CT2: Peace Love and Understanding

Civilization: French
Level: Monarch
Land: 70% Water, Continents, Random Age/Liquidity
Size: Small
Victory Modes Disabled: Conquest, Domination

The Skinny: Ours are a peaceful people, so peaceful that we can NOT declare War. If War is declared on us, we can (and will) fight, but we can not:
1) Capture a City
2) Capture a Worker/Settler
3) Bombard Cities (we don't want to risk innocent deaths)
We can still launch "offensives" to destroy enemy troops in their soil, but the cities are sacrosanct.

We are able to accept a City flipping to us, but since none of the Civ choices are Scientific or Religious (this is deliberate), culture will have to be earned. We can also accept Cities in Peace Treaties, as we are saving the cities from their former, warmongering captors.

No tricking the AI; if they ask us to leave their territory, we must do so. In addition, we can not ask the AI to leave our territory.

While I would prefer a Space Race victory, Cultural will be fine, as will Diplomatic (although Diplomatic is how I usually 'win' a game I'm getting my butt whooped in otherwhise).

Any other suggestions can be considered. If interested let me know; I'm not going to start the game until this weekend at the earliest, so there's time to join.
I'm looking for 6 players total, including myself. First *two* turns will be 15 turns, subsequent turns 10. 24 hours to say Got It, 72 hours to Play, all other standard SG rules apply. SG Newbies are welcome to join, although note that this isn't a Training Day Game.

THE STORY:

In the year 2004, the designers at Firaxis finish programming the Beta for "Play The World Again"--a scenario expansion that includes one momentous enhancement: a learning AI. With learning AI enabled, there is no need for 'levels', for the AI will always play to your level...and as you get better, so does the AI. What results is an ever-expanding game that one can never get bored with.
To program the initial learning AI, Firixas takes the highly popular Succession Games from the Civfanatics Forum. However, the prevalent warmongering in those Succession Games results in an aggressive AI, one that begins to learn far more than Firaxis ever intended...soon all of their computers were being utilized by the Civ AI to further its own maniacal plans.
We don't know who struck first...but in the end, Firaxis had to be destroyed to save mankind. Although in a World without Civilization, the survivors most definitely envied the dead. One of those survivors, bored with Neverwinter Nights (so we're talking circa 2010), decides to send emails to himself back in time (Microsoft Tachyon Outlook being a huge success in 2007). The mission he proposes to his younger self: a Succession Game that will show the AI that victory can be achieved without war...in the hopes that this Succession Game will change the future...so that the world will continue to enjoy Civ for years...

I'd offer you the choice of a red or blue pill...but the trace program is actually in the glass of water.

The following SGers have been assembled on this noble quest:
ChrTh
Zed-F
Architect
Mystery13
Rowain deWolf
Hotrod0823

Good luck.

This one is going to be quite a challenge. I couldn't stand the thought of NOT buying workers. They are worth buying just to slow down AI development.

Without the ability to capture cities it may be very difficult to end a war with the AI. They usually end a war when it is going against them - lost cities really count here.


NOTE: This is NOT a joining the game post.

If the players want to be able to buy workers, I'm ok changing that (it's something I never do anyway---perhaps I should work on that).
One thing I want to add is: If one of our cities is captured, we *can* recapture it.

Sounds alot like what I was planning for my Swiss variant...

Heh, once we finish one of the ongoing ones, I was thinking of something like this:

We are the (French) Swiss -- keepers of the peace, dealmakers, the world's bankers. We are a proud people, and we have never been successfully invaded. But, our culture's foundation is, we abhor human suffering! We will not resort to forced labour under any circumstances, nor will we do anything that could result in mass loss of human life -- even those in rival civs. Of course, being as we have a proud military tradition, we recognize that some must bear arms and defend the others, and that those that bear arms are often put in harms way, but all civilians deserve to be spared!

What this means:
1) No whipping
2) No attacking, bombarding, or razing enemy cities

What is allowed:
1) Rush-buy with cash
2) Draft
3) Culture-flipping enemy cities, Propaganda
4) Pillaging terrain improvements
5) "Freeing" (capturing) enemy workers/settlers
6) Destroying enemy military units

Details:
1) Small map, not sure about landform or climate yet.
2) We play as the French. Opponents are all militaristic (Romans, Chinese, Zulus, Japanese/Aztecs, Germans.)
3) No space victory. All others enabled.
4) Monarch or Emperor, depending on how much of a challenge people feel up to!

Click to expand...

Never started that one up. You're welcome to borrow some/all of that concept if you like!

Note: you can end a war with an AI if you beat up on enough of their units. On favourable terms, even. However, it would be hard to prevent an AI civ that is successful at domination from running away with the game (unless the victory condition is disabled, of course.) Part of the challenge of my version was preventing that from happening...

UN and Space are both pretty easy victories. I didn't include Space for the Swiss since it seemed a no-brainer, but I included UN for the Swiss because Switzerland has been a neutral country forever, so it seemed appropriate. You could say, we have to build the UN or we lose automatically, but we can never hold a vote.

Let me know more about your game (especially map size is important for me, small is good) and I'll see if I can hop in.

