GOTM 158

As previously stated, this GOTM will be a WW1 scenario to commemorate the start of World War 1 a century ago.

I was hoping to post this on Sunday 8/3 but due to a technical difficulty, there is going to be a delay. I am hoping we can resolve this soon. I will post updates here.

To commemorate the start of World War 1 a century ago, we will play the following scenario:

http://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php/Kaiser

Warning: this scenario works with Mutliplayer Gold Edition of Civ2 and not with the classic (not sure about TOT).

Furthermore, this is a very elaborate scenario. A lot of game entities have been changed. There are changes to units, structures, technologies, wonders, graphics, and even terrain types. There will be quite a bit of learning to do at the outset. There is a Civilopedia entry for all the changes. Feel free to look around extensively and even play a few turns aimlessly to get the feel of it. You may even want to start as various nations and do so.

To compensate for this and the late start, the deadline is longer than usual and there will not be an October GOTM. (September is pre-announced and will thus remain.)

We will be playing the protagonist, Kaiser (Germans) at the highest level of difficulty.

The game shall be played till decisive victory or when the scenario ends whichever comes sooner. Submissions should be the last turn you play and also the turn at which you gain marginal victory.

Awards: Gold, silver, and bronze medals go to those who achieve decisive victory fastest or are closest to decisive victory on their last save. For example, if there are 5 submissions and only two achieve decisive victory, the bronze goes to the one among the three who was closest to decisive victory on their final turn. Green star goes to the player who achieves marginal victory first. Blue star goes to the player with the most objectives at their final turn. In the case of a tie in any of the above, the player with more cities wins.

Deadline: November 10th, 2014.

Please be sure to follow the submission guidelines when submitting your game (please do not send your files in a .zip file. Attach them directly to your e-mail with your name in the save file). No extra save is needed.

Please send the saved games only to civ2gotm@gmail.com.

Have fun.

There's certainly been a lot of commemoration going on in Britain and I'm very happy to see us following the theme in our little place here. For most of us older people here in Britain the main idea associated with the Great War is long casualty lists to what seems little purpose. In Britain (but I know not for other countries) it was much worse than WWII, and there is a lot of sadness that has been recorded in writing, theatre and film. War memorials are in every town and village. There were some progressive side-effects, perhaps we might think of progress in the emancipation of women and the collapse of some past-their-best empires, but on the whole it is not a time that Europe can be proud of. And the tragedy of the peace negotiations at Versailles?

I do not mean this to be humorous, but in some sense we might have thought of rewarding whoever by the end of 1918 could produce most casualties with as few cities changing ownership as possible. It could be argued they had commemorated the events of 100 years ago best.

But let's by all means go in search of military victory for the Central Powers. There is a view that Germany would have done much better to pursue industry and trade, which it was very good at, rather than colonies. But instead yes let's team it up with the decaying Austrian and Ottoman Empires as happened in real life and see how it manages a war.

Doesn't it all look interesting? I am amazed at what we are presented with - how did I not realize the amazing Civ2 could be customized to this extent? And, my fellow players, you may be amazed how little I understand of scenarios. I am happy to read the customized Civilopedia, but can someone point me to some general guide? For example how do I see what constitutes the “Total Objectives: 7” that I am aiming at?

And a question for the setter: What difficulty level should I be choosing please?

And presumably it is a case of no re-playing as normal. Like the generals of the time we can prepare by studying theory (the Civilopedia) but otherwise we learn from our mistakes.... or not?

By the way, on the subject of nationalism, readers from outside the Commonwealth may be intrigued by the name of the “English National Anthem”. This is a new idea, at least to me, but at the recent “Commonwealth Games” in Glasgow, in which England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and a few islands compete separately rather than as Britain, wins by English competitors meant the medal ceremony tune was the hymn Jerusalem.

Inkerman said:

But let's by all means go in search of military victory for the Central Powers.

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Master players, like all frequent GOTMers, make all the difference. I think this was best displayed when we played the Lycerius 10-year game two years ago. What dragged on for thousands of turns for him, others outside of our forum finished in tens of turns, and our own master players in single digit turns. No matter which side we play we will do not just better than the AI, but better than most other human players.

Inkerman said:

Doesn't it all look interesting? I am amazed at what we are presented with - how did I not realize the amazing Civ2 could be customized to this extent?

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You are not alone. I had no idea either. I opened this thing and could not believe it. The other WW1 scenario I was considering was about as elaborate as well.

