Hegemon! Of the Classical Greek World!

[Kyriakos]

Island of Samos presumably? Whenever I last played Athens, I just swarmed it with amphibious toxotoi and followed up later with Champions.

Samos should have been its own civ anyway
(Never tried to play as Ithaca or Troy, so can't say if that makes up for it)

Many important figures from there (Pythagoras, also an eleatic philosopher who gave us the term "Vacuum") and iirc it had an big enough fleet to defeat Athens at times.

 

[Geffalrus]

Samos should have been its own civ anyway
(Never tried to play as Ithaca or Troy, so can't say if that makes up for it)

Many important figures from there (Pythagoras, also an eleatic philosopher who gave us the term "Vacuum") and iirc it had an big enough fleet to defeat Athens at times.

I never really researched them, but after a quick googling, yeah, they look pretty cool. I could see them being added in with a bit of work. Probably give them:

• Unique Wonder: The Heraion - no idea what it's benefits would be just yet.
• Colony Wonders: Gaeta (settlement in Italy), Samothrace (I think it's one of the big islands just south of Thrace), and Perinthus (in the Propontis)
• Unique Unit: Samian Trireme - perhaps a Trireme that comes slightly earlier, or just a slightly tougher Trireme, though that does overlap with the Corcyran Trireme. Maybe their unique wonder auto-spawns Samian Triremes.
• Unit Line: Probably have them copy the Ionian unit line pretty closely.

Overall, they could be pretty similar to the other island Greeks, just with a beefy midgame naval unit that could compete with the Imperial Trireme perhaps.

 

[Takhisis]

They should have someting like epic civ's Colossus wonder to represent the benefits of the long-distance trade the Samians carried on at the time.

 

[Geffalrus]

Brief detour back to Illyria: I'm finally getting to the end of the Archaic Age and here are my observations.....

• Giapid Blood Drinkers are the bedrock of your army for a long time. They're cheap, relatively powerful, extremely mobile, and the sacrificial lambs they generate help you expand your border city borders.
• Illyrian terrain is pretty tough to deal with if you don't have the ability to ignore hills and walk on mountains. The only true threat I've faced was the early swarm of Paeonian Skirmishers from Macedon precisely because they could also mountain/hill-walk. Everyone else moves soooooo slowly. Epeirote Priestesses are theoretically scary, but the AI hasn't yet escorted them with chunky defensive units, so they're easy to pick off with Blood Drinkers. And if/when they do, I have Giapid Horsemen for that.
• Expansion is hugely necessary as your resources are so very spread out. Copper, tin, and horses are hard to come by compared to the southern Greeks. Granted, once you do expand, you'll find that you have a ton of luxuries and don't need to worry much about happiness buildings.
• I've basically set my science rate to 0 - I can't keep up in tech progression through domestic research, so my backup plan is to just fight everyone, inflict casualties, and take techs in the peace deal. Feels appropriately barbarous, actually.
• Soon as this Tin is connected, I can finally try out Breucanian Hillmen and have an attack power better than 3. We shall see if I can time a second offensive against Epirus to gain some coastal cities before I get Map Making unlocked.

 

[Kyriakos]

"Feels appropriately barbarous"

 

[Geffalrus]

Was poking around the units in the civ editor, and I noticed that Boats don't have any transport capacity, and that those are the units Odysseus is supposed to ride in to get back to Ithaca. Is that how it's supposed to be? My understanding is that there's supposed to be a mini-game where you get O and crew back home and upgrade him to his Final Form. But how can you do that if Boats can't transport? I guess you could build a ship back home and send it out, but that seems kind of contrary to the original story, and it would leave those units sitting costing upkeep the whole time.

I'm going to experiment with adjusting a couple things:

• Boats in general can now transport 2
• Nautes and Odysseus now have no upkeep

 

[Takhisis]

You remind me that I never played the Odysseus minigame. I need to remedy this.

 

[Geffalrus]

You remind me that I never played the Odysseus minigame. I need to remedy this.

Civ 3 is getting to be kind of an ancient game, and it still has such amazing and deep scenarios. So glad that this forum is still running and maintaining access to the files.

 

[Takhisis]

I honestly sometimes think that I should play EFZI not just to win with every faction but also taking the cities in each possible different order each time.

 

[Geffalrus]

Hmmmm, so I played through early game Ithaca with my changes. It ended up be substantially easier than expected (easy early game doesn't necessarily mean easy end game victory, tho). It was nice to be able to load my units in immediately, and I have no idea how I'm supposed to settle the other islands near Ithaca without load capacity on the boats. The better civs get Minoan or Pirate Galleys, both of which have better combat stats - and - load capacity. These early ships aren't unlocked by tech, but they require Lumber, which is unlocked by Woodworking. As such, I research that first out of the gate.

Having two boats over near Anatolia ended up being extra strong even without making use of the Nautes for anything beyond barb camp capturing. Theoretically I could have sacked Troy pretty easily, tho I'm not sure I'd have gained that much from it. Instead, I traded techs with them and Ionia, which set me up nicely when I finally got Woodworking and traded that for everything I didn't have. And since I was the only one with access to Anatolia from Greece, I was able to quickly gain a tech lead over everyone since I was the first international trader, and the computer paid handsomely for what I had available.

To get the Odyssey built quick, I went Worker first, then built estates (+1 shield) and roads on the two tiles of Ithaca. The extra shields helped me get the Odyssey up and running pretty quickly. The extra movement, safe sailing, and food/production/commerce boost to Ithaca was a massive help. By then, it was pretty easy to get Odysseus home and leveled up to a 10/10 monster. With 3 Nautes and the King of Ithaka, I could start conquering some coastal cities. Corcyra would be the easiest choice, but I think I want to gift them Shipbuilding to see if they will build Corcyran Navy, and then see if I can capture it to get myself my own fleet of unique warships.

