Going Viking (Conquests)

This scenario puts you in the shoes of a Viking Chieftain trying to win booty and fame in France, Britain and Ireland. Capture the booty from the locals and return it to your base to win.

Important: you need the Conquests version of CivIII with the 1.22 patch in order play this scenario.

The viking civs are:

Skullsplitter Vikings led by Thorfinn Skullsplitter start in Orkney (Kirkjuvagr).
Hrolf's Vikings led by Hrolf Ganger (i.e. Rollo) start in Francia (Rouen).
Bloodaxe Vikings led by Erik Bloodaxe start in York (Jorvik).
Flatnose Vikings led by Ketil Flatnose and start in the Hebrides (Sudreyjar).
Guthorm's Vikings led by Guthorm and start in East Anglia (Harwik).
Boneless Vikings led by Ivar the Boneless and start in Dublin (Dubhlinn).

The locals to rough up are:
Francia; Mercia; Wessex; East Anglia; Northumbria; Pictavia; Scotia; Strathclyde; Cymru; Connacht; Ui Neill; Mumhain; Laighin.

Main Gameplay changes:
* Viking longboats, Flagships and Dragonships have bombard ability to simulate raiding the coast line (I have renamed the labels text file so it says "Viking surprise raid destroyed improvements" and such like). Longboats have a bombard range of 2 because it is imagined that they can travel up river and strike further inland.

* Berserkers have "Nuke" flag - Berserks are basically the dark age equivalent of weapons of mass destruction. The pollution graphic is now the graveyard pollution and shows dead bodies and the text is renamed appropriately. You can only produce Berserkers if you build Berserker Quarters- this is a building that can 'meltdown' so if you allow your berserks to get bored they may decide to rip up your settlement and kill lots of people just for fun and the chance to get to Valhalla.

* There is a Treasure unit which can be captured and turned into gold and victory points when you return it to your capital. The Viking Raider unit has the enslavement ability to produce more booty. Treasure units can also be produced by building certain trade-producing "buildings": Weavers, Fur Trappers and Slave Traders. These buildings can only be built where the required resource is within the borders of a city.

* Two new govnt's: Viking Rule and Christian kingship.

* New 'buildings': Drinking Hall; Skald; Chief's Hall; Boat Builder; Harbour; Fisherman; Smithy(and some others I can't remember spent too long in the Drinking Hall last night).

* Wonders: Hall of Champions; Odin's Wisdon; Thor's Hammer; Leif Eriksson's Voyage; Great Saga; (some others I can't remember spent too long in the Drinking Hall last night).

* Armoured units have +1 Hit point bonus and movement of 1; light armoured have no hit point bonus and move 2. Zone of Control is turned on for skirmishing units.

* Viking units are typically good in offence but poor in defence making it harder for them to hold onto their gains.

* Most local civs get a unique unit with the tech "Assimilation" which basically spells the end of the Viking Age. Cymru have Hill Fighters; Scots have Clansmen; Franks have Chevaliers; Irish civs have Galloglass; Anglo Saxon civs have Huscarls. This tech also causes many of your fighting units to upgrade to Farmers.

Download link here ~15MB
http://www.civfanatics.net/downloads/civ3/scenarios/GV4.zip

First post! More Viking mods are always welcome! I'll look over it in detail a little later...

Sounds great, nice changes! I'm downloading now. Expect a playtest within the next week

When am I ever going to have time to play all these great scenarios/mods

i like this a lot, well done

Thanks guys. Hopefully you can give me lots of feedback / suggestions / bug reports which I can use to improve the scenario.

Sounds great! Gotta love those Vikings! I just downloaded it, I'll give you some feedback tomorrow.

This is a scenario about the viking invasion, but there is no viking homeland on the map

At first the vikings can not found cities....it takes two tech?

To make better units you need to make city improvements... OK i like that one (took me a few minutes to figure it out)

----OK, what I love:

The Leaderhead Art is just SUPER.

The idea of Warrior Kings is great (Like the fed jap conquest)

The returning booty for gold and score is cool

----I will play more and then have more input.

When I build Chief's Hall or Fortifications the game crashes.

Tried it with two dif viking civs...must be a missing file.
I don't get that missing file error...the game just dies.

I will try to play on, building other things.
If you want me to send you a save game file, just ask.

LuckyOrDead - There is no Denmark or Norway on the map - the idea is that you've been driven away from your homeland or are trying to set yourself up as an independent ruler in a land of opportunity. You don't get settlers from the start to make the game more challenging - initially you only start with your flagship and one loyal Hirdman but you can attract more fighters to your cause by building a Chief's Hall (people are just suckers for free mead and food). Alternatively, research Piracy and you can build Raiders- they have hidden nationality and enslave to create booty so you can build up a horde of money to make life more bearable.

Glad you like the leaderhead art -it's the work of gael and pdescobar of these very forums.

About the crashing, sorry about that, it doesn't happen in my games. There was a pre-release problem with the WON_SPLASH entry in pediaicons for the Chief's Hall but I fixed it and that would have given you an error message not just a straight crash. I'll take a look at the zip I posted and test it at home to make sure I haven't done something stupid.

If anyone else has or doesn't have this error please let me know.

I did play on, the only thing I can build with out a crash is Raiders.

If I try to build other unit I get the missing file error, but if I build city improvments the game just crashes.

I re-downloaded the zip file on a second computer and I'm getting the same errors. I'm running XP on both computers and I have the 1.22 patch for Conquests (In case it is on my end)

I really like the scenrio and hope you can work out the bugs.

