New Alliances" Bactar Island
Civ3 Conquests. Scenario title: "New Alliances" Location is "Bactar Island", alliances are locked.
Settings: Chieftan difficulty, Normal agression.
I selected to play the Dutch. The computer assigned the Portugese to be my ally. Our enemies are the Germans and the Byzantines.
My first question is this.....is this scenario some kind of a joke? Is it designed for people who actually PREFER to have a bad time?
Playing this makes me feel like I am being sucker-punched in the side of the head, over and over again, by Corky the ******.
The opening page of this scenario gives a fairly drastic warning against wasting resources on early agression. This turns out to be complete BULL, which deeply angered me. Unless you attack early, you're very very quickly drowning in invaders and you cannot keep up no matter what you do. The only way to have even a tiny chance of surviving is to distract the hordes of Germans and Byzantines by sending raiders into their territory.
So, next question is, WHY does the opening page deliberately LIE to you? If you stay home and build up defensively, you are quickly CHOKED to death with raiders! WHY does the game LIE???????????
Next....no matter how much cash and technology I give the Portugese, within 15 minutes, they have lost two of their cities. It is always the exact same two cities, and always at the exact same point in the game. So, next question is, am I correct in guessing that the game literally and deliberately cheats, and it is automatic that the Portugese will lose these cities to the Byzantines?
Next....although my raiders in German territory are not seeing any new cities built, or much infrastructure being developed, the Germans have what appears to be an endless supply of free troops, especially these horsemen units armed with scimitars. How is this even remotely possible? How is this even remotely fair, or possible to defend against?
Since the Portugese are utter morons and waste everything I give them, I'd rather conquer their cities and get control of the resources myself. How do I do this? The computer keeps refusing to let me attack them.
How and why does the Black Death occur? Every time I try this scenario, about an hour into the game, one of my cities gets the Black Death. I have never seen cities in any other nation afflicted with this.
