Scenario: 1500AD on GEM

1500AD - The age of exploration and the rise of Mughal
This is the thread to discuss and update anything related to the 1500AD on GEM scenario development.

Current release (Version 2.5)- Released: 17 Sep 2008
1) Holy Roman Empire is strengthened. Vienna (now capital of HRE) and Cologne are added.
2) Hungary is weakened. Zagreb is removed.
3) Naples is added (owned by Spain); Toulouse is added (owned by France).
4) Ottoman is strengthened.
5) Macau is added (owned by Ming); Goa is added (owned by Bahmanid).

Previous release (Version 2.2) - Released: 25 Jul 2008
Units with promotions now starts at their appropriate level.

Previous release (Version 1.2) - Released: 25 Jun 2008
Changes include:
1) Most cities have their sizes reduced to made it consistent with the city size standard used in the 1940AD scenario.
2) Mongols, Manchu are stronger than before as their knights (strength 10) are replaced by Keshiks (strength 12).
3) Tonga starts with 2 settlers allowing her to immigrant to Australia or New Zealand sooner.

Previous release (Version 1.1) - Released: 14 Feb 2008
Changed handicap setting for game balance. Changed the invasion army of Ottoman, Mughal and Japan to offensive units such that AI knows how to use them to invade the lands according to history. Added a great engineer to Spain, Portugal, England and France allowing human playing to build a second capital in the new world. Updated the map to v4.2 of GEM.


Description
The world at 1500AD is a time full of actions. While Spain and Portugal are colonizing, Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal are also expanding rapidly. Can any of these nations challenges Ming China's position as the greatest empire on Earth?

This is the first scenario released developed on the Giant Earth Map (GEM). Attached is an excel file that I've used to calculate the city sizes. (It was intended to calculate the military sizes as well but due to lack of references, it is left blank at the moment).

The playable nations are:




Instruction
This scenario comes with GEM mod. Only available in BTS version.

Screenshots group 1:

England, France, Spain, Central Europe and Southern Europe

Screenshots group 2:

Persia, Russia, Central Asia, North India and South India.

Screenshots group 3

Mongol, North east China, Japan/Korea, South east Asia and Tonga.

Screen shots group 4:

Mesoamerica, Inca, South Africa, West Africa and Egypt

Hello Genghis Kai,

the past days I haven been playing this scenario (1.1 version, of course) for a couple of hours each day, and will arrive at 1900 AD this evening.

If you're interested, I could write some feedback and suggestions for you, although I am not sure if it's all good to be put in the scenario thread, since some of it seems map related.

I've only tried a single nation (Holy Roman Empire, noble difficulty) yet, what I can say about the development of civs in the regions where I did not interfere too much is that the ming chinese became the eastern superpower rather quickly, although they did not manage to control a much larger area than the modern day borders of the PRoC.

I have to admit that I disallowed tech trading, which usually makes it easier (from my experience) for larger civs to dominate their neighbours.

Best Regards,
Ace of Spades

Surely it would be good to hear your feedback.

But the scenario is already changed in version 5.0. So may be no need to spend time commenting on something thats already changed.

I am thrilled for the next version

Some feedback on how the 1500 AD scenario played out for me:

Settings: Holy Roman Empire, noble, no tech trading.

The HRE seems moderately advanced (for a european civ) in the beginning. I focused on cultural and military expansion early on, setting the culture slider to 50% and commerce to 50%, producing barracks and mostly trebuchets, combined with the occasional landsknecht (first time I ever really got to use these) in all of my cities.

After having a quick look at my neighbours, I decided Venice and Rome would be my first strategic targets, securing both the christian holy city and the mining corporation promised a financial advandtage. Neither city was heavily defended, and after some minor squabbles with Hungary (razed Zurich, Zagreb and conquered Prague) I was able to secured both these financial centers, netting me about 300 gold per turn and allowing me to redirect my funding to science (70%) and culture (30%). Units used were mainly my starting musketmen and loads of trebuchets. By 1576 Rome was flying the HRE flag.