Thanks for your patience LuckyOrDead

The only thing I can think of as I'm not at my home PC is that the scenario files are not installed in the correct place. Try following these instructions:

1. Place the zip in your Conquests Scenario's folder (typically located at C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Conquests\Scenarios) and unzip it from there - if you have WinZip just right click the file and select "Extract to here".
2. Run Conquests and select 'Civ Content' on the main start up screen. You will then have the option of selecting the Going Viking.biq scenario.

When I get home I'll check the download out and if there is a problem I'll fix it for definite.

It would be useful if other people can tell me if they have experienced similar probs.

Nice!

Gogf said:

First post! More Viking mods are always welcome!

Click to expand...

Check out my sig.

I'll keep an eye on that mod Luddi. Feel free to take any elements from this scenario for your Norwegian mod - some techs might be transferable such as Word Fame altho' the rest are probably obvious to you anyway.

This seems good fun! Some interesting ideas nicely done. Curse you though, as I am currently working on an Anglo-Saxon scenario and you've had some of the same ideas as me. Ah well, a bit of intertextuality never did any harm...

Well Plotinus I'd look forward to an Anglo Saxon scenario very much. I started something much like that myself - it started circa 600AD with the Anglo Saxons and various British and Irish 'kingdoms' and Danes, Norse, Frisians and Franks. If you look for North Atlantic Archipelago in the main creation and customisation pages you may be able to take some stuff from it -unit ideas etc. There's also a hefty civilopedia with the backgrounds for each civ. I also recommend that you have a look at Gael's leaderheads they're very good and were made especially for such a scenario.

KingArthur said:

It would be useful if other people can tell me if they have experienced similar probs.

Click to expand...

Here are same problems. Didn't remember wich building it was, but when the building is going to be finished, then the game crashed down to Windows without any message.

Ok bear with me I'll upload a new version in 2 or 3 days. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Thanks KingArthur, the Atlantic Archipelago stuff looks really interesting and it's a shame you ran out of steam on it. I may well take a leaf out of the Vikings' book and shamelessly plunder some stuff from it. Gael's leaderheads are lovely, although I'm one of those few people who really like animated leaderheads, so I'm simply culling those from where I can. It would have been much more helpful if there had been a few more women leading Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to give me more choice... Still, if Firaxis can make Theodora the Byzantine leader, why can't I have Bertha for Kent?

I should say that my scenario is going to be a lot less ambitious than yours. My idea was to focus on the struggle of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms with each other, so the civilisations are all of them, plus, I think, simply "the Romano-British", "the Picts", "the Irish" and "the Vikings", or similar. Then the goal of the game is to play one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and try to become Bretwalda, building up a sufficiently powerful kingdom to be able to cope with the Vikings when they arrive. The map consists only of the British Isles, plus a homeland for the Vikings to come from. I want a feel rather like the Japanese conquest, but also with some of the elements of the Fall of Rome conquest, where you are playing a small, upstart tribe trying to overtake the already-established civilisations, which start with a massive culture and territory advantage - which is why I'm thinking of making the non-Anglo-Saxon kingdoms essentially larger and more powerful at the start, and ignoring their internal divisions. I wanted to concentrate on the development of Anglo-Saxon culture, especially religion - so the player must choose when (and whether) to convert to Christianity. As a pagan kingdom, troops can generate battle trophies which will provide big culture bonuses when returned to the capital - but as a Christian kingdom, many more useful buildings will become available which may prove necessary to deal with the Viking onslaught later in the game. Unlike your scenario, this will be set only in the Dark Ages, and end more or less with the time of Alfred the Great. I've not tried any kind of modding before so I don't want to bite off too much with this one...

Excellent ideas Plotinus. I know a lot of people who followed the Atlantic Archipelago scenario will be happy to see this one. You've got to have Hengest as leader of Kent though - the guy's a legend and is supposedly the basis for the name "Henchman" - there's a unique unit for you!

I was reducing the scope of my scenario (before I quit it) to include just the Dark Ages - it's name was to be "Dark Age Battle of Britain" - might suit you as a working title for your scenario.

Lumping the Romano British together is ok albeit not historically accurate - internal divisions among the British was one of the reasons for their failure to stop the Anglo Saxon takeover. They might be too strong and unbalance the game - maybe split them up as Romano British and (since some Britons were not heavily Romanised) Upland British or even just make a Welsh, Cornish and Northern British civ. Oh and you need to have Dalriada in there i.e the Scots. Mmmm, I'm not helping keep this simple, am I? You'd be wise to stick to your own plan; one of my downfalls was trying to incorporate too much into the mod to meet other peoples wishes - best to have a simple plan and stick to it. Good luck and you have my support anytime you wish to call upon it. Set up a thread in the main creation and customisation or PM me if want anymore input.

Thanks, King Arthur - I'll see how it goes, although as I say I'm seeing this project as essentially a learning experience, at least for the time being, so don't expect anything too ground-breaking! The working title, by the way, is currently "The Rood and the Dragon", to indicate that the religious question and the Viking invasion are the two main crises facing the player - at least, that's the plan.

I was under the impression that Dalriada in Scotland was essentially a colony of the Irish rather than a truly independent "state", and that's what I was going to make it - but hey, I'm just a theologian, not a historian! I must bow to your evidently greater knowledge of the period, at least until I've gone through the Civilopedia entries you had for the Archipelago project. Incidentally, I'm having Hengest as just a Great Leader, because I understand there's some doubt over his precise historicity. And yes, I say that as a loyal Man of Kent myself...

In the meantime, of course, I have this Vikings scenario to get to grips with, plus any number of others. So much to do, and so little time!