WIP: Rise of Islam Scenario

After having taken an absolutely wonderful course concerning the early history of Islam, I'm compelled now to make a C3C scenario about it!

I'm still in the very basic stages of development, but basically it would cover the time period from the Hijra to probably the Mongol invasions, so roughly 622 to 1260 (the year of Ayn Jalut), though the end date is definitely negotiable.

The basic premise of the scenario will be to take control of the fledgling Muslim faith in Medina, and, with Mohammad at the helm, take Mecca, and then expand outward and reconstruct the Caliphate.

The map I plan on using is Mongoloid Cow's "England to India" map. With the exception of omitting most of Ethiopia, this map covers the territory in question perfectly.

The single largest problem I expect is recreating the Mongol Invasions, and convincing them not to raise hell before 1241. I guess I could do this with a whole mess of Small Wonders that autoproduce insane amounts of units, I'm not sure how pinktilapia convinced the barbarians to have at you when they do in his famous scenario, but that's my best guess.

Other than that, the only thing I've really thought through concerning specifics is that it will be Regicide. Your king unit will be Mohammad, but he will upgrade to the next Caliph when the time comes, and that Caliph's stats will reflect their foreign policy historically; so the Abassid caliphs will not be as offensively capable as, say, Abu Bakr or Mu'awiya.

All cities will be pre-placed.

I might, and should probably, include the European civilizations, though so much goes on in that area over these six centuries that doing so might be very hard, or very wrong. Either way I fear it will become more of a "6-12th century scenario in which Islam happens to grow" rather than one centered on the expansion of the Dar-al-Islam.

I'm almost certain that the only playable civilization will be The Caliphate.

Okay, so have at me with you suggestions, criticisms, et cetera!

whole mess of Small Wonders that autoproduce insane amounts of units

Click to expand...

Use regular old city improvements instead -- they can autoproduce as well. Makes more sense than having a SW in every city.

I'd love to see the Sassanids or even Parthians as a playable civ

egroen said:

Use regular old city improvements instead -- they can autoproduce as well. Makes more sense than having a SW in every city.

I'd love to see the Sassanids or even Parthians as a playable civ

Click to expand...

Admittedly, I hadn't checked the editor to see if improvements could autoproduce. Though, I might have to use a large number of Great Wonders to keep the AI from razing cities.

One of the big problems I'm having is representing the various divisions within the Dar-al-Islam. Firstly, the Sunni-Shi'ite split; I'd thought about perhaps making Shi'ism a strategic resource, and making several buildings that require it in the city limits, or perhaps simply a wonder or two. The big problem with Shi'ism (or any of the other sects: Kharijism, the Druze, the Nizaris, or even the two main sects of Shi'ism) is that they don't have a definite geographic location. One century they're in the Magrib, the next they're in Egypt, but then the Sunnis take over Egypt and the Seveners go somewhere else.

After that problem is dealt with, I still have to decide whether or not to do anything about the fracturing of the Caliphate after the Abassid Revolution. How should I include the Fatamids? Or the Buyids? Should there be a Turkic invasion that predates the Mongol one?

What bothers me even more is what to do about Europe. I'm positive it will start in 622, but between then and 1260, so much happens politically. I could just neglect them, but I feel that if I give them significant attention, this will become a "622-1260" scenario. Not that that would be a bad thing necessarily, but I want this to focus on Islam specifically.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

The single largest problem I expect is recreating the Mongol Invasions, and convincing them not to raise hell before 1241.

Click to expand...

Give the Mongols an improvement which produces a unit every x turns. This unit is wheeled and doesn't cost maintenance. The city (or cities) of the Mongols are surrounded by terrain which is not accessible to wheeled units.
One day, when the mongols have researched a long line of dummy techs, they get a tech which allows them to build a new unit, which is not wheeled and to which the old unit upgrades to (for 0 money because the new unit will cost the same amount of shields than the old one).
Ta-da-da, the dogs of hell are free and not a moment too soon

Cheezy the Wiz said:

I'd thought about perhaps making Shi'ism a strategic resource, and making several buildings that require it in the city limits, or perhaps simply a wonder or two. The big problem with Shi'ism (or any of the other sects: Kharijism, the Druze, the Nizaris, or even the two main sects of Shi'ism) is that they don't have a definite geographic location. One century they're in the Magrib, the next they're in Egypt, but then the Sunnis take over Egypt and the Seveners go somewhere else.