My colonial attempts were directed at the American east coast, basically covering the entire coast with four cities and no overlap. However, they never went much further (conquered two barbarian cities and that's it) and the American colonies never played any larger role in the further game, although they managed to grow quite large (about 18 to 20 in 1890 A).

I went for a continental imperialistic strategy, finishing off Hungary in 1612 and invading France after they declared war on me while I was building up my military to invade Poland. I captured Paris in 1696, razed Calais and Dijon and conquered Bordeaux and Montpellier. At this point, I was beginning to catch up technologically and among the top 5 in score. Having defeated the second most powerful European continental power, I concentrated on conquest in the east, invading Poland and Russia (of which I only took Moscow and Novgorod) until 1800 AD. At this point, I was already using cannons and musketmen, and the Ottomans vassalized to me whil I was campaigning in eastern Europe, second in score only to the Ming.

From then on, some smaller military actions consisted of conquering continental spain and portugal, clearing the remains of the papal states and venice from the mediterranean, conquering scandinavia and finally invading Morocco and Arabia in the second half of the 19th century, being first in score since about 1820 AD.

In 1889 AD, continental Europe and the norther coast of the Mediterranean are controlled by the Holy Roman Empire, which also holds Jerusalem and is marching their riflemen and cannon on Mecca this very moment to complete its collection of western religion holy cities (which are financial powerhouses in this mod). The Black Sea region is controlled by its vassal, the Ottomans. Africa is divided between many smaller colonies from varios civilizations, without great empires of territorial integrities to be seen.

Eastern Asia is dominated by the Ming with their two minor vassals, which are opposed by the Mughal and their five vassals. They seem to have reached a stalemate in India, trading cities back and forth. Australia is colonized mainly by the Japanese and Indian civs.

The Incan empire dominates south America, with the exception of some English colonies on the eastern coast. Meso- and Northern America are spanish territory, controlled by Isabella (third in score) and Monztezuma (her Vassal) apart from the smaller HRE colonies in the east.

So much for a brief recount of events. Some more specialized feedback: Armies take a really long time to move and to react, making it difficult to reinforce the frontlines, especially in colonial war scenarios. Even ships do not seem to help this situation, since their movement speed (galleons move four squares) proves to be very low for this large a map - I've seen your changes for v5.0, however, I think even faster ships would make the game more fun to play, allowing you to put more focus on building colonial empires and making naval supremacy a goal worth pursuing.

I am slightly disappointed in the regional superpowers' inability to grow to really menacing empires, even with the vassal system - however, this seems to be a problem with civ4 itself, with the AI lacking punch in military conflicts and distributing their forces ineffciently. I'd really have loved to see the Ming empire conquer some of its smaller neighbours and maybe expand up to Australia and Persia once it got the upper hand in Asia.

I do not think I am going to finish the game, I planned on going for a domination victory, but I will rather wait for your v5.0 I guess - been playing 18 hours on this version, and had a crash lately loading a savegame which annihilated another half.

To close this up, thank you for the great map, I had loads of fun with it, and I'm looking forward to seeing its next version

Best Regards,
Ace of Spades

To: Ace of Spades

Thanks for your feedback. You know, it sometimes sounds more fun to hear how other people played their game than I actually playing it

In regards to the change in movements, the problem of having ships even faster is that it would make 'surprise' attack to the AI too easy. Since I am not intended to change AI behaviours, I should not make mod changes that would affect the AI, too much.

I recently started a game on the new version of this scenario, with the goal of exploiting the new merchant specialist mechanics. Therefore, England was chosen as civilization, since they have a philosophical leader and their situation on the island suits well with the expected playing style (pacifist colonization/expansion). Most importantly, they are one of the few civs to start with Constitution, allowing the Representation civic right on.

In short, specialist economy proves to be very effective with the new settings. The key to economic domination is food, since every single food surplus nets you 6 commerce (3 coins and 3 beakers) instead of only three. Furthermore, great merchants are now easily the most powerful superspecialists, a single great merchant nets you 9+6+6+6 = 27 commerce in the long run, provided that your health level is sufficient and the excess food is used to hire new merchants. Now compare that to settling a great scientist, which will only net you a third of the commerce, and you can see that if you want to settle any great people, there can really be no discussion as to which ones to choose.

