First scenario building attempt

[Rhynome]

Hello to you all!
I've been coming to this website and over time exhausting your supply of Civ2 Scenarios. I have Civ2 Multiplayer Gold, just so you know.

I wish to make some scenarios:
1. Main Project, long term. A mediterranean scenario.
2. Shorter term. A scenario to emulate Napoleonic era sea battles (and maybe using the same technique to emulate land battles).
3. ???

I'm hoping that by posting my intentions here you'll be able to keep me pressured to pursue the idea, and also that you'll be able to offer help.

Barriers so far:
1. Creating a map from scratch, there has to be an easier way than editing each tile at a time, surely? Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough, but is there some way of either using a sort of "brush", to mouse over terrain (unlikely), or to tell the game "(0,0),(0,200),(200,0),(200,200) all plains", or such? If there is no such way then I'll just go ahead with doing it nice and slow. I see other posts on the matter and I am looking at them, but I'll put this question anyway, in case new and refreshing information comes up, oh yes, please, go off topic onto any rambling matter if you so wish.
2. Changing city names. There must be a way, but until I find it can anyone else tell me if they've done it and if so how they've done it?
3. The other stuff I'll ask as I come to it; such as "can someone please design me a graphic for a small flimsy ship that may be able to carry some cargo and a crew of 5 or 6, pleeeeease?"

Apart from that, hey all! And I like the scenarios you lot churn out and I'd love to get involved.

Thanks in advance.

 

[kobayashi]

1. yes a seperate program comes with CIV2 MGE which is essentially a map editor. It has a five tile by five tile brush. You can change terrain but the finer details like roads, you have to do by hand.

2. Under cheat mode, set yourself as that civ and you can change the names of all its cities. There is also a nice third pary utility which lets you edit the insides of cities easily, I can't recall the name of the program at the moment but its probably something like CivCity etc.

http://sleague.apolyton.net/index.php?title=Category:Utilities

3. just 'borrow' from the hundreds of scenarios you have exhausted.

 

[Agent327]

Also, standard Civ2 works with City Lists per civ which you can edit in your scenarios to provide your custom names. (And ofcourse all cities on a map can be edited.)

 

[Rhynome]

Oh, wow, I remember that map editor from years ago. Silly me. Okay, I'm going to delete that first question and make you all look like idiots who answer the wrong question just so I can save face.

Thanks both of you. I shall now begin with all the fun of the map.

Just so it's known, and to keep me motivated (as described above) the Med. one is a trading map. I'm not actually sure if it's possible to make it as such, if not it'll just be a standard civ map with 7 tribe starting locations that you can play. If it is possible to be a trading map I'll have to make it for online play, as only humans would really be able to make it work, and that means I'll have to try and play a few online games to get a feel of how the changed systems work.

What I'll probably do is make the map, design the tribes and then make two or maybe more different scenario from it.

What I mean by trading scenario:
I've always found that in Civ games there's a lack of Casus Belli; war just starts because it's part of the game objective. What I want to do is to have a wonder of the world called "Trading Empire" that has a very high build cost, so the only way to get it is to buy it with cash from caravans and freights (which have inflated revenues, much as in La Belle Epoque and similar scenarios). In order to promote trading over war I'll make most of the land units more defensive than attacking, with a high build cost to good attacking units; so if you really want to go to war, you can, but really it's easier just to scupper other countries' trading attempts at sea. I need to see if it's possible to have allocate Objective points to the wonder so that at the end of the game whomsoever owns it wins; if not then as long as it's online play between humans (if the game ever gets accepted in that way) then they can just accept that whoever gets the wonder wins, they don't need the game to tell them to.

Tribes:
Iberians (or Spanish)
Italics (or Romans)
Carthaginians (or Berbers)
Greeks
Egyptians
Hittites (or Turkic or Turks or Whatever)
Canaanites

Hm, that's it in explanation for that one for now.

I'll start off with just the map with the tribe starting points set out. I may also make a map with the tribes developed, so they all have infrastructure and a few towns; so you can play more of a "golden age" type scenario and get right into the trading.

Still not sure whether to have the map revealed or not.

 

[Agent327]

Turkish tribes didn't arrive in Anatolia until centuries after Antiquity. Otherwise I'd say your Trading Empire idea sounds pretty challenging to build a scenario off.

 

[Rhynome]

I know the Turks didn't really turn up until... but the Hittites never really had access to the sea and the Turks are less obscure than the Hittites, really. I put Turks in brackets mainly if anyone was confused about who I meant by Hittites. At least this gives the region of where they're from.

The main plan is Hittites. It's Carthage or Berbers that I'm not so sure about; the legends, and a lot of etymological evidence, suggests that Carthage was founded by Phoenicians who are Canaanites. So if I'm going to have the Phoenicians building a society, sending out basic costal rafts and coming across the Carthaginians then that's going to be a little weird.

