OK.....after LONG stint of not being happy with Paradox games, I want to at least take a crack at making things that DO make me happy. And....well I haven't really played a Civ game other than 2, and it' exclusively because of the awesome scenarios, I should cut my teeth on very simple game I know very well.
As to what to make...there' a couple of things, depending on demand and possible feedback.
A couple of the old scenarios I could try to remake because I think they are flawed in important ways or could be improved.
I could try and create my own, which has a huge problem in that I can't create maps and don't know if other will AND placing cities is a NIGHTMARE for me. Not impossible but.....difficult.
I'm also dealing with the imitations of unit types and terrains. For historical civs, that's probably not a huge issue, but if I COULD, I'd remake the Mars Scenario AND a Fallout scenario, both of which I don't have enough terrain types for the same map.
Something I LOVED about certain scenarios was infrastructure building, creating TALL empires instead of side empires......normally in preparation of making it wide. IIRC ToT is a better system and is more flexible if you have the maps. BUT the airport bug is MORE important for me as a tool in infrastructure building than the flexibility of TOT and the lack of maps.
Is there a program of some kind where you can change normally editable values? In this case, resetting wonders, including lost ones, setting cities so that they can only be reduced to level 1 but never destroyed? Just getting the city editor to work for TOT multiple map games would be a Godsent.
And what are some of the mechanics you can build with events? I loved the weapons purchase mechanic from 1948, the village and temple sacking mechanic in Age of Constantine, the whale hunting in one of the Charelmane scenarios, the slavery mechanic in Colonization 4, etc.
I want to see about building new mechanics.
Right now, I am thinking of the "easiest" thing to do is to take the old Outremer scenario. It's both too hard AND too easy and there's too many cities in the Holy Land. It's a great long term scenario IF managed right.
So what am I thinking of? Well, turn on the Cheat mode and use it as part of the house rules MERCS and special units. LIke have the 1948 weapons buying program and you buy units from outside. Rule is you get them for five years BUT if you decide to keep them longer, you need to make a sacrifice: in this case, creating a barbarian estate unit on one of the tiles in your cities and permanently lose production. Something like that where creating a professional force means ultimately creating nobility or making horrific concessions to the merchant republics.
Thing is, I want to make painting the map HARD and true professional forces possible to build but so costly they usually aren't worth it. This is sorta, but not completely like the Host Mechanic and Navy mechanic of onf of he crusade scenarios, this on starting 1000 AD AND the Magister units of Age of Constantine.
I was wondering if there way a way to make more lateral play possible via these barbarian units that deny city use of terrain, and if it could be both a good and bad thing... Like....you could allow heretics and outsiders to build enclaves, but you could use I dunno, a special taxman unit to tax it every turn and either get gold or a free merchant unit or a levy unit you can use to speed production in the empire. But this would need to be balanced by some kind of upring mechanic, where the more tolerant you are, and more of these milking units you have the greater a chance of a major, destructive rebellion, either a nuke goes off or it creates the same effect as a goodie hut releasing a bunch of bad news units.
My goal is to make long term development games, ones where winning is good, but it's just the beginning. You can and SHOULD create a long term golden age. I played Fading Lights which is 200 turns and I conquered the Middle East by turn 60 or so and spent a long and prosperous 150 years of infrastructure building, including creating monasteries on every hill in the empire, building new cities maximizing old ones, all while listening to audiobooks.
Oh and something occurred to me that maybe occurred long ago. People were talking about building WW2 operational games where gas was a mechanic and the best way in theory as to make the mechanized forces eat food instead of production. but the AI wouldn't use them to attack.
Well, why not reverse them, and change the terrain variants to make production to work as food and food to work are production? Not for every scenario that's for sure, you might get what you need for tactical and operational scenarios.
Other things I could work on would be tweaking Red Front, a scenario I could never stomach to play because....I know what the Soviets did to Eastern Europe or taking one of the really great multiplayer gems for WWII or Napoleon and using events to turn them into functional single-player games. Or I could take the Fading Lights map and city placement and possibly make a World War I Middle East Front game?
