LotR8a Crazy Celts

Arathorn

Catan player
Joined
Jan 10, 2002
Messages
3,778
Location
Illinois
Civ: Crazy Celts
Leader: Brainless
Difficulty: Monarch
World size: Large
World characteristics: All the rest random
Opponents: Max # (random)
Variant:
I can't tell if we're one schizophrenic leader/family or if we're mimicking some of the difficulties in transition in power, or if we're part of some mad monkey cult.

Each player plays 3d6 (3-18, determined by rolling 3 dice) turns, under a variant set of rules, through 1000 AD. At 1000 AD, each player only gets 2d6 turns.

The variant is determined by rolling two six-sided dice, taking their product, and consulting this table....

Code:
1 – Zealot – must declare war on everyone and stay at war with 
      them all your entire turn
2 – Robin Hood – must give away one of our cities to the lowest-
      scoring surviving civ
3 – Oaf – tactless mode, which means no initiating diplomacy and 
      no counter-offers if the AI offers you something
4 – Anti-plutocrat – must end each of your turns with less than 10 
      gold in the treasury
5 – Trade Baron – all luxes/resources that we can acquire/sell 
      must be bought/sold from every other civ (e.g. if we have
      spare iron and the Zulus are the only civ which doesn’t, we 
      must sell them iron.  If they can’t afford it, we have to give it 
      to them.  Similarly, if somebody has spices for sale, a Trade 
      Baron must do everything in his/her power to purchase those 
      spices.)
6 – Hawk – each city completing a non-military build (anything but 
      military unit or barracks) must build something military (unit or 
      barracks)
8 – Sentimentalist – NO spending on science and no scientists 
      (long for the “good old days”)
9 – Regent in Power – player must "skip" 1-6 turns before 
      beginning play.  Skipping turns means shift-enter to move no
      units and accepting default builds and pop-ups.
10 – Revolutionary – must revolt at beginning of turns, even if the 
      final government is the same as the in-coming government
12 – Builder – each city completing unit of any type must next 
      start a building
15 – Egotist – all available wonders (minor or major) must be 
      started by a city, if possible
16 – Suffragist – all slaves must be disbanded, joined to cities, or 
      returned to their native civ
18 – People’s Choice – the government must be as free as 
      possible, so democracy, republic, communism, monarchy,
      despotism in descending order.  If the government is less free 
      than is possible, a revolt occurs and a new form of 
      government must be established
20 – Tyrant – personal power is important.  Government must be 
      communism, monarchy, or despotism, selected in that order
24 – Hippie – peace must be made with all civilizations as soon as 
      possible, even if it means paying for it
25 – Science Freak – science must run as high as possible 
      without going into negative balance (no exploiting)
30 – Insecure – every in-coming city build order must change.  
      Lux and science slider must change.  Any on-going deals that 
      can be cancelled must be cancelled.  All worker actions (or as 
      many as can be reasonably found) must be changed.
36 – Overloaded – roll twice and do both, ignoring this roll if re-
      rolled.  If the roles contradict (e.g. Science Freak and
      Sentimentalist, re-roll the second until something possible 
      occurs)

Reports are encouraged to be "in character" as much as possible, and actions are, too.

To keep things honest, each player is only allowed ONE veto stamp per turn. When you get the game, you are only allowed to change the build order in ONE city. And you can't just wait and change it later. If the previous owner started the Colossus, you keep building the Colossus (exception, when a wonder is built, the city building that wonder may be freely cascaded by player's choice). Unless, of course, the variant rule says otherwise.

Starting position:
lotr8a-4000bc.jpg


Island start? That'd be a bit of a bummer, but we'll be fine.

Roster:
Arathorn
TriviAl
Snaproll
meldor
Karasu

Yay! Some new blood in the LotR series and for me to play. Cool! Glad to have you all aboard!

Arathorn
 
Historians disagree about some of the exact details of the origins of the Crazy Celts, but they all agree on a few facts. The Arathorn family ran things...and ran them strangely.

Instead of founding the city where the Crazies were placed, presumably by God Herself, the Hippies wanted an ocean view, so a long 50-year trek east was organized. The people complained, but Arathorn I was insistent. His childrean and his people would see the sea!

Arathorn II strode into the throneroom the day after the death of his father with a revelation. "We should make peace with all our enemies!" This thought was greeted with stunned silence by the assembled advisors. Eventually, one gathered his wits enough to penetrate the smoky air with a question. "Enemies? What enemies, sire?" Arathorn II pondered this briefly. Hmmm.... "Well, since we have no enemies, we need to find some other people and make friends!"

