Age of Heroes: A Late Bronze Age Scenario

[Vladi]

What s that, I was playing with Babylonians and had Heavy Spearman in city...and 4 enemy archers were killed so easy my Spearmans.....I was looked, and saw that archer attack was 45...he s stronger than Modern Tank

 

[Big Bopper]

What s that, I was playing with Babylonians and had Heavy Spearman in city...and 4 enemy archers were killed so easy my Spearmans.....I was looked, and saw that archer attack was 45...he s stronger than Modern Tank

oops; fixed it

 

[Rathvilly]

Finished a game as Mitanni (Emperor) - really good though lost by quite a bit to Egypt - only managing fourth place with 12,200, despite being second largest power at game end. It was quite hard but I want to have a few more games to test the scoring a bit more - you really have to trade and its slightly difficult from mid game when embargoes start flying around.

Encountered one error - in the pediaicons text file you need a wonder splash entry for BLDG_Vassal. Just curious - have you thought of making this an improvement requiring the capital resource within city boundary ? At the moment you can only have one vassal ...

You have lots of victory locations but assign zero score for them - I'm presuming this is deliberate ....

All in all I really like the changes and game play -

 

[Big Bopper]

Encountered one error - in the pediaicons text file you need a wonder splash entry for BLDG_Vassal.

Added a patch for this on the first post.

Just curious - have you thought of making this an improvement requiring the capital resource within city boundary ?

This is something I'm considering for the next update.

You have lots of victory locations but assign zero score for them - I'm presuming this is deliberate

For now this is intentional, once I look into the victory point scoring more closely, this may change.

 

[Yoda Power]

Finally tried it out. It's great fun and pretty balanced. It did however crash when researched Construction. I don't think the crash was related to that directly, but that was when it happened. Year 1465 BC. :/

 

[Big Bopper]

Finally tried it out. It's great fun and pretty balanced. It did however crash when researched Construction. I don't think the crash was related to that directly, but that was when it happened. Year 1465 BC. :/

I'll take a look and post a fix in few days. I just need to know what civ you were playing to make finding the problem easier.

 

[Yoda Power]

I was playing Egypt. Didn't get any error message.

 

[Big Bopper]

I was playing Egypt. Didn't get any error message.

Sorry for the long delay. I wasn't able to find a problem with Egypt, but I have since had a similar problem playing as the Mycenaeans. The problem for me was caused with the noraze.exe I was using where the game would just shut down. I was able to solve this by loading the game a turn before using the regular .exe, playing a turn and then switching back to the noraze.exe. Hopefully this was the issue.

 

[Yoda Power]

I didn't use the norace.exe though.

 

[arkguy]

When I tried to download it I got a messages saying it was unsafe to download and might harm your computer. Has anybody downloaded this mod recently and knows for sure if it is safe or not to download?

 

[Rambuchan]

Can't believe I haven't yet found the time to try this out. How life can run away with things! Looks super cool and I look forward to getting stuck in. Any particular civ you want tested out / presents a good entry level experience?

 

[Big Bopper]

When I tried to download it I got a messages saying it was unsafe to download and might harm your computer. Has anybody downloaded this mod recently and knows for sure if it is safe or not to download?

This may just be because it hasn't been downloaded enough times for your security program to verify it is safe.

Can't believe I haven't yet found the time to try this out. How life can run away with things! Looks super cool and I look forward to getting stuck in. Any particular civ you want tested out / presents a good entry level experience?

I've played most of my games with a Greek civ, Hard to keep up in tech, but they won't be overrun until the very end. The Four main civs of the scenario Egypt, Babylon, Mitanni and Hittites are probably the best civs to start with, Egypt being the Easiest, Babylon and Mitanni are average, and the Hittites are the more difficult of the four. Out of the four the Mitanni I've looked into the Mitanni the least.

I'll probably be looking to update this scenario again sometime in the Winter, so I could use any feedback.

 

[Rambuchan]

I've played most of my games with a Greek civ, Hard to keep up in tech, but they won't be overrun until the very end. The Four main civs of the scenario Egypt, Babylon, Mitanni and Hittites are probably the best civs to start with, Egypt being the Easiest, Babylon and Mitanni are average, and the Hittites are the more difficult of the four. Out of the four the Mitanni I've looked into the Mitanni the least.

Will have a roll with the Mitanni then.

I'll probably be looking to update this scenario again sometime in the Winter, so I could use any feedback.

