Count of Anywhere

[Lamabreeder]

The Count of Anywhere * Civ III Scenario
by Lamabreeder


This Scenario requires Conquests

Some Technical Attributes

* Fast to load and fast to play with minimal wait between turns
* Limited but diverse unit set with several upgrade paths
* Custom tech tree (one era)
* Custom governments (3)
* Altered resources
* Slightly altered terrain attributes
* COMPLETE Civilopedia
* No custom graphics other than the Science Advisory screens.

Installation

Unpack the archive in your Scenarios subfolder. Make sure that it contains the file CountOfAnywhereV02.biq and the directory CountOfAnywhere afterwards. The first is the scenario itself, the latter contains the customized artwork and civilopedia.

Overview

A Medieval Alternate History Scenario in which all civilisations start with 7 settlers but can build no more. Careful city site selection is thus crucial. Goal is to advance far enough to introduce civil and social reforms, or in technical terms: To build a 3 component spaceship. Conquest or domination victory is not possible. Barbarians pose a potential threat even in mid to late game. Access to some ressources is only possible via colony. The best unit cannot be built directly but is generated from a building, thus limiting the availability of this unit.

Example Images

Civiopedia entry:

Spoiler :

A start:

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An early empire:

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A late empire:

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Tech Screen:

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Backstory

Spoiler :

Europe, Middle Ages. Endless, dark forests cover the surface of the world, only here and there interrupted by tiny settlements or one of the very few cities. Civilization is still surrounded by wildness. There within lurk untamed beasts and those who have turned their faces from civilization. You have set out with your loyal house troops and a few peasants to found a new home and bring civilization to a yet untamed area of the world. Let your efforts stand the test of time, and bring greater glory to God, the Emperor, and yourself!

This is not a game of world empires, but of small kingdoms on the edge of civilization, possibly belonging to bigger empires - or one bigger empire -, but effectively standing on their own, for good or worse. Manage what is given to you wisely, exploit and cultivate the all-present wilderness around you to your advantage and stand firmly in the way of barbarians or envious neighbors trying to destroy you.

First Steps

Spoiler :

You begin the game with a bunch of Settlers, Housecarls and some workers. Neither Settlers nor Housecarls can be built anymore. The housecarls are the first and the best defenders in the game, and every settler should be accompagnied by one because barbarians are already highly active.

You must found your cities quickly and wisely. There is no time for exploration, especially since the AIs already know where they want to found their cities. But a large part of the map is already uncovered, and if you understand what you see, not much additional exploration is necessary to make your decisions. Keep in mind, however, that in this scenario you can found your cities ONLY on grassland or plains. NOT on hills, forests, swamp or mountains.

The map constists of river valleys surrounded by wilderness (consisting of forests, hills and mountains). You see the map as if you had already sent a unit along all roads. You also see single uncovered spots further away from the road. They give you a hint where the border of the valley is and thus a general impression of the shape of the valleys. Finally there are some thinner trails and some small uncovered spots, marking smaller valleys and clearances. With this information it should be possible to roughly plan the shape of your small kingdom.

If you don't get a city site, go for another one. Effectively there is enough space available. Albeit this depends a bit on the civilization you play; the ones in the edges tend to have a little less space than those in the middle. If you are unhappy with the shape of your empire just restart. And as a note: Your starting location is definitly a good site for the capital, but not necessarily the optimal one.

After you have settled all your cities, you will sooner than later discover how fierce the barbarians are. They are designed to be strong and to be a real threat in the beginning. I recommend to concentrate your defenses on a few cities at first and to deliberately leave some cities undefended. You can start to protect them as well as soon as you have some minimal forces to do so effectively.

I also recommend to try to get one of the two World Wonders that generate extra trade. Especially with the limited number of cities this is a huge boost to your economy that wil even grow with your city size.

Generally make sure you build enough military to prevent or effectively counter an attack from a neighbor or to deflect barbarians. You can build lots of city improvements early on, but just because you can does not mean you have to or it would even be a good idea. Check your government - you start with Early Feudalism that allows you a huge amount of units as long as you have some very small cities.

On the Military Units

Spoiler :

In medieval times, defense was easier than offense. To reflect this, offensive units are much more expensive than defensive ones. In addition the city improvement Castle gives cities a huge defensive bonus of +100%.

I adopted the idea from the RAR modpack to give units a hitpoints bonus or malus depending on how advanced they are. The first units you can build are quite ineffective, having only two hitpoints. They are weaker than barbarians, but you can field them in large numbers or fortify them in cities with castles.