Apart from managing England and Ireland, I started settling Northern America, which by now (1670) is dominated by my cities. However, this has crippled my economy so severely that I have to run at 0% science, 10% culture and 90% gold (while still having 150 beakers due to my 50 specialists) to pay for the massive maintenance. I could liberate these colonies to form the USA of course, however I am pretty sure they would break away from me sooner or later then, so I am planning on moving my capital to America ASAP, which I will probably manage to do in the early 1700s. This should cut my colony expenses and allow me to become the most productive civilization in the long run.

We'll see how this turns out...

There's one little thign I noted, some of the civ adjectives ("...was conquered by the Venice/Spainese..." seem awkward to me. Is this intentional, due to these being in use at the time the scenario plays at?

Best Regards,
Ace

Ace of Spades said:

In short, specialist economy proves to be very effective with the new settings. The key to economic domination is food, since every single food surplus nets you 6 commerce (3 coins and 3 beakers) instead of only three. Furthermore, great merchants are now easily the most powerful superspecialists, a single great merchant nets you 9+6+6+6 = 27 commerce in the long run, provided that your health level is sufficient and the excess food is used to hire new merchants. Now compare that to settling a great scientist, which will only net you a third of the commerce, and you can see that if you want to settle any great people, there can really be no discussion as to which ones to choose.

Click to expand...

I don't understand how food surplus nets 6 commerce and then a single merchant nets 27 commerce. Can you explain further? (I am not a good player in Civ )

Ace of Spades said:

There's one little thign I noted, some of the civ adjectives ("...was conquered by the Venice/Spainese..." seem awkward to me. Is this intentional, due to these being in use at the time the scenario plays at?
Ace

Click to expand...

I don't get it as well.

Genghis_Kai said:

I don't understand how food surplus nets 6 commerce and then a single merchant nets 27 commerce. Can you explain further? (I am not a good player in Civ )

Click to expand...

Okay, I will try to explain further.

First, I assume that you are running Representation (+3 beakers per specialist), which is easily the best form of government under specialist-heavy economies.

Second, I assume that you have a city with its growth limited by food rather than health. In fact, since cities are spaced quite closely together in this scenario, it's not unusual to have a city with a health limit of 20, but producing only 24 food with all tiles being worked (the others are claimed by neighbouring cities), limiting its population to 12.

Now, add a great merchant super specialist. the great merchant adds:

(f = food b= beakers g=gold)

3f 6g 3b

Now the city has 3 more food, producing 27 food/turn and starting to grow. Once it has grown to size 13, you get another citizen. Since there are no further tiles to be worked, the citizen will be assigned to be a merchant, adding another:

1f 3g 3b

This leaves our city at producing 28 food/turn, and still growing. You can repeat this two more times, until the city 30 food/turn at size 15 and stops to grow. Now the total sum of what you gained from adding the great merchant to the city amounts to once thze output of the great merchant superspecialist plus thrice the output of a merchant specialist.

Therefore, you have gained:

a) 3 population points (due to having gained 6 food/turn)
b) 15 gold/turn (1 x 6 + 3 x 3 gold)
c) 12 beakers/turn (4 x 3 beakers from Representation)
d) 11 great people points (1 x 2 + 3 x 3 gp points)

Now, if you compare that with what you get from other super specialists, you have gained a huge advantage. For example, one great scientist - under the same conditions - yields:

0 gold/turn
1 shield/turn
9 beakers/turn
2 gp points/turn

I don't get it as well.

Click to expand...

I just thought that it sometimes says "the Spainese" where it should say "the Spanish" or something like that, so maybe some of the civ descriptions are not entirely correct. I can have a look at the XML file later, and maybe point you to some entries that sounded strange to me.

Anyway, my English game is progressing smoothly, using a peaceful colonization strategy. I will probably finish it next week. The AI seems to put up more of a challenge compared to the last version from what I can tell now, however they still seem rather tame in some respects (as ming china not abusing their enormous starting potential for example).

Having a great time with your mod though nontheless, so thanks again for your efforts

Regards,
Ace

Ace of Spades said:

Okay, I will try to explain further.