What you recommend for a milk run?
As to what to make...there' a couple of things, depending on demand and possible feedback.
A couple of the old scenarios I could try to remake because I think they are flawed in important ways or could be improved.
I could try and create my own, which has a huge problem in that I can't create maps and don't know if other will AND placing cities is a NIGHTMARE for me. Not impossible but.....difficult.
I'm also dealing with the imitations of unit types and terrains. For historical civs, that's probably not a huge issue, but if I COULD, I'd remake the Mars Scenario AND a Fallout scenario, both of which I don't have enough terrain types for the same map.
Something I LOVED about certain scenarios was infrastructure building, creating TALL empires instead of side empires......normally in preparation of making it wide. IIRC ToT is a better system and is more flexible if you have the maps. BUT the airport bug is MORE important for me as a tool in infrastructure building than the flexibility of TOT and the lack of maps.
Is there a program of some kind where you can change normally editable values? In this case, resetting wonders, including lost ones, setting cities so that they can only be reduced to level 1 but never destroyed? Just getting the city editor to work for TOT multiple map games would be a Godsent.
And what are some of the mechanics you can build with events? I loved the weapons purchase mechanic from 1948, the village and temple sacking mechanic in Age of Constantine, the whale hunting in one of the Charelmane scenarios, the slavery mechanic in Colonization 4, etc.
I want to see about building new mechanics.
Right now, I am thinking of the "easiest" thing to do is to take the old Outremer scenario. It's both too hard AND too easy and there's too many cities in the Holy Land. It's a great long term scenario IF managed right.
So what am I thinking of? Well, turn on the Cheat mode and use it as part of the house rules MERCS and special units. LIke have the 1948 weapons buying program and you buy units from outside. Rule is you get them for five years BUT if you decide to keep them longer, you need to make a sacrifice: in this case, creating a barbarian estate unit on one of the tiles in your cities and permanently lose production. Something like that where creating a professional force means ultimately creating nobility or making horrific concessions to the merchant republics.
Thing is, I want to make painting the map HARD and true professional forces possible to build but so costly they usually aren't worth it. This is sorta, but not completely like the Host Mechanic and Navy mechanic of onf of he crusade scenarios, this on starting 1000 AD AND the Magister units of Age of Constantine.
I was wondering if there way a way to make more lateral play possible via these barbarian units that deny city use of terrain, and if it could be both a good and bad thing... Like....you could allow heretics and outsiders to build enclaves, but you could use I dunno, a special taxman unit to tax it every turn and either get gold or a free merchant unit or a levy unit you can use to speed production in the empire. But this would need to be balanced by some kind of upring mechanic, where the more tolerant you are, and more of these milking units you have the greater a chance of a major, destructive rebellion, either a nuke goes off or it creates the same effect as a goodie hut releasing a bunch of bad news units.
My goal is to make long term development games, ones where winning is good, but it's just the beginning. You can and SHOULD create a long term golden age. I played Fading Lights which is 200 turns and I conquered the Middle East by turn 60 or so and spent a long and prosperous 150 years of infrastructure building, including creating monasteries on every hill in the empire, building new cities maximizing old ones, all while listening to audiobooks.
Oh and something occurred to me that maybe occurred long ago. People were talking about building WW2 operational games where gas was a mechanic and the best way in theory as to make the mechanized forces eat food instead of production. but the AI wouldn't use them to attack.
Well, why not reverse them, and change the terrain variants to make production to work as food and food to work are production? Not for every scenario that's for sure, you might get what you need for tactical and operational scenarios.
Other things I could work on would be tweaking Red Front, a scenario I could never stomach to play because....I know what the Soviets did to Eastern Europe or taking one of the really great multiplayer gems for WWII or Napoleon and using events to turn them into functional single-player games. Or I could take the Fading Lights map and city placement and possibly make a World War I Middle East Front game?
What you recommend for a milk run?