There are no barracks in this game. But there is a Wonder, the Great Sword Smithy, that, next to other things, acts as one for the city in which it is built.

The strongest unit of the game is the Knight, which can trigger a golden age for all civilizations. The Knight cannot be built directly, however. Instead, it is generated by a building, the Stables. In order to build the Stables, you need access to the strategic resource Horses, and a Smithy must already be present. To build the Smithy you need the resource Iron and the building Castle (which requires neither resource nor building). So you need Iron and Horses to let your cities generate Knights.

This mechanism makes sure that neither you - nor any other civilization - can mass produce an army consisting of a single unit - the Knight. The Knight historically represents the elite of military and society at the same time and thus generally exists only in limited numbers. After you have built Stables in your cities, you can produce supporting troops instead.

There are three strategic resources with military relevance, Iron, Horses and Gold. Lacking any or all resources is not necessarily a game deciding factor, however. While it makes your life certainly harder, you can still build competing units, even if you perhaps need a few more. Every resource allows you to build at least one unit with a special strength; possessing Horses and Iron at the same time opens up the afore mentioned Knight.

Siege weapons have regretfully been left out completely because the AI cannot handle them effectively.

On Terrain

Spoiler :

Terrain is slightly altered.

* It is not possible to found a city anywhere else than on grassland or plains.
* It is not possible to cut down forests.
* It is not possible to clear swamps.
* Mountains have an increased shield output.

On City Sizes

Spoiler :

In the standard game population sizes 1-6 constitute city size level one, 7-12 level two, 13 and beyond level three. In this scenario, level one is constituted by population sizes 1-4, level two by 5-8 and level three by 9 and beyond. That means that a city founded next to a river can immediatly grow to population size 8 while a city somewhere else can only grow to population size 4. This is not a huge disadvantage, however, since small cities increase your free unit allowance dramatically, and additionally the Well which allows growing to city size level two is available early and very cheap.

On the Governments

Spoiler :

This scenario is located in the early middle-ages until very early modern time in Europe. The selection of governments is naturally very limited and consists only of Early Feudalism, Late Feudalism and Trade Republic. Every civilization starts with Early Feudalism, and the other two are available only much later. The latter two are located in completely different tech branches, so which one you get first depends on your research priorities. Typically, however, Late Feudalism is available earlier than Trade Republic.

The Early Feudalism experiences no Despotism disadvantage. Despotism disadvantage means that every tile that contains more than two units of either three food, shields ore trade produces one less.

None of the three has war weariness. This has in part to do with game mechanics - the Trade Republic would became useless in this scenario if it had any - and in part with history. Historically war weariness is tied with a representative government, because it is the outcry of the masses in the face of seemingly useless aggression and casualities. In the middle ages there exists no representative government. The Trade Republic, despite its name, is not a representative government of the people, but only of the rich upperclass. You may compare it with the Italian city-states, like Venice or Genua.

The Trade Republic enjoys the Commerce bonus, meaning that every tile that produces at least one commerce produces one more.

The unit cost for every unit beyond the number of free units differs between the governments. It is 1, 2 and 3 for Early Feudalism, Late Feudalism and Trade Republic respectively.

The main distinction between the governments, especially between Early and Late Feudalism, is the number of free units depending on city size level. In Early Feudalism, you gain lots of free units as long as you have very small cities. In Late Feudalism the situation is reversed. You gain lots of free units if you have large cities, although not as much as you could possibly get under Early Feudalism. The Trade Republic has only minimal troops support, so sustaining a large army is very costly. The Trade Republic allows a better research rate than the Late Feudalism, however, and that is what it is for. Remember, you cannot win the game by domination or conquest, but only by building the "Space Ship", which requires the research of all technologies.

There are some other differences between the governments which are completely covered in the Civilopedia.

On the Buildings

Spoiler :

First off, there are lots of buildings that you can build early on. But, as I already mentioned earlier, first make sure that you have sufficient military to defend yourself before you are stuck with a civilian building for some time. Eventually you will want to build them all, but the timing is, as always, important.

I left the most common buildings from the standard game intact, altered only a name here or there, and introduced a few new.

