The Underdogs

Everybody likes the underdog,
because everybody feels like the underdog.
No matter how successful you are,
you always think,
'No one's being nice enough to me!'
Kate Beckinsale​

Welcome to the world of Underdogs, world were problems are many and options are few. There are 36 Civilizations in my beloved modern day Earth 2010 Scenario -- you control one of the bottom 6. Colombia, Venezuela, Kenya, Congo, Kazakhstan and Iraq -- they start from the bottom for a reason: fewer techs, fewer land, fewer population and fewer Wonders (including National) than anyone else in this world. To make things even harder each of this bottom 6 human civs finds itself vassalized to one of the top 6 superpowers controlled by AI:


All the standard Earth 2010 Victory conditions enabled, but main objective of this game is to win the Underdog Victory: after 120 turns (10 years in game's terms) Player with the highest score among the human Underdogs will be crowned as Topdog

With AI masters controlling humans you still can go to war, but it will be beyond your control. Or you can break free from Master (theoretically) and get a boost to your score, but then you will get punched back by your former protector. Every human will be able to build a Terrorist unit -- so things wont be very boring .

This game offers unique, builder type of experience, where humans are teching, improving economy, increasing population -- basically improving their country and trying to slow down other humans, while being helped and controlled by their Big Bro. Humans may never face a major war in 120 turns, or may be nuked to death in one turn . Being controlled by AI limits your options, and makes World affairs quite uncontrollable, but also feels very funny, especially when you are facing this type of dilemmas:



So what should Congo do? Breaking away from Europe (permanent alliance by UK+France+Germany+EU) will instantly boost your score. But starting war with your former Master and in this case with "defensive pacted" NATO countries -- can be too intimidating even for the most "stupid AI" bashing human. Especially when the other human Underdogs will only be too happy to speed up your downfall.

Order of Battle :

Tigranes aka President Santos of Colombia, vassal of Brazil
Imp. Knoedel aka President Chavez of Venezuela, vassal of China
methinkso aka President Kibaki of Kenya, vassal of India
kiwitt aka President Kabila of Congo, vassal of Europe
Kokturk Hercules90 aka President Nazarbaev, vassal of Russia
Nighthawk419 aka President al-Maliki, vassal of USA

Technical information about installation is in the second post. Starting situation is attached as the Colombian first turn.

If you don't have it already download old unpatched Earth 2010 and place it in your Beyond the Sword/Mods folder. If Gamefront fails you try Mediafire instead...

Get the patch (Update 6): from the link above or from http://www.mediafire.com/?6bw4859537xhwza


Case A: If you didn't have the old un-updated Earth 2010 please follow the link and download the mod. Then download the update six. Patch/merge "update 6" directly over your Earth 2010 mod. Rename Earth 2010 folder to Earth 2012 (very important!) Open both Public Maps (Worldbuilder Saves) with WordPad and replace ModPath=Mods\Earth 2010 with ModPath=Mods\Earth 2012

Case B: If you are already playing Today or Minor League simply create a copy of the old un-updated Earth 2010 folder. Patch the update over Earth 2010 folder. Rename Earth 2010 folder to Earth 2012 (very important!) Open both Public Maps with WordPad and replace ModPath=Mods\Earth 2010 with ModPath=Mods\Earth 2012. Go back to "Copy of Earth 2010" folder and restore the name Earth 2010. Your Minor League game will use that folder with old un-updated mod, your Underdog game will use Earth 2012 folder, which in reality contains updated Earth 2010 mod.

Hmm, I kinda forgot about the whole vassal thing when I was thinking about my strategy here and doing a test run. So I don't know what the heck I'm gonna do now... Oh well!

Good luck to everyone, hope we all have a good game!

There are many dirty tricks you can play with your master AI even as vassal. Say, you can send a Spy to disconnect one of the resources in India. Master will demand it from you and you can get a screen like in the spoiler In my testing game I got those greedy British demanding Diamonds from poor Congo on the turn 1 Luckily nobody nuked Congo next turn, which is strange. AI loves to spend all their nukes as soon as war is declared...

We just need 1 more player to start! Anyone man enough to rule over Iraq or Colombia? Iraq is the hardest, I must confess...

*sigh*

A Tigranes PM and with this sales pitch... its hard to say no.

FINE FINE I'LL DO IT!

I'll take Iraq so I can have the great American power backing me!

