Coronavirus MP Challenge Part III

JPetroski

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There was some interest in starting up a new game in the other thread. I know @Prof. Garfield made some relatively minor changes to @McMonkey 's "A Soaring Spirit" to help streamline the MP experience. That has always been a fun one, but I'm open to play just about anything.

Anyone else interested? Winter is coming and we're all going to be bored again.
 
Here's the link to the last version of the A Soaring Spirit conversion I made.

A Soaring Spirit ToTPP conversion

I never got around to doing a full playthrough test, but it doesn't seem like there should be too much that could break. I couldn't guarantee that no balance adjustments would need to be made, but, on the other hand, with 6 independent players, balance issues might not matter so much. The events will make it so that AI tribes won't break the scenario (though I didn't program them to compete either).

I'd be interested in playing. If others would also, I can look through the events and write down all the events that exist for the scenario, and update the Legacy Event Engine (since it currently has an outdated copy). The scenario also needs art for the "master builder" improvement that lets a city build a wonder.
 
I mean you never know how it goes but from looking at the list of stuff you changed, I don't know that this would be any differently balanced than it always was. It seems like many of the changes are "ease of use" and the few other things you added apply equally to everyone. I think it's fairly safe to say that there wouldn't be the need for changes mid game (unless we stumble across a bonafide bug or something) since I know some have expressed a desire not to have to do that.
 
This is from the changes document in the download - not sure if there are any others?

Changes from A Soaring Spirit 1.3

Fortresses were removed from all squares, and TOTPP was used to make terrain stackable. Unit defense stats have been doubled.

Using TOTPP, cities will not lose population when attacked, and will only lose population when captured as long as the city will not be destroyed.

Cities of Black Sea Ports, Egyptian Ports, and Western Ports added. These have a Palaces and Walls.

Turns now represent 5 years. By pressing 'k' when adjacent to land, a sea unit can restore its movement to full (except for a fractional movement point, which keeps track of the remaining 'charges' available).


If the player attempts to build a city with a unit other than a colonist, the player will be warned, and the city will disappear if they actually build it. Similarly, a city not built on a colony site will disappear. The 'fertility' value has been changed for each tile, so villages should not produce cities. However, if they do, they will also disappear.

Stonecutting advance is now Tactics instead of Construction, so no fortresses can be built.

Have made many units immune to bribery. Have changed the bribery message forbidding the bribery of player and Persian units. Now, if a unit can be bribed to join a player, it can be bribed away also.
@desert
Remember, only Barbarians and Lydian Barbarians can be bribed,
no player units or Persians!
@DESERT2
;Remember, only Barbarians and Lydians can be bribed.

Colonists, Engineers, Citizens, and Helots are 'enslaved' (i.e. a slave unit is generated for the winner) when they are defeated. Slaves are also captured. A suitable message is generated.

Added code so that only citizens and colonists can join cities.

Every player turn, each colonySite has a 1/90 chance to "upgrade"
If no richVillage on the tile, add a rich village,
If 1 or 2 rich villages, add 2 more rich villages
If 3 or more rich villages, add a fortress
If a fortress, turn into a minor city.

If an attacking unit has a strategos in the same square, it does 20% of the defender's HP in damage before the attack begins. If the defending unit has a strategos in the square, and the unit can be killed in the next round of combat, do 2x that unit's firepower in damage to the attacker. (This applies in every round of combat where the defender risks being killed.)

Currency and Papyrus have been swapped in the tech tree, so currency is now Trade, and allows clicking on foreign cities to discover supply and demand, and allows the supply and demand window to be opened in the regular game. Unfortunately, when building a caravan, the supply and demand window was opened, allowing easy circumvention of the mechanic.
 
In the current version of this scenario, I've exempted Eureka Moment (Darwin's Voyage) from the wonder building restrictions, since it seems rather weak with the technology diffusion mechanic that is in place. However, upon review, a number of wonders seem a bit weak, especially if building one is likely to prevent you from building a better one. I'm thinking it might make sense to use Lua to bestow additional bonuses for certain wonders.