The most notable changes or introductions (you can check all details out in the Civilopedia, of course):

* Temple is renamed to Church, since we are in the middle ages and in Europe.
* Granary is renamed to Windmill.
* Monastery: Acts like a Temple and a Library combined (and costs as much maintainance). It is cheaper for scientific as well as for religious civilizations. It requires a Church to be built.
* Well: Allows a city to grow to city size level two, like an Aqueduct in the standard game, but is much cheaper.
* City Rights: Allows a city to grow to city size level three. Please be aware that a city of this size produces pollution. This building requires a Marketplace. In the middle ages most of the people lived in the rural areas, cities were small and there existed only very few of them. Rights given to them, the city rights, served as a foundation for growth in importance and wealth.
* Bank: This building gives +50% tax like the Bank in the standard game. In this scenario, however, the bank gives an additional bonus of +25% to production. It also requires the strategic resource Gold to be built. The presence of a Bank in city may well make the difference to building a Mercenary in two or just one turn(s).
* Castle, Smithy, Stables: as described above under the Section about units, this sequence of buildings allows the generation of Knights, next to a defensive bonus (from the Castle) and a productivity bonus (from the Smithy).
* Watermill: Increases productivity by 25%; requires a Smithy and the city must be next to a river.
* Sewer System: Reduces pollution caused by population (which is the only kind of pollution in this scenario), like Mass Transit from the standard game. Requires City Rights.

On the Tech Tree

Spoiler :

The archive contains another image which depicts a sketch of the tech tree including arrows.

The tech tree offers, especially in the upper, civilian part, some synergetic effects which are left for you to find out using the Civilopedia. Their benefits are not game deciding (I have won without them) but certainly nice to have.

It should be mentioned that while all techs are within one era, this does not mean that they have similar costs. Quite on the contrary. You can trust that all techs in the same row (i.e. above one another) have roughly similar costs, but techs in the next row are much more expensive. Christianization for instance costs as much as Mysticism from the standard game (4), while Monasticism is as expensive as Construction from the standard game (20). A New Era costs twice as much as the most expensive technology from the standard game, Integrated Defense (720 vs 360). Just pay attention to the number of turns required to research the next tech. There may be vast differences.

Like the tech tree of the standard game you have to make trade-offs between military necessities and civilian niceties. Or military niceties and civilian necessities - depending on your game situation. I have tried my best to distribute the units and buildings in a way that necessiates strategic decisions between roughly equally desirable things of which you can only have one next.

Known Issues (Nothing serious)

Spoiler :

* City graphics are ancient, should be medieval.
* After completion of the tech tree cities suddenly switch to modern.
Both points have the same cause: the city graphics for european cities should be changed to medieval for all eras, but I found myself to be unable to do it; my experiments always left ugly artifacts.

* Science advisory screens lack arrows.
I simply have no efficient means to add some. Please check the additional tech chart supplied with this scenario for the arrows. Or check the technologies individually in the Civilopedia.

I would highly welcome it if anyone could help me out with thesse issues!

* The Civilopedia does not contain information about any concepts anymore. I own a german copy Civ III and thought the german information about concepts for an international crowd unhelpful, so I deleted them completely. This can, however, lead to a crash of a game if you now try to find out what i.e. "Culture" is within this scenario. I trust, however, that any player approaching my scenario already knows about basic concepts, so just stay away from them and all should be fine.

I hope you have as much fun playing the scenario as I had!

Lamabreeder

 

[RedAlert]

What an intriguing concept! The map reminds me of the dark forest map from Age of Empires II. This seems well thought out and looks very cool, and I will try to find some time to play it.

 

[Lamabreeder]

Thank you for your interest and your positive feedback, RedAlert! I hope the scenario will meet your expectations should you find the time.

And now that you mention it, the dark forest maps in AoE were my favorites...

 

[Lord Malbeth]

Thank you for your interest and your positive feedback, RedAlert! I hope the scenario will meet your expectations should you find the time.

And now that you mention it, the dark forest maps in AoE were my favorites...

Hmmm, very interesting! I'm excited to take a spin...

 

[Cyc]

I'm having trouble switching from my Home Castle pre-build to the Great Archives. A glitch maybe? I don't remember reading anything about that kind of restriction.

 

[Lamabreeder]

Lord Malbeth,

thank you for your interest!


Cyc,

do you have a Monastery built in the city that attempts to switch to Great Archives? The Great Archives require a Monastery. In fact many Wonders and Cultural Projects have a building as a prerequisite, making prebuilds and Wonder Switching a bit trickier in this scenario. This is on purpose, especially to make it harder for the AI to chain produce and switch Wonders. I hope you will get the Great Archives nevertheless! And I hope this is the reason for you not being able to switch, not really a glitch. Thank you for playing my scenario!

