Five Cities Scenario - Conquests

[CdGGambit]

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago about a "five city challenge" or something of the like. I think it was a player limited decision rather than an actual part of the scenario. The idea stuck with me as an interesting game and I built a scenario around it. The end result is that regardless of map size, the game does not bog down and still provides a huge world. Turns go by quickly as you don't have many cities to manage. Army sizes are smaller, and the game requires much more tactical decisions involving limiting your opponents resources. This Scenario doesn't change the map so you can play with a random map each time.

In this Scenario you are given five settlers, workers and warriors to start the game with. Your palace will also build one settler every 100 turns. You cannot build any more. Concentrate on holding resources with outposts and using airfields and mobile armies to defend them.

Rule changes:
-Research costs for medieval and industrial have been halved and the modern era research has been cut by 3.
-The optimum number of cities for all map sizes is 7.
-Defensive bonuses in all towns/metropolis/cities increased
-All units (except cruise missle, tactical nuke and ICBM) now have pop. cost of 1
-Cavalry upgrades to mechanized infantry
-Medieval Infantry upgrades to rifleman
-Longbowman upgrades to rifleman
-Guerilla stats 8/8/1 90s hidden nationality does not upgrade
-TOW Infantry 14/16/1 120s Bombard 8
-Marine stats 16/10/1 120s
-Paratrooper stats 8/14/1 90s
-Modern Paratrooper 14/16/1 110s
-Modern Armor 24/16/3 150s

Notes:
My reasoning for making the optimum city size of 7 is to increase the effect of corruption in the games. Otherwise, on a huge map size corruption would never play a role. Likewise, it is also to give diminished returns on taking enemy cities such that a player who takes over another nation does not have gigantic advantage over the rest of the players. The increased defensive bonuses of towns is designed such that it's much more difficult to take towns as well. The stat changes are mainly just small changes designed to make some units that are hardly ever used and interesting. I hope you enjoy the scenario.

I've played it through a few times and it has this annoying habit of limiting the amount of micromanagement required and drastically decreasing turn sizes. Airfields actually become useful too which is neat.

Unzip to your Conquests/Scenarios directory and enjoy =]

Please post any comments and crits or mistakes.

Gambit

 

[Dicorion]

Thanks. I will try.

 

[teccuk]

This sounds fantastic!
The palace producing a settler every 100 tuns is an ingenious way of limiting growth!

Stupid work... rather be going home NOW to try it.

 

[Aethelwulf]

For Civ 4 - Change 'England' to 'Britain' !!!

No!!!!

Leave England, add Scotland

 

[teccuk]

Gambit - been playing your scenario for two evenings now. Works very very well, the AI seems to have no problem with it, i was expecting them to join their settlers to a city or somthing! I think it still benefits a war like game, but then war is basically a good tactic. I'm pretty sure its my fault that i'm getting left behind in the tech at the mo.... I'm playing on regent and its turning out to be a great game! Racing to build a colony on saltpeter at the moment!

Aethelwulf - nice name by the way always fancied myself as king of wessex!

Anyway: no no no no!!!! Come on the three countries have been united off and on now for nearly 2000 years! Would have england been able to get an empire without Scottish sceintific ingenuity or welsh industrial might? no, it was a 'british' empire. And im sorry but theres no way Scotland would be justified as a civ in its own right! I've got scot welsh and english releatives i feel more british than english, the differences between the three might seem very pronounced to us living here but no one outside of europe would be able to tell the difference in terms of culture or traditions scotland only as difernet to wales as cornwall is to northumberland. It might be three countries but its quite obviuosly one nation.

King Arthur for leader, his legend lives everywhere in britain!

 

[Plotinus]

This looks like a really good idea. I'll be giving it a go. Although I think that since it's a random map game it ought really to count as a mod rather than a scenario, so the thread should really be in the Mod forum. Perhaps someone will move it.

As for the entirely OT England-Britain argument, I think I should point you to the link in my sig!

 

[CdGGambit]

I can't really tell the difference between scenarios and mods, both seem to have both type's of games.

Anyways, thanks for the comments guys. I do like how the AI responds to the ruleset in this scenario. Last game I had an opposing Civ attack me just to destroy some of my colonies near them, once they were gone they immediatly sued for peace. I fought back long enough to retake them, but it does show the AI takes into consideration colonies for warfare. I was very impressed by that.

Does anyone have any suggestions for rules changes to make the mod run smoother? The only other thing I can think of is to suggest 12 players rather than 16 for a huge map size to give more room for colonies.