Be careful what you wish for!!

 

[PiotrG]

Finally tried it out. It's great fun and pretty balanced. It did however crash when researched Construction. I don't think the crash was related to that directly, but that was when it happened. Year 1465 BC. :/

I have the same.

I played Elam. Game crashed when Metalurgy invented in the year 1263

 

[Rambuchan]

Well, I haven't had a huge amount of time to play lately, but I did get that Mitanni game going, albeit not very far into the depths of the game.

Mitanni are in a tricky position. Surrounded on all sides and with a number of options, threats and opportunities. I see they could really be played a number of different ways and that's great.

This time, I decided to support the minor civs to my north via tech trading, as a buffer against the Hittites, whilst using that cash to rush core infrastructure and build up a massive military to go conquer the Amorites. I've gotten as far as having that military and being ready to launch that invasion, which will likely continue on to take Canaan and then onwards, depending on how things pan out.

I'll be starting a new contract soon and may not get much more time to play further. So here are my notes so far, including some minor cosmetic-only notes in the spoiler:

- Very cool scenario and great to see this era getting some love. As Yoda notes, it all seems quite well balanced and thought out. Good variety of civs and units and buildings, with good flavouring going on for the various culture groups. I'm liking the Pantheon Victory. Nice one. Very flavourful and appropriate.

- I personally found the choice of terrain art meant it was difficult to recognise many resources. But I'm aware that my tastes regarding terrain art vary from the majority. The leaderheads are all well chosen and there are some great characters around. Though I did get a little confused between two leaders with roughly similar LHs; forget which ones but they both have grey haired, bearded, sea faring dudes with silver/iron coloured helmets. I think both were made by Piernik. With such funky, historically and culturally distant leader and civ names, players probably need as much help as they can get differentiating. Interface and city screen art is lovely.

- Good settings for unit movement, on roads and otherwise, and good use of wheeled/mountain settings.

- Tech tree looks very good. The branches and the abilities are well spread out and offer a good choice of paths. Nice work there. I know it isn't easy doing this well. There may be finer points for tweaking but I didn't get to any obvious exploits or points of weakness.

- The Pedia's nice and pithy and neat, though I reckon you can go further with the detail. On a first roll, I did get confused with the UUs and mistakenly triggered a Golden Age, presuming my UU was just a flavoured chariot. Maybe my oversight, maybe clarification of which are the UUs that trigger a GA could be in order.

Overall, I think you've done a really good job. Thanks for the effort and inspiration. With another round of neatening and polishing up and checking (see minor notes in spoiler and crash reports from others) this will be a very good scenario.

Spoiler :

- Spotted quite a few invalid and/or missing entries in the Civilopedia:
~ many of the various diety entries on the Pantheon page
~ missing entry for Heraion Guard.
~ Probably others. Just firing it up and looking through the main lists for the different categories in the pedia will spot them all.

- A few transparency issues exist for small pedia icon files:
~ Many in the full units list
~ Goddess of Hunt too.

- Naming of civs:
~ The "Independents" appears under cities when 'colour blindness' is checked but they don't appear with this name when in the F8 (victory progress) or F4 (diplomacy screen). Forget what name they have in those screens or whether they appear at all. I might be missing something about them but this was confusing. Worth checking they all have the same names in the civ adjectives etc settings in the biq.

- United Nations still appears for diplomacy victory in F8 screen.
- Many, if not all, units have a "~" symbol appear by their name upon build notification.
- Typo on Scenario Introduction/Background text (first screen upon scenario starting). "Seem"/"Seen".

 

[Big Bopper]

Thanks for the response Rambuchan.

I personally found the choice of terrain art meant it was difficult to recognise many resources.

The terrain might be changed, since I like to play with different terrain types anyway.

Though I did get a little confused between two leaders with roughly similar LHs; forget which ones but they both have grey haired, bearded, sea faring dudes with silver/iron coloured helmets. I think both were made by Piernik. With such funky, historically and culturally distant leader and civ names, players probably need as much help as they can get differentiating.

Yes the Phoenician (Sea Peoples) and Thracian (Arzawa) were both made by Piernik, his leaderheads are some of my favorites. One of the problems I had with choosing leaderheads was finding ones that could pass as bronze age, but a lot of leaderheads, at least in my eyes, were distinctly iron age.