 

[Cyc]

Played the scenario. Really enjoyed it. Especially the Reformation and entire Cultural revolution for a new way of life. A great victory condition. I didn't finish my first game, as I didn't want my Family Castle on my Western border. As I stated in my first post, I had a little trouble at first with the Civilopedia not stating all the requirements for the builds, but eventually with some research and testing, it all worked itself out. Finishing up without the Space Race screen was kinda scary, as I really needed to check the 2nd place team.

Good work.

 

[Lamabreeder]

Hey Cyc, I'm very happy to hear that you had fun with my scenario!

I'm a bit confused with the bit about the Civilopedia not stating all building reqirements, though, because I was extra careful to include every bit of information. I also checked my own installation and there the information was there. (Just like in the first example image in post #1) Don't know why this info doesn't show on your installation but I'm sorry to hear this! You worked it all out yourself nevertheless, so I think all is good in the end.

I had a little help with the victory condition from my gf, a historian, who gave me some pointers on what reforms might be plausible for the civs at the end of this scenario.

Oh, and your screenshot revealed to me that I forgot to translate the civ names to english! Not that it matters much, I think...

 

[Cyc]

Lamabreeder, I can go back and triple check my copy, but I think the version you posted above is different than your installation. You may have left out a patch. Besides the names, most of the text is still in Duetsch. The building requirements posted were as I said. There were multiple examples. This is not a loss in translation. Remove your copy and install the copy posted above.

With the information missing and the language being foriegn, it became a Civ puzzle. When I tried using the Espinage screen, I had to save and close to open an English version save so I could see the order of options. Then go back into your game and make my selection. But the game was still fun, even though I haven't had to do this much research playing the game since I first bought Civ3. Thanks again.

 

[Lamabreeder]

Hi Cyc,

I did as you suggested, removed my own scenario completely, downloaded it from this site and then reinstalled it. The result: Everything works fine, just as advertised in post #1.

So, why does it work for me and not for you? I am puzzled.

A first possibility: The directory structure after unpacking the archive might be uncorrect. In order for the civilopedia to be available, the folder CountOfAnywhere must be located in the Scenario folder within the Conquests folder. The CountOfAnywhere folder must contain the folders Art and Text. It is easy to mix things up here by unpacking the archive into an additional folder (with the same name). In this case you would have a folder CountOfAnywhere containing another folder CountOfAnywhere containing the folders Art and Text. This will not work.

A second possibility: I am not sure how much the german version and the US version conflict with each other. Since I have no problems playing US scenarios with my german version I did not assume there where any significant problems. Known problems like the Tank/Panzer problem do not apply here. Moreover, if it would, the scenario would not have loaded at all. I might, however, not have realized the existence of other dependencies. At the moment, I assume that in order for the civilopedia to be available, an appropriate text file must be sitting in the right place (Scenarios/ScenarioName/Text/Civilopedia.txt) and matching keys must be placed both within the text file and the scenario file. Perhaps additional requirements must be met. Since I play my scenario on the same system it was developed on, it is not surprising that it works - here.

Several things could help me find out what is wrong. First, are there other players who have the same problem? Second, what exactly does the Civilopedia tell you if you, i.e., inquire about the Housecarl (which can be easily done right after starting the scenario)? Third, if someone has some clue as to the nature of this problem or even knew a solution, this would be extremely helpful, of course.

Wow Cyc, not having the Civilopedia available and nevertheless figuring out everything on your own is quite a feat, I daresay!

In part the language problem cannot be helped; not easily at least. This concerns all language which is contained in the scenario file itself. I attempted to translate the most important stuff (units, technologies, terrain,...), but I forgot for instance the spy missions. The civilpedia, however, is english, at least the textual part contained in the Civilopedia.txt.

 

[Acrux]

This looks intriguing. I'll definitely check it out.

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

This is a great mod thanks for making it

 

[schimtzi]

I noticed that cities near river cannot build Family Castle (because cities adjacent to river _may_ not build Aqueducts, Wells in this case). Is this intentional? Not a major problem though. Overall I have to say that I especially liked this scenario. Very nice work.

And yes, a few things remained in Deutsch (civilization names, or 'Wohlstand' for instance), but it did not bother me a bit. Adds to the flavour of the game.