I have no idea what my plan will be.

Also, I may or may not be able to re-download the new mod this weekend so I may not be able to play any turns until Monday. We will see, it depends on if I'm travelling this weekend and whether I can get internet and time to do it all. Luckily I'm 6th I guess, so everyone will get their turn before mine.

Welcome! His Excellency burned your Baghdad in parallel universe, so you got yourself a brand new one here . I even gave you a lonely single transport to make up for absence of Basra -- in case you would need to send your future Great Merchant to Tokyo (best commerce city). But beware of Somali pirates, hehe! If you need more ships just order them with some seafaring humans. When there are so few options one has to become super creative!

You qualify under case B -- no new lengthy downloads, just get the update and follow the installation instructions!

@ALL PLAYERS: Guys, before we start please post here that your installation is successful and you can open the file I have attached in OP. Last time it took as a month with all the mod-is-not-running on my machine issues. It's better finalize everything for the smooth ride later.

I will send my turn to Hercules (Chavez is still alive in 2010 ) as soon as everybody is ready, please post here!

Tigranes said:

Then download the update six. Patch/merge "update 6" directly over your Earth 2010 mod. .

Click to expand...

where is this patch merge ?

Edit: Found it. It is the first post of the link under Updates and hidden by the spoiler 'Hide'

Couldn't get it to work. Tried following instructions, no joy.

I guess Hugo is not in this.

Hope I haven't screwed up original Earth 2010.

works fine for me

Hercules90 said:

Couldn't get it to work. Tried following instructions, no joy.

I guess Hugo is not in this.

Hope I haven't screwed up original Earth 2010.

Click to expand...

Let's go step by step to see what went wrong.

1. Did you create the copy of original Earth 2010 folder? Both folders must be in Mods folder. The name of the copy will be Copy of Earth 2010

2. Did you download and extract Update six? After unzipping you will get yet another folder named Earth 2010.

3. Did you drag and drop that Earth 2010 (update) into Mods? Did Windows ask you if you want to merge folders? And then bunch of other warning on which you always answer yes, do it for the following N conflicts?

At this point you should be able to run updated Earth 2010. Please double click on
Earth 2010.CivBeyondSwordWBSave

If Baba Yetu music starts and you see Obama -- life is good!

(by the way the name Earth 2010.CivBeyondSwordWBSave should never get changed. You only rename Earth 2010 folder to Earth 2012. And then right click on Earth 2010.CivBeyondSwordWBSave file, chose open with Wordpad and simply change 1 digit in the path name: 2010 --> 2012.

Please post the screenshot so I can see what error message are you getting. This really should not be very difficult

Santos Save file loads OK for me!!!

1) Copied Earth 2010 as Earth 2012
2) Opened the Update 6 Zip file with the Earth 2010 folder in it
3) Opened the Earth 2010 folder in the Zip File
4) Copied the two folders in the Earth 2010 folder in the Zip over the same folders in the Earth 2012 folder
5) Edited the two Files "Custom Earth 2010" and "Earth 2010" from Mods\Earth 2010 from Mods\Earth 2012
6) Opened the Earth 2010 file and it opened OK
7) Opened the Santos Save in the Op and it opened OK

All set.

Great! And you still can play your Today game, right?

methinkso, how are you doing? Can you load Colombia' first turn?

well I'll try again tomorrow/ later

Yeah, it loaded up fine for me, though when I quit to the main menu, the game crashed. lol. I guess that's not a big deal.

I had that problem with some mods. Perhaps I still do, but did not experience it lately. For some reason it might be connected with the Windows updates. One modder even told me -- it's a known problem, but I always believe there must be a solution beyond the Voodoo magic, you know...

Could have been a fluke, the few times I ran the scenario before (and I had already applied this latest update then as well) I didn't have this problem so who knows.

If you are running Civ 4 on Win 7 it may pay to try my suggestions in my thread (see sig)

I can't seem to be able to download the update 6. The gamefront.com website keeps crashing on me before I can download it... I'll try again later or another day.

Nighthawk419 said:

I can't seem to be able to download the update 6. The gamefront.com website keeps crashing on me before I can download it... I'll try again later or another day.

Click to expand...

http://www.mediafire.com/?6bw4859537xhwza

Try this, please...

Ok I got it to work... thanks to both Tigranes and kiwitt, your instructions were excellente!

And PS - WOW is this going to be awful!