It's pretty unique having the tech lead this early. I struggled heavily as Corcyra and Illyria recently, and the only ones I've had this much tech fortune with have been Sparta and Athens. I don't think my changes had that big of an impact on the tech lead since it was almost completely about the fact that I had boats at the start and could contact everyone fairly easily. If I go conquer someone right now with King of Ithaka, that would be directly the result of my changes since I would need to wait until Shipbuilding just to get a transport capable naval unit. And sending a ship from Ithaka to go get Odysseus while he sits offshore from Troy just feels weird. With my changes, it felt much more like Odysseus was journeying around the Aegean going on adventures (aka having his Nautes kill barbarians).

 

[Geffalrus]

My first attempt at the Corcyran Navy trick was an abysmal failure. By the time I gave them shipbuilding and they build the wonder, they - already - had around a dozen Akontistes defending their capital. And even though the 5 attack Nautes and 10 attack Odysseus should easily overpower them individually, this was not the case in practice. Every. Single. Defensive bombard hit. So I could only take down about half of them before being forced to sail back to Ithaca to heal up. And then when I tried to sail back, I was met by a freshly spawned Corcyran Trireme. So that was a bust. Going back to my primary Ithaca save for when I had just returned Odysseus. Second time around I'm going to make sure I have a good supply of Toxotes before I attempt the assault, and maybe also scout with an embassy first.

 

[Saevius]

Couldn't the main file (1.45) be uploaded something elsewhere, please? Google returns the error, for some unknown reason.

 

[Arexander]

You can still download it, Google's just complaining that the file is too large and it can't be previewed or scanned for viruses.

 

[Saevius]

You can still download it, Google's just complaining that the file is too large and it can't be previewed or scanned for viruses.

Oh, sorry for a false flag, I just tried to download it via my deleted Google account so it returned me error 403. I had to restore it (temporarily, because I don't need it anymore) to download.

For all that, this download still requires a valid Google account (and there's a many people who don't use Google), so maybe an alternative download option could be great.

 

[Takhisis]

this download still requires a valid Google account

wtf it's supposed to be available to anybody with the link, not just Google users.

 

[Arexander]

Can confirm, it requires you to login to Google to download. Mayhaps Google has changed their policy at some point? Not that I would know, since I'm pretty much always logged in.

 

[Takhisis]

They probably have, because I already had a problem last year which I finally solved some 7 months ago:

Hello! I am the maintainer of the upload through a Google Drive. Today I had to clear it with Google that I was not somebody else, because Google sometimes decides that I am not myself and cannot be trusted with my own account, and then I found that for ‘security reasons’ people trying to download the scenario from my drive had been blocked. I've checked and it's available for anybody with the link, but Google did warn me that it had ‘changed security settings’ (see the above result, a repeated occurrence, with it declaring that it doesn't know who I am and sending a security alert to a backup account to boot). If anybody's having any trouble, please contact me here on CFC, either here in this thread or privately. It should allow people to download it. Emphasis on should.

So they've probably done something of the sort again.

Edit #1: I've just been treated to an intro on how they've made things ‘better’ and ‘more accessible’ for me.
Edit #2: It still says ‘Anyone on the Internet with the link can view’ and ‘Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print, and copy’
Edit #3: Support specifically describes it as

• Anyone with the link: Anyone who has the link can use your file, without signing in to their Google Account.

So I don't know what's going on with Google this time. Again.
And both this file and the Desert and the Mountain one have the same settings, but there's still occasional instances of people unable to download them without my express authorisation.

Maybe I/we should find a better hosting service.

 

[Geffalrus]

For those interested, I've been tooling around with making a small scenario submod for this that focuses on the conquest of Kypros in 307 BC by Demetrios, son of Antigonos Monopthalmos, from its original holder, Menalaos brother of Ptolemaios Lagid.

This mini-scenario will focus solely on the island of Cyprus and the struggle between two players for control of the island. The Antigonids will start with a single landing site on the northern peninsula of the island, but a large and powerful army. The Ptolemies will have the entire rest of the island, but have to build defense forces mostly from scratch. Unit rosters will be pretty simple, mostly using units from the Hegemonic Era. The key will be deciding on whether to spend time building the costly Pezhetairoi and Hetairoi units of Macedonian veterans, or go for the quick to build, but much less powerful Local Levies, Local Cavalry, and Greek Mercenaries. Additionally, there will be a good supply of siege and naval units drawn from Rambuchon's excellent mod roster. In our history, the conquest of Cyprus was decided by the naval battle at Salamis, which convinced Ptolemy to abandon the island and ransom back his brother Menelaos. Demetrius's victory started his reputation as Poliorcetes, the Besieger, and gave his father an opportunity to proclaim himself Basileus. Soon, Cassander, Ptolemy, Lysimmachos, and Seleucs would follow suit, and the pretence of fighting to uphold the Argead House of Macedon would come to an end.

The scenario will be between 50 and 100 turns in length. Unlike real history, this will probably feature a fair amount of grueling combat to clear and take the island, since obtaining victory after a large naval battle would be pretty boring. The siege of Salamis will be pretty tough as I intend to give the city good defenses and a bunch of Greek Fire pots. I'll post again once I've done more with the map, units, and techs.

 

[Takhisis]

Sounds interesting. Of course, you could modify the timescale so that it all takes place within a year or two.