With that began the construction of a group of individuals to spread peace, love, and harmony to the rest of the world. Through many descendents, all the Arathorn line insisted that these individuals be exclusively descended from the royal bloodlines. Since "free love" was part of the mantra of the capital, this wasn't *too* difficult, so some "Flower Children" (warriors is much too violent a name, as decreed by Arathorn VII) were sent south to explore.

Arathorn III was another huge decision-maker. He was faced with the issue of what his royal taxes should be used for. "Dude!" he exlaimed. "What are my options?"

"Well, sire, we can research Bronze Working, to make better weapons..."

"No way! Weapons? Who needs 'em?" Arathorn III interrupted.

"We could try to make an alphabet," continued the advisor.

"Nah. Learning letters? Who needs that?"

"Well, then, sire, how do you feel about Pot..." the advisor tried next. He wasn't allowed to finish.

"POT! Excellent! Do that."

Thus, Pottery was investigated with all available funds.

Arathorn VII began to build Moonies to spread the Hippie lifestyle to neighboring civilizations.

The Flower Children found one tribe of savages. These people were so excited to be showered in flowers that they gave the Crazy Celts 25 gold, just to be left alone. "Peace out!" the Flower Children said as they left the village to keep exploring. Amazingly, these people were never heard of again.

Arathorn X began another explorer, simply because the Pottery Barn people were late delivering his granary instructions.

Arathorn XI was the last official leader of the family. Since so many of the people were actually descended from Arathorn I, either directly or indirectly, and patrilineage was so hard to determine, it is very possible that all leaders were all cut from the same cloth.

But at that point, things changed abruptly....
 
Our world now...

lotr8a-3450bc.jpg


Save http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/lotr8a-3450bc.zip

TriviAl -- UP NOW
Snaproll -- on deck
meldor -- waiting
Karasu -- impatient
Arathorn -- resting

Please zip all uploads to lotr8a-year.zip (as per my example) so that things stay clear between the two games. I would recommend keeping the actual save files "Brainless of the Crazy Celts, year.save", which is the default name. That'll stand out in a list of save files, certainly.

In case you couldn't tell, I rolled for 11 turns (one of the most likely rolls, actually). Lots of fun wondering "hmm...what am I going to have to do?" I hope for contact soon. After pottery, if possible, I would try to beeling for MM as we might well be on an island.

Arathorn
 
During the reign of Arathon XI, the chief scientist Dr TriviAl was kept busy working on the 'pot'. He was a quiet man, rumoured to have the research ethics of a facist scientist. Although anyone mentioning this within earshot of his 'secret laboratory police' tended to end up volunteering for experiments in the exciting new field called 'disection'.

Anyway, the well charted descent of Arathon XI towards madness has absolutely nothing to do with the harmless mushrooms the good professor added to his evening meals. When the previous king had to be locked away in a padded room the prof kindly stepped in to run the country for him, what a nice guy :rolleyes:

Anyway, I have the save and will play the 13 turns of fun this evening when I get home from work. If I can get to the net cafe this evening I'll post in around 6 hours... otherwise it will be tomorrow morning.

Looking forward to this, should be fun!
 
Yes, I'm glad you managed to start it so quickly, Arathorn!
Incidentally, I think it was a good idea to make the "b" version open: maybe two teams would have made it easier, but I believe that the possibility to see the evolution of another game with the same rules will add a lot to the fun of this one.

And you can tell I'm "impatient" -I'm really looking forward to seeing how the story of this world unfolds...
(BTW, what version was it again?)
 
Roll your own dice! That's part of the fun! Seeing your results appear..... Looking it up on the chart....what am I gonna have to do??????????? I got a huge kick out of the trepidation.

Version = 1.21f, I think. Is that not the latest PTW out there?

I'm impatient, too! I think this is gonna be lots of fun. I'm gathering from TriviAl's "got it" that he rolled a 25 for type -- that's a rare result (1 in 36 chance, only), but one that shouldn't hurt us at all at this point in the game. Actually, it's a pretty good (read lucky) result.

Arathorn
 
Indeed it was the 25 - courtesy of my custom written virtual dice... a highly demanding programing task :) Just find it amazing that work has taught me something useful for a change!
 
Prof TriviAl surveyed his 'borrowed' empire. The old king may have been a little derranged, but he had the right ideas about research, so those were left well alone. The land itself was scarred with mines and boatloads of workers set off every morning to butcher wales for their valuable scientific components... Everything seemed good.

A new unit of warriors finished training - these were sent on a short scouting expedition, later they would be bought back to oppress the citizens. This would let them stay in their laboratories at all times rather than being mollycoddled with expensive luxuries!

The prof told the people they could build themselves a grand temple in the center of the town... He secretly intended to hijack their hard work and turn it into a building where he could store all the grain. With enough guards the townsfolk would be completely under his control - they could either obey or starve. He allowed himself an evil laugh at the thought of the POWER!

