maps folder, clear the cache, and bob's your uncle.

"C:\Documents and Settings\ * your documents * \Application Data\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\cache"

(original post below):

Hi folks,

Here is another scenario in my continuing mission to convert my entire 'Intro to Roman Culture' class into one great big long Civ IV-fest (see 'The Year of the Four Emperors' for my first foray).

In this scenario, we have a map of central Italy, in 753 BC. Romulus, mythical king of Rome, has just founded a city on the banks of the Tiber. Its population: outcasts and criminals. The neighborhood is a bit crowded, since Italy has been populated since the last ice-age. To the north of Rome lie the Etruscan and Faliscan peoples; to the south, other Latins. Various other tribes live in the far hills...

A note on the scenario: To enable as much play on the land as possible, map north is to the left. It was just easier this way. Calendar is in years, and if I did the calculations correctly, it should end roughly 500BC, or at the founding of the Republic. Will Rome survive that long? Only you can decide!

Download this into your public maps folder, it ought to turn up in your scenarios.

A note on my teaching strategy here- this would be my introductory Civ IV scenario in my class. I wouldn't go in for much guided playing (see the lesson plan in 'The Year of the Four Emperors'), but would rather let the students play this one out, to get them used to Civ, etc. At the end of the game, my questions would concern the role of geography in forming connections between peoples, wars, etc, and the tenuous nature of Rome's early survival (many of my students seem to believe that because Rome had an empire, _of course_ it would've beaten all the other early surrounding city states.)

I used the Civ4 Editor to make the map - you should too!

Hope you all enjoy; would love your feedback and comments!

Year of the Four Emperors

My academic research: Agent modeling in Roman Archaeology

[DoctorG]

I'll get some screenshots up in a few days, I promise.


---ack! Noticed that I forgot to give my protohistoric italians any useful/appropriate technologies. They should all have bronze and iron working, at the very least, hunting, fishing, and agriculture. Ok, will do that soon too.
---------> taken care of. More or less appropriate technologies now in the scenario.


---by the way, it occurs to me that this scenario might go very well with The Barbarian Civ mod, which lives at: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=170243

[Starship]

You're a genius. Firaxis should do up some historical applications, and sell it to schools. Can you imagine an on online university? Course hours for interactive online civ? Now that I would pay for. There are only two or three major grades for upper level History courses anyway. Writing a paper on an interactive historical simulation, rather than a book; Brilliant!

Who said History class has to be dull. A History course with civ, I can guarantee, would be full the instant it hit registratation.

Break into your groups, play an era of civ multiplayer, interacting with maps/name/peoples/technology of that age, and discuss/ write synopsis for homework. (Maybe an active lesson teacher in corner of screen lecturing on things you're playing with while playing. Sort of a civilopedia turned textbook, and instead of a pedia it's an interactive teacher by popbox.)

At all levels this could work. For youth applications...Think of an Oregon Trail mod/game for kiddos. If what you're doing is not stirring up the powers that be, they're crazy. That's $.

[DoctorG]

Thanks for the support! I've been thinking much along the same lines myself.

As it happens, all of my teaching is in the distance education department and online. So if anyone is interested, drop me a line and I'll tell you where you can sign up for the course (apologies to the moderators if I'm not allowed to do this?). The scenarios won't be for assessment - yet. I'd have to get that approved by the University. However, there's no reason why I can't use these as ancillary materials for the time being, the experience of which'd inform the writing of the more traditional essays...

Hang, I might even accept a well-crafted scenario, with supporting documentation (ie full citations, explanation for design decisions, historical points to be made), in lieu of an essay....hmmm....

[HÄI]

Yay! Just what kind of mods I love: I much prefer short & funny historical scenarios instead of megalomaniac mod projects

Keep up the good work!

[HÄI]

Auch, I spoke too early - the scenario crashes after first turn playing as Romans

[Pvblivs]

I love such posts

[HÄI]

I posted after great experience with the four emperors mod and getting all horny after seeing this

[Pvblivs]

After all this scenario reads very interesting. But I'll have to wait until someone posts "hey I played it through and it actually works perfect".

Then it's my turn

[DoctorG]

Hi

I'm pretty new to making scenarios, etc, so if it crashed on you, send me some details and I'll see if I can fix whatever the problem is.

[HÄI]

Not much details to tell - started up as Romans, pressed enter -> desktop. Difficulty monarch, speed normal, latest patch.

[DoctorG]

arg! man, but this is annoying. Before my last upload, it was fine on my machine. I tweaked the starting techs, saved, and uploaded. Now, I look and see that the description I'd put in has disappeared, and yes, it crashes after one turn. Why is that? This frustrates the hell out of me. It didn't used to do that. I didn't change anything fundamental - just added bronze working and iron working. Is that so wrong!?!

[Pvblivs]

Your error might be that there are prerequisites for iron and bronze working. Maybe it crashes because it realizes that some techs are missing in the tree?

[DoctorG]

Originally Posted by Pvblivs

Your error might be that there are prerequisites for iron and bronze working. Maybe it crashes because it realizes that some techs are missing in the tree?

That was it, more or less - I'd also added monarchy (because Archaic Rome was a monarchy, natch) but didn't have the prereqs. Thanks for the suggestion!

To anybody who has downloaded this before, to solve the problem download it again and clear the cache. That should do it.

(the cache lives at:

"C:\Documents and Settings\ * your documents * \Application Data\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\cache"

or thereabouts).

[Thehistoryman]

what is your next venture? something in the Republican era perhaps? Maybe something towards the end of the empire, after the split.

[DoctorG]

I really like the early empire. Always have. But I like Etruscans too. I might someday put together an Ottawa Valley 19th century scenario, but that'll just be for amusement of my friends and neighbours!

At the moment, I'm working on a scenario that explores the whole tricky area of 'Romanization'. In archaeological circles, the word conjures up a whole host of problems- did conquered peoples adopt wholesale Roman culture? Did they use aspects of Roman culture to express ideologies of resistance? Some people prefer to use the term 'creolization' to capture what happened to native cultures once Rome turned up. Recently, Ray Laurence at Birmingham University in the UK proposed an alternative idea abour Romanization, as a 'reconfiguration' of local geography, a network geography, shortening the space-economy (ie, better roads make places 'closer' together, thus enabling more contact and interaction) of a region. I like this idea, and I've actually written the odd article starting from that idea.

Anyway, enough of the waffle. I'm building a scenario to explore these ideas with my students, and it will be built around the Roman city of Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) in England (I once excavated there; it's a neat site! go to www.reading.ac.uk/archaeology to find out more about it). The aim of the scenario will be to win a cultural victory. I'll probably put together a lesson plan too, because I will want my students to watch for particular things, relate what's happening in the game with current discussions on acculturation/domination/romanisation in the literature. I will post it once it's done. I have a hell of a time with the worldbuilder...

[Eqqman]

Just some words of encouragement. A different teacher came up with a simulation of Mediaeval Europe for one of his classes, and ended up having it picked up by a publisher and had it released as 'Mediaeval Lords' back in the old DOS days. It was one of my favorite games for the Commodorw 64 and one of the few games I actually just bought instead of pirating. And this was in the days when anybody could be a priate with no effort since 'protection' consisted of asking you what word was on line such-and-such of page such-and-such in the manual.