 

[teccuk]

Hi Gambit.

I dunno you seem to have got it pretty much right. Its a really good mod/scenario (whatever).

Have you changed the rules on defense? it was taking me about 3 knights to kill spearmen in unwalled cities! Im not that bad at civ - ive been playing for years, but i keep falling quite serously behind in tech, any ideas as to why? normally on regent i don't find this a problem. I finally killed the maya but the corruption is so rampant that im losing money hand over fist with 11 cities! again, money is not something i usually have a problem with on this level. - i suppose im just not playing it right. The AI seems to really suit this scenario for some strange reason - although what i have found is a war like civ on another continent gets huge by killing, which means there huge (compared to others) but also totally corrupt.

Started another game on pangea with lots of desert to really give a feeling of emptyness on the level above regent (uh... whats that?)

I wouldnt suggest anything - its your scenario! My only wish maybe to get three settlers and get the palace to produce one every 50 turns - but maybe this would be a seperate three city challange!

This is the best scenario ive had for ages really adds to the game - thanks for making it!

 

[teccuk]

Ah! just read the first post - you have changed the defensive bonus of cities - very good move!!!

 

[CdGGambit]

Yes, there's a serious edge given to defend cities now. Likewise, the optimal number of cities is set at 7 (thinking about moving that up a notch or two) to prevent too much victory by war. You need to strangle your opponents resources and then attack their cities, it's the only way you'll have a chance at winning unless you have much, much more tech.

One thing I have noticed, is that on cities with large amounts of corrupt that you just took (especially on pre-democracy governments) it is helpful to keep them on wealth or corruption reducing improvements or units. It doesn't make any sense to try to improve the city until you can get the corruption way down.

I don't have a problem staying up to date research wise on emperor, but that's usually where I put my focus in the game.

 

[teccuk]

Okay, clawed it back. Emporer game going well after a few false starts - upped the max cities to 8 - seems to work okay.

Made a scenario based on this one - huge desert filled map with 6 small oasis (ie 5 cities each possible aound a lake) resources are hidden in the vast desert which has various hidden treaures and very small oasis. Its not as much fun i thought it would be, quite a slow game with a lot of work required to reccy and claim the resources / luxurys in the desert - of course additionally annoying is the AIs ability to see those barbarians and thus steal all the gold that lies within! grrrr.

 

[davbenbak]

This would be great for a Greek City-State scenario. I had thought of trying one along the same lines with some of the great maps of Greece that are available but was unable to find a way to keep the AI from destroying the few precious cities you start with.

 

[Luthor_Saxburg]

I've played and enjoyed it very much. It's great for people like me who like big maps but don't have the patient to manage lot & lots of units!

I think the one settler every 100 turns is a simple and great idea! And having units to cost 1 pop really changes the game and makes it more fun. You really have to take care of that growth and military power hinders your growth, so you think twice before building military units! At least I did! The funny thing was that that "rule" was on top of my mind even when I played other games so I was not building military units in small sized cities... even though the rule did not exist anymore!
The increase city defense is annoying but a MUST. Otherwise the game could go too fast. I think you must have increased the defense bonus a lot, no?!


What for me makes less sense is the following:
- Personnally I wouldn't cut the research costs. I understand why you did it, but I like slow research
- I don't understand why you allow upgrading Cav to Mech Inf. I think the old rule is better (because it's more difficult with less upgrades).

 

[CdGGambit]

I think I may have cut the research costs a little bit too much, as the cities you do have end up being VERY powerful by the middle ages. I can probably quickfix that just by increases min research time to 6 turns.

With Cavalry, I always got annoyed that the horseman line didn't go anywhere. In history, Cavalry was typically replaced with mechanized units. However it may have been more like disbanding the Cavalry to make room for mechanized units. With the 1 pop costs for creating a unit, it would make sense to use already trained troops. And it doesn't seem to be that big of a leap for me, as Galleons upgrade to Transport anyways =]

 

[teccuk]

Hmm, again i reckon its pretty much bang on as it is - the science rate is great for terrible terrible traders like me who really can't be bothered to check in with the AI every couple of turns and so allows us to remain a little more isolationist scientifically.

Yes, after two 'epics' (the turns are lovely and short) i can conlude that it might be a good idea to raise the optimum city count to 8, and i spose the calvary to mech infantry is a bit random too, but i can see why you did it.

This is great tho - just leave it!

Still cant get my good *in theory* desert scen to be any -fun- although it works technically. Sounds good to anyone else or is it a non starter?