Click to expand...

A couple ways you could possibly do it. If you're not running out of strategic/luxury resources, you could have multiple version of the Shi'ite resource, placed in different locations, appearing with successively later techs, and resulting in different buildings/wonders/what-have-you.

The other way to give the feel of the Shi'ites moving around would be to give the resource high appearance and disappearance values...I suppose the problem here is that it likely could reappear somewhere in Europe, or in Mongolia, or some such other place (unless I suppose it was limited to a certain terrain only found in the Islamic regions). Or, perhaps the high disappearance could be used by itself in conjunction with a couple versions of the Shi'ite resource that vanish over time...

Cheezy the Wiz said:

The single largest problem I expect is recreating the Mongol Invasions, and convincing them not to raise hell before 1241. I guess I could do this with a whole mess of Small Wonders that autoproduce insane amounts of units, I'm not sure how pinktilapia convinced the barbarians to have at you when they do in his famous scenario, but that's my best guess.

Click to expand...

There's another method you could try which is more precise, though unfortunately some of the "workings" are visible to the player.

You need to have a section of the map that is inaccessible to the rest. For example, if you make Ocean tiles impassible to all ships, you could do this on a stretch of Sea on the other side of some Ocean.

Make a long line of tiles. The line must be one tile wide. If you want the AI civ to remain quiet for 50 turns and then to go ape, the line must be 50 tiles long. It could zig-zag back and forth from one side of the map to the other if necessary. Units on the line must be unable to leave it, so perhaps it could be made of Sea tiles with Ocean on either side, or if on land, it could have impassible Mountains on either side.

At one end, put a Victory Location. On the tile before that, put a unit belonging to the player. This unit must be immobile and invisible and have useless defence.

At the other end, put a unit belonging to the AI. This unit must have 1 move per turn and awesome combat stats.

The AI will move its unit, tile by tile, along the line, in order to get to the VL. When it reaches the player's unit it will attack it by mistake, because of the submarine bug. The AI and the player are now at war.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

I might, and should probably, include the European civilizations, though so much goes on in that area over these six centuries that doing so might be very hard, or very wrong. Either way I fear it will become more of a "6-12th century scenario in which Islam happens to grow" rather than one centered on the expansion of the Dar-al-Islam.

Click to expand...

Don't be afraid to make the Europeans dummy civs. You could even just make them a single civ called "The Franks" and give them dummy techs, carefully timed so that they acquire the right sorts of units at the right sorts of times. Just give them enough complexity from the Arabs' point of view - that is, if you want to have the idea of the Arabs fighting some European civs but not others, then you'll need several European civs after all, but I'd still just give them the basic dummy techs and not worry about anything more complicated. This is what I did with the Arabian civs in my African scenario and it worked pretty well.

Stazro said:

Give the Mongols an improvement which produces a unit every x turns. This unit is wheeled and doesn't cost maintenance. The city (or cities) of the Mongols are surrounded by terrain which is not accessible to wheeled units.
One day, when the mongols have researched a long line of dummy techs, they get a tech which allows them to build a new unit, which is not wheeled and to which the old unit upgrades to (for 0 money because the new unit will cost the same amount of shields than the old one).
Ta-da-da, the dogs of hell are free and not a moment too soon

Click to expand...

This is actually the conclusion I came to while brainstorming at the gym today!

I actually think I'll combine them, though. Have the Turkic tribes "outside" the mountain ring, and have them get their awesome units when they're supposed to, but have them wheeled, too (this also works to stop them at the Zagros instead of going apey in Arabia), and then have the Mongols inside the mountain ring, and when the time is right, upgrade for free to their awesome-er units, and out they come, into the Turkic lands.

Micaelus said:

A couple ways you could possibly do it. If you're not running out of strategic/luxury resources, you could have multiple version of the Shi'ite resource, placed in different locations, appearing with successively later techs, and resulting in different buildings/wonders/what-have-you.