A few short decades later one of the outlying scout groups made contact with a barbaric race called the Mongols. They had knowledge of 'the pot', but nothing else. We were on the verge of our own breakthrough on this subject and had no interest in learning their inferior version - they were allowed to continue on their way. The people were allowed to have a celebratory trade fair - this did not slow down the vital research, but did bring a few extra coins into our coffers.

During the fair, pot was finally discovered and the people rejoyced. While they were sleeping it off in the morning, the prof switched the plans for the temple to that of a granary - no-one even noticed, perhaps 'the pot' had damaged their short term memories. All the efforts of the laboratories were now directed towards a system of coding sounds onto paper - at this stage it is tenously called project 'alphabet'.

The other scouting group to the south discovered a huge expanse of rain forest with a river running through it. The prof dreamed of sending workgroups down there to slash and burn this expanse of stupid plant life. It would make for great farming land, as well as producing cheap furniture and plentiful paper for the 'alphabet' characters to be scrawled on... unfortunately a colossal work force and hundreds of years would be needed for this to suceed. In the meantime food would be scarce, pehaps a network of these granarys could solve this problem...

Towards the end of the reign of science and reason, a Mongolian scout befriended the tribe north of the city - they were given the secrets of mysticism - at almost the same time they worked out how to shape bronze - the professor suspects the influence of another race of people with whom they trade.

At the grand age of 693 Prof. TriviAl was hard at work in his private laboratory when... <to be continued by the next ruler>

Here is the save.
 
Your choice. The game is secondary to the fun, but I'm anxious to see it evolving. I just want to make sure we get TriviAl's full story. Not getting it sets a dangerous precedent, and I want to know what everybody did, to fill their roles!

Maybe play when you get the time and have a write-up ready but don't post until TriviAl has? I mean, the play's the thing, but I also want the timeline to somewhat flow.... That would be my advice, though. Play if you've got the time. Roll your results and get it done, but wait to post until TriviAl has (unless of course you just can't stand it!). It's all meant to be fun, and I don't want to be overly ruly in this....

(How's that for a wishy-washy answer?)

Arathorn
 
TriviAl can just edit the short report above to put in his full story. Meanwhile that shouldn't slow the progression or regression of the game.
 
I didn't have time to play tonight, so it's a moot point. Sorry to hold the game up. I'll play ASAP tomorrow.
 
I've editted in my story now.

We do have an interesting start position - aren't exactly swimming in food.

Have fun with it!
 
Looking forward to lurking in on this one. I don't think I've seen a more intresting & chaotic varient then this.

*cue evil laughter*
 
"Commander, the Emperor is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress."
"I assure you, my lord, my men are working as fast as they can. I need more men!"
"Maybe you can tell him that when he arrives."
"The Emperor's coming here!? We shall redouble our efforts!"
"I should hope so, for your sake. The Emperor is considerably less forgiving than I am.

The Emperor descended on the new colony with much fanfare and ceremony, but his mood was sour and he set about to business quickly. He was an evil tyrant, and he made sure the people knew it.

As the smoking body of Professor TrivAI was finally carted away, seared beyond recognition, the Emperor decided that the research project set forth by the man had too may resources invested in it to discontinue now. THe Emperor was not against technological advancement per se, just amused that men could devote themselves to it so fully when other, greater powers existed.

The enemy, known as the Mongols, was more advanced in both areas. The Emperor was dismayed by reports that the Mongols had learned to harness and machine a peculiar metal know on this world as Bronzenite. They also had learned of new forms of worhip yet untapped on more civilized worlds. This mysticism also had to be studied.

The Emperor's first act was to set in motion the construction of a great Military compound to train his Troopers for the eventual subjugation that was coming. The workers, having just completed a great sustenance maintenance facility, knew the craft and built the compund quickly.

Imperial scouts brought back news of another Indigenous tribe, the Germans. A strange name for a strange people. These heathens knew of Brozenite, but didn't have even the most rudimentary facilites for proper worhip of His Excellency! This was rectified immediately. The Germans were stripped of their knowledge and most of their gold and "given" the facilities to build proper temples.

With the military compound completed, the Emperor set into motion his genetic breeding program, geared towards increasing the population and expanse of the fledgling settlement. After all, more people meant more troopers.

The Emperor soon left, satisfied that the people had been set back on track. As he walked towards the shuttle, flanked by hundreds upon hundreds of loyal troops, the Commander came hurrying in from behind, obviouly in some distress.

"You Lordship, we have just received word that the Germans have found yet another amazing material on this planet that they call Ironocomium. My men inform me that this presents a serious threat to us!"