So the current tribe list seems more to be:
Iberians; Italics; Berbers; Greeks; Egyptians; Hittites; Canaanites.
For the Berber city names I'll just use the Carthaginian ones most likely. Wikipedia gives me 19 names for Hittite cities, which is nice, but I suppose I'll want up to about 25 (though I plan for ~12 cities), in which case if I can't find many more I'll start using Hittite proper nouns from Hebrew and other near-Eastern texts
As for the Iberians, however...

First rough map in current formation, then going to play about with different map ratios, etc. Once I work out where I want everything it'll be a bit easier. I'm also going to give each tribe roughly the same amount of resources, so if you add up how much Food, Shields and Trade they each have then it'll be roughly equal, maybe make averages of a few different city placement patterns. Then the scattered islands throughout the Mediterranean won't be balanced, and are first come first served. If you can grab the hypothetically vinyard rich island of Sicily first and keep dominance over it then good on you! Of course, the Canaanites are going to have a bit of a hard time getting to Sicily, so the island themselves will be slightly spread out, e.g. Cyprus for Canaanite, Hittite and Greek, Crete for Egyptian and Greek, Sicily for Beber and Italic, etc.

Even if I can't get the original Trade Empire idea to work I do like the idea of making a balanced Mediterranean map; almost perfectly balanced for each tribe, but with different chances to exploit the map. If the trade Empire does seem to work, however, my little diagrams seem to suggest that if you can keep hold of Crete then you can significantly damage other tribe's chances. So I'll fill Crete full of mountains (as it should be) so it's hard to profit from it and also easier for other tribes to attack or at least besiege it. I may have to take some geographical liberties with the Macedonia/Scorpia region of Greece, however, in order to prevent them from having too much land to build in to.

 

[Agent327]

Hittites without sea access? This map says differently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hittite_Empire.png

Also, Carthage (in Aramaic Qrthdst, New City) was founded by Tyre, that is certain; the date is not.

 

[Rhynome]

I didn't say they didn't have sea access I just said [incorrectly] they weren't that sea-based. Though there are two Hittite civilisations in history, due to name and historical ambiguity, no? Or... may have been.

I'm putting Tyre as a Canaanite city, so I don't really want Carthage.

I'm a bit obsessed with languages, so I don't really want two Northwest Semitic, let alone two Canaanite, speaking peoples on the same map. I want this to sort of be the era where language and nation were arguably more related.

Also, thanks for all the help so far!

 

[kobayashi]

As a 'trading-based" scenario, the Wealth of Nations might have some ideas for you. Its uses trade routes and bribery as the main means of expansion.

http://sleague.apolyton.net/index.php?title=The_Wealth_of_Nations

 

[McMonkey]

Sounds like an interesting concept. I would not trust the AI to trade (or do much else) very effectively without massive help from the events. One of the hardest parts of making single player scenarios is making the game challenging by getting the AI behave in a aggressive and concentrated manner. Something to bear in mind early on in the design process. Good luck!

 

[Agent327]

I didn't say they didn't have sea access I just said [incorrectly] they weren't that sea-based. Though there are two Hittite civilisations in history, due to name and historical ambiguity, no? Or... may have been.

Indeed, sea-based they were not (but you said without real sea access), though there aren't that many "sea-based" civs anyway. Also, there weren't two distinct Hittite civilizations, just the Hittite Empire and, after its collapse, minor Hittite kingdoms.

Be sure to check out kobayashi's link!

 

[Rhynome]

I think I meant Hatti as opposed to Neo-Hittite. Not Hittites but there before the Hittites and from whom the Hittites may have their name. Like the Normans turning up and after a while calling themselves "English", whereas before only the Anglo-Saxons were "English" (from Angle, of course).
Actually, I think this is the reason for a lot of my conclusion. But I should stop thinking about that, and instead start thinking about how I'm going to restrict growth in North West Africa; I'm thinking lots of desert and making it very hard, if not impossible, to irrigate due to mountain placement.

Also, writing this here more for my benefit than anyone else's.
Roads and rivers will have a 1/2 cost, instead of 1/3, to promote use of sea, maybe with railroads to 1/4 for that super-fast travel. For the same reason North Africa is currently split in two on the map around about the coast of modern Lybia.
For, again, the same reason of slowing down the game the production cost of settlers may be increased. I don't want the map to get smothered before the fun has had a chance to start. It would be far more interesting if the Greeks could have a city on the same island as the Berbers and, once again, if the trade thing works then it'll be a shame for the infrastructure to be up before the sabotage and privateering can begin.

Does anyone know of a way of instigating a pecuniary reward for destroying an enemy unit? Would it be via events if possible?

Oh, to give an idea of scale, on the current map revision both Sicily and Sardinia can comfortably hold three cities.

 

[Agent327]

Hatti is just another name for Hittite(s), their one time capital being called Hattusas.

It's quite easy to eventscript say giving X amount of gold for killing unit Y belonging to civ Z. (Just check out the Editor Help to get it right.)