Click to expand...

That's a good idea!

The other way to give the feel of the Shi'ites moving around would be to give the resource high appearance and disappearance values...I suppose the problem here is that it likely could reappear somewhere in Europe, or in Mongolia, or some such other place (unless I suppose it was limited to a certain terrain only found in the Islamic regions). Or, perhaps the high disappearance could be used by itself in conjunction with a couple versions of the Shi'ite resource that vanish over time...

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's kinda iffy. I may just go with the first one.

Plotinus said:

There's another method you could try which is more precise, though unfortunately some of the "workings" are visible to the player.

You need to have a section of the map that is inaccessible to the rest. For example, if you make Ocean tiles impassible to all ships, you could do this on a stretch of Sea on the other side of some Ocean.

Make a long line of tiles. The line must be one tile wide. If you want the AI civ to remain quiet for 50 turns and then to go ape, the line must be 50 tiles long. It could zig-zag back and forth from one side of the map to the other if necessary. Units on the line must be unable to leave it, so perhaps it could be made of Sea tiles with Ocean on either side, or if on land, it could have impassible Mountains on either side.

At one end, put a Victory Location. On the tile before that, put a unit belonging to the player. This unit must be immobile and invisible and have useless defence.

At the other end, put a unit belonging to the AI. This unit must have 1 move per turn and awesome combat stats.

The AI will move its unit, tile by tile, along the line, in order to get to the VL. When it reaches the player's unit it will attack it by mistake, because of the submarine bug. The AI and the player are now at war.

Click to expand...

Hmm, I might be able to do this, too. My problem, though, is that, because of the weird shape of the map, I don't have endless steppe area to set this sort of thing up in. And I would have to be delaying them several hundred turns, as the Mongol invasions come at the end of the scenario; indeed, the date for the end right now, 1260, is the absolute apex of Mongol expansion.

Don't be afraid to make the Europeans dummy civs. You could even just make them a single civ called "The Franks" and give them dummy techs, carefully timed so that they acquire the right sorts of units at the right sorts of times. Just give them enough complexity from the Arabs' point of view - that is, if you want to have the idea of the Arabs fighting some European civs but not others, then you'll need several European civs after all, but I'd still just give them the basic dummy techs and not worry about anything more complicated. This is what I did with the Arabian civs in my African scenario and it worked pretty well.

Click to expand...

I don't think I'm going to make Europe terribly complicated, after having thought about it for a while. However, once the Crusades come about, they will get some AWESOME crusaders. Making Europe into "The Franks" might be the way to do it to keep them from going at each other with Hospitalers instead of me. I will have a few other European civs, though; probably England as it's own civ, Galicia and Asturias, though I could group them into a just plain "Spanish" civ if need be.

So far, here are the civs I will have, as of right now.

The Caliphate (you)
The Meccans
The Roman Empire (it wasn't called the Byzantine until the 17th Cen.)
Sassanian Empire
Turkmen
Mongols
The Franks (France, Germany, the Italian Duchies)
Hispania? (Asturias + Galicia?)
England
maybe the Vikings to stir up trouble
The Beoduin Tribes

The rest of the world can be left blank as far as I care. I may throw some barbarians out there, just for fun.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

After having taken an absolutely wonderful course concerning the early history of Islam, I'm compelled now to make a C3C scenario about it!

The basic premise of the scenario will be to take control of the fledgling Muslim faith in Medina, and, with Mohammad at the helm,

Click to expand...

What are you going to use as the Leaderhead. I guess you know after taking the course that publishing pictures of Mohammad is forbidden and you would offend Muslims by doing so.

Are you planning on using flags or some other symbol.

Goldfool said:

What are you going to use as the Leaderhead. I guess you know after taking the course that publishing pictures of Mohammad is forbidden and you would offend Muslims by doing so.

Are you planning on using flags or some other symbol.

Click to expand...

I'm quite inept at modifying those aspects of the game, so I think I'll just stick with the default Abu Bakr. Mohammad will upgrade to Abu Bakr anyway in-game.