Therefore, you have gained:

a) 3 population points (due to having gained 6 food/turn)
b) 15 gold/turn (1 x 6 + 3 x 3 gold)
c) 12 beakers/turn (4 x 3 beakers from Representation)
d) 11 great people points (1 x 2 + 3 x 3 gp points)

Click to expand...

I see. I didn't think beyond the instant result, thats why I didn't understand. Thanks for the explanation.

Ace of Spades said:

I just thought that it sometimes says "the Spainese" where it should say "the Spanish" or something like that, so maybe some of the civ descriptions are not entirely correct. I can have a look at the XML file later, and maybe point you to some entries that sounded strange to me.

Click to expand...

Oh Ok. You meant the spelling. I will check that.

Ace of Spades said:

Anyway, my English game is progressing smoothly, using a peaceful colonization strategy. I will probably finish it next week. The AI seems to put up more of a challenge compared to the last version from what I can tell now, however they still seem rather tame in some respects (as ming china not abusing their enormous starting potential for example).

Having a great time with your mod though nontheless, so thanks again for your efforts

Regards,
Ace

Click to expand...

I suppose Ming is not as strong as the previous version?

I suppose Ming is not as strong as the previous version?

Click to expand...

Yes, but he's still first in score in 1815 AD of course - the others cannot really catch up to him.

However, he did not vassalize the Jurchen, as he used to in my two games with the old version.

Isabella seems to be the big bully right now, she's third in score (with me being a very peacful second, only the French declared on me twice due to the -50 modifier) and already vassalized four minor nations, it seems she even peaked at six but they tend to break away from her.

One very funny event was when the Apostolic Palace declared war upon Ismail, who was utterly devastated as about 20 civs declared war on him, most of his core cities going to Arabia. Did you tweak anything about the Palace? I also noticed it is located in Worms now, probably to represent the fact that the Holy Roman Emperor claims to be the highest-ranking political leader of the christian nations.

One civ that seems to do remarkably well (especially compared to the real world) is the papal states, they assimilated venice due to the huge cultural value of rome and are one of the tech leaders now, controlling all of Italy and the surrounding islands, as well as some colonies.

Best Regards,
Ace

Hello Genghis Kai,

here are some proposals for CivAdjective changes:


Regards,
Ace

P.S.: do you prefer to be called Genghis or Kai?

Ace of Spades said:

One very funny event was when the Apostolic Palace declared war upon Ismail, who was utterly devastated as about 20 civs declared war on him, most of his core cities going to Arabia. Did you tweak anything about the Palace? I also noticed it is located in Worms now, probably to represent the fact that the Holy Roman Emperor claims to be the highest-ranking political leader of the christian nations.

Click to expand...

I gave the Apostolic palace to HRE because I wanted to give HRE something special, like Papal with the State religion, Venice with the Corporation and Spain/Portugal with the colonist.

Ace of Spades said:

One civ that seems to do remarkably well (especially compared to the real world) is the papal states, they assimilated venice due to the huge cultural value of rome and are one of the tech leaders now, controlling all of Italy and the surrounding islands, as well as some colonies.

Click to expand...

Mmm... that wasn't intended. I thought Venice should have enough cultural buildings to protect itself as it was in v4.2. (I don't think I have change anything in there) Need to check that. Thanks.

Ace of Spades said:

Hello Genghis Kai,

here are some proposals for CivAdjective changes:

Code:

Spainese     -->     Spanish
Arabs         -->     Arabian
Safavids     -->    Safavid
Ottomans    -->    Ottoman
Mughals        -->    Mughal
Shaybanids    -->    Shaybanid
Bahamids    -->    Bahamid
Vijayanagara    -->    Vijayanagaran
Mongols     -->     Mongolian
Jurchens    -->    Jurchen
Aztecs        -->    Aztec
Minor Nations    -->    Minor Nation

Regards,
Ace

P.S.: do you prefer to be called Genghis or Kai?

Click to expand...

Thanks for correcting my poor English Except Arab and Mongol which I think are better than Arabian and Mongolian (these are modern terminologies I think). I will correct them accordingly.