So, it's already started. If you guys want to tinker and experiment with Lua, more power to you. But I don't want to be part of a multi-player game that is a work in progress. I'm interested in something that is finished, fully play-tested and preferably without Lua events. I'm happy to join pretty much any multi-player scenario that meets those criteria.
 
I'm going to take the position that I'd like people to keep building scenarios, that few will if their creations are never played, and so I'm happy to play a match of something someone designed 1.5 years ago that no one has given a shot as of yet.

With that said, I can appreciate wanting to at least know where the goal posts are from day one for those who play to win, so I'd suggest that if major changes are being considered, that they be implemented prior to the match if possible.
 
A Soaring Spirit hasn't been an active project for me. Its purpose was to implement the required house rules into the actual game, and then make some changes that will hopefully preserve the feel of the game and actually stand a halfway decent chance of a PBEM being played to completion.

I restricted wonder building so that a single player couldn't just gain a bit of a lead and take most of the good wonders. When I did that, the Eureka Moment wonder (Darwin) seemed too weak for anyone to build. Now, having come back to this a year later, I realise that about half the wonders aren't really worth building if they mean giving up the chance for a more powerful wonder. I would want to solve this issue before starting the game, and with some good ideas it wouldn't take very long. It also shouldn't be that hard to test that the wonder effects are working properly.

Over the Reich is a completely asymmetric game that is also zero-sum. If something is good for one player, it is bad for the other. Hence, it is hard to balance.

In Cold War, it is supposed to be in everyone's interest not to have World War III, but at the same time, everyone's competing for the same cities. In order to work, everyone has to believe they are more likely to win by not starting WWIII. That's also a difficult balance to achieve.

In A Soaring Spirit, however, everyone can very easily think that their best course of action is to build colonies and expand, so any imbalance is felt much less strongly. If anything, the problem is likely that no one will want to fight until a clear winner has been established. On that basis, I would argue that the likelihood of needing to fix events is low. I'm not really trying to get the game to play out in a particular way.

With all that said, I haven't put that much work into this scenario, and I will not be in any way discouraged from scenario building if it doesn't get played.

Hammer of the North might be interesting.
 
I am with @techumseh, in that a nice straight-forward, fully complete scenario from the archives, that we know is bug-free is the best option.
 
My own suggestions:

Tech's "Frederick the Great".
John Ellis' "Seize the Crown!" or "Colonies".
Exile's "Age of Charlemagne".
Harlan Thompson's "Viking Age".

These are all tasty departures from the usual industrial age choices.

I'm not pushing for my own creations here, but for MP...
I have a recent and non-Lua version of Bitterfrost Warlords scenario also.
I could quickly add non-stackable and light ToTPP features to it if needed.
 
Thanks Curt. I appreciate the mention of Freddy, but it is decidedly made for single play. Prussia is very hard pressed to defend itself from very powerful AI adversaries. If those were human controlled, it wouldn't last the first season. Roman Civil Wars might be a better fit, as it was made for multi-player. I gave fairly high MFs to the units so it wouldn't drag in a multi-player game. There are other excellent games out there to choose from, including John Elllis' 'Bonaparte' v2, Carl Fritz's 'Justinian the Great' v1.2, Paul Cullivan's 'End of the Bronze Age', and Harlan Thompson's 'Mongols' v3.1.
 
Bonaparte 2 is near to my heart. I'd PBEM that (dibs on Russia)
 
I'm going to bow out and wish you all well. I view the design predicaments we had no choice but to contend with in the past as highly problematic to ignore in the age of lua, and Napoleon has some pretty critical ones, IMO. But it looks like you have at least 4 players and possibly more on the way so don't let me get in the way of a good fun game if you're all up for it. I'll spend my civ2 time trying to finish up my big project (and maybe put the nail in the coffin in a few others).
 
Yep. We are all CIV men here, and there are few more polished products that the works of Ellis. It is the labour of a moment to add some ToTPP features like stackable tiles, etc. I urge the respected people here not to allow Lua as a stumbling block to us all getting together over a good CIV session. We are a shrinking knightly order as it is. :)
 
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