 

[Necropolis]

id like to see a mixing of the Star trek modpacks to make quadrant modpacks for CIV2
the Beta Quadrant right now is the Most Interesting to me it would be a good start.

 

[timerover51]

I know the Turks didn't really turn up until... but the Hittites never really had access to the sea and the Turks are less obscure than the Hittites, really. I put Turks in brackets mainly if anyone was confused about who I meant by Hittites. At least this gives the region of where they're from.

Hmm, why don't you simply use the Trojans instead of the Hittites. The other options, since this is Mediterranean based would be the Mycenaean Greeks, or the Minoan civilization of Crete. Both were very heavily involved in trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. Of the three, the Minoans were the civilization most heavily dependent on the sea.

And the Berbers would be much more accurately described as Numidians, as that is how they were known in the Ancient World.

 

[Necropolis]

i agree Numidians is more classical age then Berbers.

berbers is more like middle ages.

why are you thinking about the Minoans any ways there civilization disapeard around 1400 BC and was replaced by the mycenaean

and there is a trading empire wonder on anoter Civ2 modpack its called "east india company" and its on the Call to power modpack i know that this wonder replaced Light house. basically what this wonder did was make Ships travel farther per turn.

and the Cannanites did not Found carthage it was the phonecians . phonecia is modern lebanon and Cannan is the modern nation of Isreal. you could also have a wonder for solomons temple in isreal that was built in the 960's BC. i know that this wonder idea is not too far fetched cause on one of the star trek modpacks theres a Vulcan Temple wonder.

just replace the wonders that are outside of the mediteranian like Great wall of China could be changed to Great city walls of jerico but Jerico is before the recored history age that began in 4000 BC. and jerico is in Isreal by the way.

also its thought the cannanites lived in isreal before the Hebrews in the the 1400's BC the hebrews came to Isreal in the 1200's when they were freed by Moses its thought to be during the riegn of Ramses 2 in egypt.

Ramses 2's reign was important becasue this was the very first war that ended with a treaty and it was the first known treaty in recored history it was made between the egyptians and the hittites after the battle of kadesh like i said the Minoans were long gone by the 1200's.

the hittes were important becasue they invented Iron Working but on the game Iron working makes Legions possible this inturn is part of Roman empire society. but im my opinon all a legion is basically is guys with swords.

dont try to make the map square by square just down load the mediteranean map

also the founding a Carthage is about 800 BC which was long after the treaty of Kadesh in
1286 BC. besides theres already a mediteranean scenario that comes with the game its caled "Rome" and the timer period it right after Alexander the great of macedonia dies.

 

[Agent327]

Some comments:

and the Cannanites did not Found carthage it was the phonecians . phonecia is modern lebanon and Cannan is the modern nation of Isreal.

also its thought the cannanites lived in isreal before the Hebrews in the the 1400's BC the hebrews came to Isreal in the 1200's when they were freed by Moses its thought to be during the riegn of Ramses 2 in egypt.

The Phoenicians spoke a Canaanite language. The story of Exodus was written after the Babylonian exile, 586 BCE, and after the Prophet books, ergo most plausibly a later invention. (There's no mention of Jews in Egyptian history until the Egyptians made contact with them in what's now Israel/Palestine.)

the hittes were important becasue they invented Iron Working but on the game Iron working makes Legions possible this inturn is part of Roman empire society. but im my opinon all a legion is basically is guys with swords.

You could use Bronze Working instead. (Or make Iron Working a prereq for Chariots, for instance.)

 

[Necropolis]

no there were two distinct period's of Hebrews being enslaved. there was the earlier one with the Egyptians and then Chaldean one were they went to Babylonia. besides it doesnt matter when the story was writen becasue its based on history you just take out all the super natural stuff and then your left with the facts. the Hebrews were enslaved to the Egyptians for about 400 years but the Babylon one was about 50 years.

we are getting off topic the point is i think that the exodus was based on true story. im not saying that mosses parted the red sea really happined.

its not acurate to use Iron working for chariots becasue when chariots were invented there was no Iron working yet. chariots began in the 1600's bc becasue this is when recorded history first mentions them when egypt was invaded by the hysokos.

just because Phonecians spoke the same language as the nebrews dosent mean they were the same culture they were two distinct cultures

 

[Agent327]

I was only commenting on the Phoenician language.

As far as '400 years of slavery' of Jews by Egypt: that's total nonsense. There's no record of this in Egyptian historical records, only of Egyptian campaigns into Palestine and beyond. Any slaves resulting from these campaigns would have been war captives. They certainly did not relocate an entire people and there's no record of any massive 'exodus' of Jewish people back to Palestine. The Babylonian exile consisted of (partial) relocation of native conquered population, originally an Assyrian practice to ensure native obedience - which however wasn't fail-safe at all.

And I agree it's off-topic. So, how's the scenario progressing?