I guess you know after taking the course that publishing pictures of Mohammad is forbidden and you would offend Muslims by doing so.

Click to expand...

Many of those same muslims (you are talking about pretty conservative muslims here) would view any image of an animal or person as forbidden. Hence, they would obviously not be playing this.

I would not worry about this.

Vikings? Surely there's no reason to have a map reaching that far north?

Are you intending to in any way simulate the political fragmentation of the Abbasid caliphate? Great empires falling apart is something CivIII does not handle well, yet having a unified caliphate stretching from Morocco to India when the Mongols come around would be odd to say the least.

The Last Conformist said:

Vikings? Surely there's no reason to have a map reaching that far north?

Click to expand...

It was just a simple brainstorm. The map includes the southern tip of Scandanavia; considering I start at 622, it definitely includes the time they were active. Now, however, I'm leaning more towards simpifying Europe, rather than expanding it, so I will, more likely than not, exclude them from the scenario.

As for the map, it's because it does a diagonal "cut," if you will, from the Indus River to Scotland. That's how some of the northern lands are included. But don't worry, I have no intention nor felt compulsion to fill those empty lands. I may use them for staging one of the steppe peoples' invasions, though, ala Plotinus style.

Are you intending to in any way simulate the political fragmentation of the Abbasid caliphate? Great empires falling apart is something CivIII does not handle well, yet having a unified caliphate stretching from Morocco to India when the Mongols come around would be odd to say the least.

Click to expand...

This is going to be THE hardest thing to deal with. I quite simply don't know how to do it without engineering several massive "invasions" (Fatamids, Buyids, Qarmathians, Almoravids, Almohads), though I think I will have a minor Buyid uprisal; it won't be anywhere near the scale of the Eastern invasions, but it will be quite the problem for you.

I think, though, when it comes to the continuity of the Caliphate during the late Abassid era, I will have to take some artistic license. Certainly, other civilizations are going to get the opportunity to push back; I have every intent of instigating the Crusades and Reconquista. But I think that I will have to leave the Abassid Empire's unity to the responsibility of the player, simply because of the game engine.

Though, since we ARE just brainstorming, now, there's definitely space in the Sahara to set up a large Berber invasion to happen around 900 or so.

Your idea sounds great, but to be honest I think you'll find it extremly hard to get all these invasions working properly. I tried something similar with my Persia scenario, but it never worked out the way I wanted it.

A quick 622-750 scenario would be just as cool, if it was functioning well, in my opinion. You should ofcause do whatever you find most interesting though.

Fanastic idea!!

I think the mod "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" could help you to provide a few ideas to create invasions or changes in strengths of civs.

awaiting eagerly

not an editor so i dont know if this can be done, but:
about the mongols, why not make them a barbarian horde, place their location in a remote enough spot so they are insured of uprising. time it so they appear at the allotted time. you can time the appearance of the uprisings, no?

ofcourse, that will make them a non civ, but they sure will wreck havoc with everything...
and they wont be razing cities either...

if you make them: 4 move, blitz cavalry, with an awesome attack value - that will not kill your empire, but it sure as hell will damage it.

maybe you can make them lower your victory points?
and set a VP win condition?
that way you must fight them and win...

Lakimid Arabs and Gepids would be cool. Also create Berbers in North Africa.

Spain can be the Visigoths since that is who the Arabs Conquered.

Generic Franks would work very well since Charles Martel stops the Arabs in France and then Charlemagne unites Europe and reinvades Spain.

Leave England barren and maybe put a weak Frank City named London and that is it.

Italians are really the only European Civ (other then Byzantium and Vikings) that should be seperate since they caused problems later to Byzantium and Arabs colonizing.

How are you going to do Arab Civil Wars and other Arab Civilizations? In a way I think you should cut this scenario at 800 and start a whole new scenario after that. My Mongol Scenario is good for that time period. I intentionally did many nations even in Europe and Middle East for Mongol Scenario so it could be more then just Mongols (also split China into 3-4 Empires which was historical for time, there was not a single China at time of Mongol invasion).

Gepids were not really a very influent civilization, they disappeared just as they appeared, in pretty much all places they went to. I don't know if they should be in. Just my opinion.