Inkerman said:

And, my fellow players, you may be amazed how little I understand of scenarios. I am happy to read the customized Civilopedia, but can someone point me to some general guide? For example how do I see what constitutes the “Total Objectives: 7” that I am aiming at?

Click to expand...

Again, you are not alone. I bought the Civ 2 classic soon after it was available for Macintosh back in the mid 1990s. I have played dozens of games but for some reason never played any scenarios till a few years ago when I tried the WW2 scenario that shipped with the game. I loved it and played it again right after the first try. I have been meaning to play the Rome scenario that also shipped with the game, but so far has not had a chance.

There are several major differences between a scenario and a regular game. I will put my understanding in the next response so it will be more conspicuous for others.

Inkerman said:

And a question for the setter: What difficulty level should I be choosing please?

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Thanks for noticing this. I just fixed it.

Inkerman said:

And presumably it is a case of no re-playing as normal. Like the generals of the time we can prepare by studying theory (the Civilopedia) but otherwise we learn from our mistakes.... or not?

Click to expand...

Go ahead and play a few turns aimlessly to get the feel of it. Maybe even start as another nation.

This is for Inkerman and anyone else with not much experience playing real scenarios. I have to admit my experience in that department is very limited and I invite the more experienced among us (Prof. Garfield, ...) to please comment here.

- Your score is measured in total number of objectives not regular Civ2 score. Objectives are designated by the game designer and are not changeable. There are two kinds of objectives: cities and wonders. You achieve the objective when you (conquer and) hold those predesignated cities and wonders. If you click on any visible city on the map, it will tell you whether it is an objective or not. If it gives you a numeral larger than one for the number of objectives, it means it is also home to objective wonders.

- Number of allowed turns is quite smaller than that of a regular game. A regular game allows over 400 turns, even though most of the time we do not play that many. A typical scenario gives you tens, not hundreds, of turns before it ends.

- Research is typically much slower than a regular game and does not play a major role in your game. The idea is to represent a particular historical era and thus you typically get most of the techs of that era and achieving more advanced ones are made quite difficult.

- Expansion is another theme of a regular game that does not play a major role in scenarios. You can build new cities but given that you already have a bunch of developed cities, your rivals with whom you are likely to be at war have a bunch of well developed cities too, and that the timeline is quite shorter than a regular game, expansion is not among your high priorities.

- Wonders are toned down in scenarios as well. Some are prebuilt and some are not allowed (like Apollo in WW2 scenario). Wonder building is typically not a big part of a scenario game.

- Massive war, on the other hand, is typically a lot more prevalent in scenarios. In the world war scenarios all sides are armed to the teeth and most of your effort is spent on how to best defend and attack.

- Many scenarios do not allow a change of government. This is again done to properly represent the era they are simulating.

- There may be other special rules as well. Some typical ones are: no pollution, no tech from city conquest, ...

- There are events that happen due to a trigger. This is not possible in Civ2 classic and thus I have no experience with it. But I have heard about it. I would be delighted to hear what more experienced scenario players can tell us about it.

Always check the scenario for a readme file (Kaiser doesn't seem to have one). They will typically give you a lot of information about the scenario and concepts.

- Research is typically much slower than a regular game and does not play a major role in your game. The idea is to represent a particular historical era and thus you typically get most of the techs of that era and achieving more advanced ones are made quite difficult.

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This is true for some scenarios, but by no means all. Plenty of scenarios have a very large tech tree to research through. Sometimes tech costs are very expensive because the scenario designer expects you to use trade units.

Thankyou. I appreciate both the explanations and the hints.

So we are playing, at the hardest difficulty level, until we own 6 of the following 7 objective cities (or the game ends):
Berlin
Wien
Paris
London
Moscow
Rome
Washington.

As this may take a few turns (!) and the designer has put a lot of more powerful units behind new technologies I think research will play some sort of role here.

Ali Ardavan said:

Go ahead and play a few turns aimlessly to get the feel of it. Maybe even start as another nation.

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Very good. That's in progress.

It seems for all nations the July turn is about sorting out cities production and happiness, as few units can be moved. Then it is "The Guns of August".

I have played these two turns for a few nations - and will do so for the others - "aimlessly". I just made attacks, unintendedly mimicking what actually happened 100 years ago I suppose. To an extent the AI seems to do the same.