The Commander never said another word, as the gurgling in his throat briefly overtook any other sound he hoped to make and then silenced altogether. The Emperor took one last disparaging look at him. then departed, hopefully for good.

Spoiler - Rolled a 4,2,1,5,4 - 7 turns, Evil tyrant. As we were already in despotism there wasn't much I could do, other than build an early barracks.

The Game
 
2510 BC (Pre-turn)
Meldor the Magnificent comes into power after getting his knife dirty killing that worthless general who thought he was good enough to rule. The knife, although gold plated was dirty, so Meldor the Wonderful immediately through it away and got a new one. After all, he was worth it. After posing in front of a mirror for some time, Meldor dained to look at what was going on. What! the people weren't building a Colossal Statue of him in the harbor? How could this be, surely it is an over sight? Meldor's inferior advisors explain that we need a settler to build another city. This would allow more people to come to know the wonder that is Meldor. That would be great, then they could build a statue to Him. Meldor the Beautiful thought it wonderful that the men of science wanted to learn this alphabet so they could make markings about His Lovely Personage, but it was depleating the treasury of money that Meldor could spend on better things, like Himself. He ordered science dropped to 60% to balance the budget and allow some expendatures that would make Meldor's life much better. Meldor the Bright could see that the people would be unhappy if Meldor didn't live in luxury, so he raised the luxury tax so that the people could buy things for Meldor the Benevolent. Yes, he truely was special, so special the people renamed the city Meldor is Great. How wonderful the must feel to know Meldor sleeps in comfort they will never be worthy of.
(I) The world stands in awe of the Glory that is Meldor

2470 Bc (1)
An Iberian tribe had heard of Meldor The Generous' wonder and hoping one day to be worthy to wipe his..well you get the idea, they gave Meldor the Handsome the arts Mysticism. For this Meldor the Angelic sent them an autographed likeness of himself.
(I) The people of Meldor is Great are ready to venture worth to make a new city to honor Meldor's Visage and decide that those that stay should build a huge likeness of Meldor the Pretty Darn Good taller than anything else and stradling the harbor so that passing ships would know that Meldor the Momentous resided here.

2430 BC (2)
The settler named In Meldor's Shadow along with the warrior named In Awe of Meldor set out from Meldor is Great to found a new city near two stalks of wheat with plenty of grasslands. Meldor the Wise Knows that this place would allow lots of citizens to build a great building in which the people could come and hear the words of Meldor the All Seeing. His words would ring like prophesy throughout the ages.
(I) Ah, the Stupendousness of Meldor

2390 BC (3)
Meldor the Articulate baskes in the devotion of the people to him.
(I) Can anything else be said for the Meldor the Gracious, sure it can.

2350 BC (4)
The people rejoice as the reign of Meldor the Ideal continues.
(I)The love that is Meldor the Supreme

2310 BC (5) Oh the shear joy of Meldor the Marvelous' very presence.
(I) Could life be better than to serve Meldor the Alpha Male

2270 BC (6)
It is a long way, but the people want to build the new city that honors Meldor the Powerful in the best spot on the whole map. What esle would do?
(I) Oh, if only there were some woman worthy of baring the seed of Meldor the Potent.

2230 BC (7)
The people begin to spontaniously glorify anything to do with Meldor the Laudable
(I) The wait for the statue in the harbor is stil 24 more cycles but its visage of Meldor the Sweet will be worth the wait.

2190 BC (8)
The settler and warrior arrive at the prime position to show the Benefits of Meldor and not too soon as a group of diaper wearing throwbacks to the last worm to run the coutry appear to try and stop them.
(I) Seeing the Superiority of Meldor even in the dim faces of his followers, the savage moves off.

2150 BC (9)
The city of Meldor is Magnificent is founded were it has access to two wheat, two Whales, and a fish. Meldor the farseeing thinks that this will be the best food city on the planet. And so the people immediately set out to build an Oracle to share the Wisdom of Meldor with the ages.
(I) What more is ther to life than Meldor the Macho

2110 BC (10)
The Gods of the game would normally have a person stop here, but Meldor the Omniscient is allowed another turn of course.
(I) Yet once again the sun is sahmed in comparison to Meldor the Demi-God

2070 BC (10)
The statue of Meldor the Gifted is but 16 cycles from completing. The Oracle of Meldor is a mere 298 cycles from finish but surely no one will forget Meldor the Ultimate in that measly amount of time. Meldor the Masterful is lured into a room by his advisors with tales of new adjectives for him, but what realy happened to him....

The Shear Beauty of His Reign

[EDIT] Edited to ensure that the full rightousnous of he who is Meldor the unparalleled is clearly seen.
 
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