Kai is part of my real name. But maybe call me Genghis in here since everyone else do that.

Hello Genghis,

Here are some minor bugs I found:

I noticed another glitch in the text files, due to the long civ names ( CivDesc ), which are currently used like the short names.

For example, in case of the English civilization, both CivDec and CivShortDesc are set to "England".


However, this leads to game messages like "The city of Paris was conquered by the England", where CivDesc is used.

CivDesc should be a longer description of the Civilization like "Kingdom of England" or "English Empire" to fit with well with these game messages.

Another, more gameplay-related issue seems to be the liberation of colonies. I'm not entirely sure why this happens, but when the Holy Roman Empire, in my current game. liberated its colonies, I got the message that they had granted independence to their overseas colonies of Germany. However, this caused every other civ to promptly declare war on the HRE, and when I moved my mouse curser over Maximilian in the scoreboard, it said:

"Master of Minor Nations"

I'm not quite sure why this happened. It seems to work for some cilizizations at least, for example I could liberate my own colonies to create the United States of America without having all the other civs declare war on me.

Hope this helps,
Ace

Ace of Spades said:

Hello Genghis,

Here are some minor bugs I found:

I noticed another glitch in the text files, due to the long civ names ( CivDesc ), which are currently used like the short names.

For example, in case of the English civilization, both CivDec and CivShortDesc are set to "England".

Code:

CivDesc=England
CivShortDesc=England
CivAdjective=English

However, this leads to game messages like "The city of Paris was conquered by the England", where CivDesc is used.

CivDesc should be a longer description of the Civilization like "Kingdom of England" or "English Empire" to fit with well with these game messages.

Click to expand...

I tried to avoid to call nations with "Republic of...", "Kingdom of ..." or " ... Empire". Reason is that I feel it is inappropriate to use a fixed name to call a nation, which can have a dynamic government form. For example, it is strange to call a nation "Kingdom of ..." while it use Universal Suffrage and Emancipation as it's civic. So United States of America is just America and Ming Dynasty is just Ming in all my scenarios. I don't know whether this is the best way thought. May be you can suggest alternatives.

Ace of Spades said:

Another, more gameplay-related issue seems to be the liberation of colonies. I'm not entirely sure why this happens, but when the Holy Roman Empire, in my current game. liberated its colonies, I got the message that they had granted independence to their overseas colonies of Germany. However, this caused every other civ to promptly declare war on the HRE, and when I moved my mouse curser over Maximilian in the scoreboard, it said:

"Master of Minor Nations"

I'm not quite sure why this happened. It seems to work for some cilizizations at least, for example I could liberate my own colonies to create the United States of America without having all the other civs declare war on me.

Hope this helps,
Ace

Click to expand...

Don't know why, but "Master of Minor Nations" is strange still "minor nation" should be a minor nation in the scenario, which means it can't have any diplomatic relationship. So I don't know how it can becomes a vassal of someone else.

Genghis_Kai said:

So United States of America is just America and Ming Dynasty is just Ming in all my scenarios. I don't know whether this is the best way thought. May be you can suggest alternatives.

Click to expand...

I absolutely support this idea, since I share your feeling that a civ with a representation government should not be called "Kingdom of ... ". Currently, I have no idea as to how to solve the dilemma of the gramatically incorrect in-game messages under these circumstances, but I'll give it some thought, and if I can come up with something I'll let you know. I know that something like this has been implemented by Rhye, but I suppose it does require non-trivial modification of the dll.

Don't know why, but "Master of Minor Nations" is strange still "minor nation" should be a minor nation in the scenario, which means it can't have any diplomatic relationship. So I don't know how it can becomes a vassal of someone else.

Click to expand...

Somehow the newly created colony seemed to have minor nation status. This is probably due to destroyed civilizations being used as colony civilizations... I noticed this in a earlier game, when Portugal liberated its colonies and they became Hungary, which had been destroyed some 200 turns earlier. Somehow some of the settings seem to be carried over, including the "at war" status of the civ - since everyone was at war with "Minor Nations" before they got destroyed, they seem to have declared war on the HRE when the Minor Nations "respawned" as the HRE vassal.

Best Regards,
Ace