I am impressed by aspects of the design. For example using a whole world map has meant the main European theatre is very congested. It looks as if the defence will have many advantages and players may need to be quite organized (or imaginative) to overcome it.

I realise I will want, as the first post says, to spend time understanding the changes to the game entities. I have started doing that.

I think it might look a bigger task than it actually is.

For example the function of the city improvements (and all the European cities seem to start with a good set) are unchanged, although their name and cost usually is different.

Similarly the function of the wonders - ironically I see "Clyde Shipyards" the weekend the last commercial yard on the Clyde goes out of business - is unchanged, although the name is, and the cost and expiry may be.

I may regret this comment I know, but because we won't be spending a lot of time on trade and growing our population, and despite the revised game entities, I am optimistic this imaginative GotM will not be such a great time consumer by Civ2 standards.

Unless you have to get MGE to play.

First of a few posts about the situation. All is information available at the start, but I'll put it behind spoiler buttons.

First one on buildings.

Excellency,
The war will not be over by Christmas. We must put the country on a war footing.
We must sell city improvements so we have a sustainable war effort.


We should start on this in July.

The Civlopedia will understate the movement allowance of units in this scenario. This is because the road multiplier is 2 instead of 3.

Is trading with enemies allowed in this GOTM? I would suggest not, because it would better reflect the German position. (Also, note that the US is in the equivalent of despotism if you are thinking of delivering there.)

What about stack protection with aircraft?

Prof. Garfield said:

Is trading with enemies allowed in this GOTM?
What about stack protection with aircraft?

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Both these are normally OK in GotM and my opinion is they are not sufficiently significant in this to have a special rule. (And I wouldn't be in favour in any case - at deity level I don't think the AI will hold back.)

The air question leads to more initial analysis. We note stack protection can apply from the off, as recon planes move like bombers in the regular game, that is they can fly for two turns.

But perhaps more ominously our air warfare technology is not far advanced yet.

Unit strengths and summary of units in North/Baltic Seas.

A few notes on the armies.

There are few if any veteran units at first, but many barracks.


As the game progresses new units will appear. Infantry units get better defence, and often lower attack values. Artillery gets stronger attack values.

Most wonders do not expire.

And now for something completely different.

This GOTM. I have been playing civ for quite some time now (I better not try to think about for how long), but now I have to play in english. I log my games in english but I play in german since I only have the german version I bought a long time ago for 20 DM, and that doesn't allow me to install an english version. After I started this scenario, there were tons of units disbanded in Budapest and in Frankfurt. That did not seem right, so I deleted some .ger-files, renamed some .txt-files to .ger, and there it was, a totally new game! The game still thinks it is german but it is not. And I have to deal with it...

Hello Major,

Thanks to you, and Magic, as non-native English speakers active in this forum.

I think Classic and MGE handle language choice slightly differently:

* With MGE the language is chosen at installation time. You probably have the best solution.

* With Classic the language can be chosen without re-installing, if you have the appropriate files for the different languages. My (English) disk includes all files.

I remember a colleague at work assuring an international group all this wouldn't be a problem if we would only see reason and all use French.

I have started playing now and have had messages that do not match exactly what was happening in the game. If you see such messages, do not worry that it is a problem from the language question.

regards, Inkerman

I was able to win an auction on eBay for a copy of MultiPlayer Gold Edition.

I installed it into a separate directory from my Classis Civ II.

When I try to load the scenario, it still tells me "Failure to Load Game: file is not a saved game".

Anybody got any thoughts?


Actually, it looks like I got a MGE manual, but a classic disk. The disk is a newer version (copyright 2000) than my older disk (copyright 1996). The new disk is also kind of gold colored. But the civ2 application files from both disks have the same date. Looks like I kind of got ripped off.

haleewud said:

I was able to win an auction on eBay for a copy of MultiPlayer Gold Edition.

I installed it into a separate directory from my Classis Civ II.

... Looks like I kind of got ripped off.

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You can't be accused of not trying.

Now you have a separate directory (folder in Windows parlance) you are well placed to use this page (if you're using Windows.)

Please let us know how you get on.

So I downloaded the 5 zip files from the page, unzipped them and put them in the CIV2 folder. Once I did that, I was able to run Civ2. It said Gold Edition and I was able to load the scenario.

Now I just need to find time to play.

BTW. I am running on a HP Laptop, 32-bit operating system running Windows Vista.