@Zed-F - I agree you can end an war if you kill enough units. However, I find it tends to take a lot longer to hit that point.


Another potential issue: Can you accept cities from a peace treaty?

Zed-F,

I agree with the 'no whipping' idea.
In terms of size, oh yeah, I didn't mention that, did I? I'd say either Small or Standard, depending on whether we go with Regent or Monarch...that can be a players' decision as well.
Conquest and Domination would be turned off, so we couldn't lose as a result of those. I think keeping Space on is a good idea, simply because I believe it's extremely tough to win by Space victory when you limit your expansion... every time I've tried in that situation, one of the other nations decided it was time to wipe me off the map. I would think in terms of difficulty, Space Race would be hardest, Diplomatic would be easiest, and Cultural would fall in between.

Lee,
That's a good question. My instinct is to say No, but it would really be the only way we could expand once everything settles. That can be a players' choice as well (I probably should collect all the players' choices, huh?)

I wouldn't see why not. No civilian death toll involved. However, you'd have to do a lot of pounding of their units to get to them to agree to that.

Just my 2 cents but sure why not. Free the city from the years of warmongering and oppression of a rival nation.

Originally posted by hotrod0823
Just my 2 cents but sure why not. Free the city from the years of warmongering and oppression of a rival nation.

Click to expand...

That's the kind of attitude I need to justify it!
Yes, we can accept cities from enemies after war (it's their fault for starting the war in the first place)

Hmm, RBD9 was a 5CC space victory on Emperor, and RBD10 was shaping up to be another one until it was short-circuited to be a Diplo victory instead just to get the game over sooner. I have even heard of an OCC space victory on Monarch. So, I wouldn't think that a space victory would be much of a challenge for a normal expansionist civ, even if we only ever have one core and never build an FP due to being hemmed in and not allowed to go conquer. As for enemy civs deciding to wipe you out, I can think of a couple good ways to avoid that off the top of my head:
- Lots of workers & cheap units, with some good units thrown in the mix for border defense. Deter enemy aggression by maintaining the appearance of strength.
- Maintain good relations. Establish embassies and RoPs with other civs, especially if you are the same size or larger as them. Trade spare lux/resources away for cash or for other lux if you are smaller. Remember you can be a lux reseller in the game and turn a profit, if you buy lux from a small civ and turn around and sell it to a large civ, and keep both happy in the bargain!
- Play the Diplo game! Build up some cash reserves, and if someone picks on you, bribe everyone else to go pick on them...

Anyway, my point is that Space victories aren't all that hard. Usually you can just go min science until the end of the Industrial Age, and build up a large cash cushion, then turn on the research once you get to the modern age and out-research/out-produce your rivals, employing sabotage if need be to further ensure you have the upper hand. Plus, once you get rails, you're pretty much invulnerable to any enemy AI attacks anyway, providing you haven't skimped too much on military -- and there's all that time after you've built your factories/hospitals where there's nothing to build BUT military, anyway, so usually that's not a problem.

EDIT: Of course, cultural and diplomatic victories are not too hard either. In this case, with no cheap temples or libraries, a single city culture victory might take a bit longer to acheive than usual, and a civ-wide culture victory might actually be somewhat difficult, maybe impossible if we can't expand via conquest. I'd probably say space is easier than cultural for the French, though.

Zed-F,

It's probably my lack of experience, then, that makes me think Space Race is tough (I used to think taking on Japan in the middle ages when their cities were in Jungles was tough )

I'll leave it enabled, but it'll be a players' decision. A Cultural or Diplomatic Victory would happen before the Space Ship could be built anyhow, most likely.

Well, I'll probably sign up, if:
- It's on a small map
- It's on Monarch or higher
- I'd prefer to play as French against all the militaristic civs, since part of the point of this kind of a variant is to try to survive enemy aggression. The always war games have explored this from one angle, with maximum intensity wars but unrestricted options; here's an exploration from a bit of a different angle, with standard intensity wars but somewhat limited options.

You'll probably want to rewrite the rules once you've gathered all the suggestions you plan to accept as well -- and some backstory like the Swiss story I put together would be nice. Or you can just use that one.

I agree with Small, Monarch and French (because I Joan), so I'm willing to do that... I'll do a final summary/backstory once the roster gets filled (if it gets filled)...so far it's

EDIT: See the first post for Roster

I am up for this variant. However, will you be here to finish?

Never Winter Nights Goes Gold

Originally posted by Architect
I am up for this variant. However, will you be here to finish?

Never Winter Nights Goes Gold

Click to expand...

Yes, I will be here

As I replied to Sirian when he questioned me on my quote, my Civ III time was hard-fought--I'm not going to decrease from that. My NWN time will come out of unimportant things -- work, sleep, eating, etc.

I've updated the first post with the Story and Game Rules...feel free to read

I'm in! I don't think our training game will be around much longer

Sounds very interesting

If there is still a slot open i would like to join

Rowain deWolf

Mystery and Rowain, you've been added to the roster

We have room for one more--but we have enough to start playing.

I'll get this sucka going tonight....the future is at stake!

If you are looking for one more I would like to be in. May be a bit of a step up to Monarch but I am willing to try if you'll all have me in.

Hotrod