Tech tree looks very good. The branches and the abilities are well spread out and offer a good choice of paths. Nice work there. I know it isn't easy doing this well. There may be finer points for tweaking but I didn't get to any obvious exploits or points of weakness.

The tech tree is one of the major changes I'll make when I redo the scenario. I'm not too sure how I'll go about it, but I don't want civs to have nearly the entire first age already researched.

The Pedia's nice and pithy and neat, though I reckon you can go further with the detail. On a first roll, I did get confused with the UUs and mistakenly triggered a Golden Age, presuming my UU was just a flavoured chariot. Maybe my oversight, maybe clarification of which are the UUs that trigger a GA could be in order.

This is something I overlooked, I'll make sure to add a note to each of the unique units civilopedia entry and also clear up a lot of other things in the pedia as well. Since this was the first scenario I made with a Civilopedia, a lot of the entries were left incomplete without knowing they were.

Thanks for letting me know about the bugs, I'll try to get these fix in a patch at some point, when I have time.

The transparency issues will be fixed too, I didn't know how to correctly do the graphics for civ3 when I originally made this scenario.

I used '~' and other symbols in the unit names in order to have the duplicate names, before I knew of utilities to do this without using blank spaces and symbols.

 

[PiotrG]

next problem

LOAD ERROR
Error Readin File
Missing entry in "Scenario\Age of Heros\text\Pediaicins.text" WON_SPLASH_BLDG.Vassal

The game will now exit

edit

ok, I created a good entry

#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Vassal
art\wonder splash\Vassal_Splash.pcx

and I put it to PediaIcons

#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Caravan
art\wonder splash\Caravan_Splash.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Heroic_Epic
art\wonder splash\Epic.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Vassal
art\wonder splash\Vassal_Splash.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Military_Academy
art\wonder splash\Military_Academy_Splash.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Oracle
art\wonder splash\oracle.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Pantheon
art\wonder splash\Pantheon_Splash.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Royal_Library
art\wonder splash\GrtLibrary.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Royal_Residence
art\wonder splash\Royal_Residence_Splash.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Spy_Network
art\wonder splash\Spy_Network_Splash.pcx


and then went to
1.Age of Heros / Art / Wonder Splash / and copied any directory and changed its name to Vassal_Splash

it works

 

[Kulko]

Just started a game as troy , if I find time to play this regularly I will post in in Stories & tales. But beforehand I have a few questions.

I have the ability to build a glass workshop or such, which produces tribute. Sounds good, but how exactly does that tribute thing work? I couldn't find anything on it in the civilopedia.

Also as I understand I will not be able to build settlers, so I will have to grow via military conquest?

 

[Big Bopper]

I have the ability to build a glass workshop or such, which produces tribute. Sounds good, but how exactly does that tribute thing work? I couldn't find anything on it in the civilopedia.

The glass merchant produces the tribute unit every 12 turns and has to be brought into your capital to cash it in. There is also victory points attached to it (100) and 20,000 points are needed to meet the victory condition.

Also as I understand I will not be able to build settlers, so I will have to grow via military conquest?

Settlers are not buildable, I only included them in the biq in case I wanted to use them at some point.

 

[Leobon]

I downloaded this a week ago and have played a couple games as Egypt and the Hittites. It's a nice scenario and I rather like the map itself: it feels pretty geographically correct and the civilizations represented present a nice variety for gameplay. I have a couple bugs to report as well as a couple suggestions for better gameplay.

- Nile Spearman has an erroneous cost of 1 population
- Sanctuary of Arinniti (Hittite-culture group great wonder) does not provide a Shrine for every city on the continent

Those are the only two bugs I've seen so far. I haven't had any problems with crashing or anything else. I do have a few suggestions for future edits:

- Population growth seems too restrictive with a food cost of 3 per citizen. In my own game I lowered this to the normal 2 and also increased the value of irrigation by 1 on each tile that allows for irrigation.

- There are only 3 scientific ages, and the game starts out with the first age being almost over. There isn't much innovation or military variety, with a lack of artillery, not many naval units, and not many land units. One tree for Archers, one for Spearmen, Chariot, Swordsmen, and that's about it. This brings me to my last point:

- Chariots are better than Swordsmen. I haven't played all the civilizations or looked at every single variety of Swordsmen in the BIQ but the ones I have looked at, Chariots essentially have the exact same attack/defense/HP stats as a Swordsman but have better movement. I never bothered building anything other than Chariots and Heavy Spearmen.