Gargantua_FR
Chieftain
- Joined
- May 1, 2015
- Messages
- 29
Hello guys,
I am quite new at civfanatic even if I have been a lurker from one year. And all of this stories inspired me to start my own variant game with a narrative report. I post the introduction here.
Here is the abstract version if you don't want to read the lengthy introduction
Mr Soupalognon, the Sun rises in 4000 B.C. on iberic peninsula, and you have been chosen to lead the spanish people to become a major european power. An omniscient god has revealed you lot of informations about the surroundings civ, so you may want to listen carefully the following map description :
This game takes place on the Europa map provided with Beyond The Sword, this includes all of northern Africa coast and Israël and mesopotamia. It has been slightly customized mainly to ensure ressource and capitals surrondings balance. However, this has been done a year ago so we don't know a lot about our initial positions. This is supposed to be sort of Antic european history oriented but ther are a few inaccuracy for game balance purpose. 12 Civ are known to compete for Europa's domination, being cultural, military diplomatic or scientific.
First ourselves, Iberic peoples led by Soupalognon (Isabella of Spain). We start on the east coast of Iberic peninsula (somewhere between nowadays Barcelona and Valencia if I remember correctly) at the city of Carthagène. No more is known around our position, except we should have source of both strategic and precious metals and a relative dry land for historical accuracy.
To the north, lives our ethnic brother Brennus of Gauls (Celts). He is currently on the collins in central Gaul, but there is a very fertile valley to his north, to the east stand the Alp mountain and after that, we have :
Julius Caesar himself : His starting position is a bit small but he has lot of ressource and his legion may try to conquer Gaul or pacifically expand to the awesome Danube valley east of italy.n the former case he will have to compete with the two following rivals.
First Alaric leader of Gothic horde (Charlemagne of HRE) starting in the fertile and flat valley, not far from baltic sea. He'd like to saccage Rome one more time but his starting position is low on production, exept for ton of forest.
Then Pyrrhus of Epire (Alexander of Greeks), the famous roman rival starts in Athens with horse and copper availlable. He has two main expansion choice. Either the Balkan and Danube valley or the turkish peninsula, not so fertile but more productive with marble availlable. Controlling Constantinopolis might be a very good spot.
To the north lives Cassillevauno of Britons (Victoria of England), our ethnic cousin. Britain island is very good, lot of rare ressource (Deer and beaver). And Ireland is looking good as well if he wants to set up a scientific civilization. However Londinium is one tile off the coast so if he wants to expand on the sea, that's a though competition with :
Ragnar of Vikings. This guy even has a galley at start to play with. His homeland, Scandinavia has only a few but very good spot. Still he his a prime candidates to settle denmark, western russia and perhaps some brittons trading post.
On the central and cold russia province you can met the completely slightly inaccurate Oleg the wise of Rus' (Stalin of Russians) Russian has no antic leader and we cannot let all that land to barbarians. He start in an heavy forested region, has a lot of polar ressources and a lot of good land he may claim to his west and south. However there is someone not so far away, he had better to keep an eye on.
ATTILA himself, leader of the Huns (Genghis Kahn of Mongolia), the furious barbarians hordes. They even got two keshiks at the start. (By the way the Keshik is so more appropriate for Huns than for Mongols as an UU). Lot of horses live in this region which is a bit dry, the best territory nearby is the Black Sea coast.
More to the south, in mesopotamia, we have Darius of persian Empire. A very good region for starting a civilization with a lot of flood plains (almost the only ones with egyptians) along Tiger and Euphrate. However there is a few deset in the surroundings and with map borders (By the way Earth is flat and there is nothing but Dark Hell beyound World's border) he is kinded of screwed. At this time Mesopotamia was well advanced compare to Europe, so to reflect this Persepolis already has a barracks and Darius has a worker availlable.
To his east, live the jewish led by King David (Gilgamesh of Sumeria), they also got good starting position and nice expansion possibilty in Egypt (Egypt civilization is already in decline and there is only barbs there now) and in Turkia. Another advenced civ starting with a farmed wheat and of course the judaic holy city of Jerusalem.
Finally the last one Hannibal of Carthaginians, the famous roman's worts ennemy. He his very isolated, His starting position looks quite good after OG's intervention (my god, it was so useless by default, only plains and desert tiles). He his quite isolated, so he will have to compete for mediterrannean possesions if he wants to be relevant in this story. He has a starting galley to help him in this task, though.
Finally, last one : since Europe is kind of backward barbarians are ragings in this region, be careful !
I had fun in the workbuilder editing the diplomacy, so I have a few thing to say on that point. There are two coherent ethnic groups slightly in love with each other, namely the Celts (ourselves, Brennus and Cassillevauno) and the Germans (Ragnar, Alaric and Stalin). Other than this, commercial civ (Viking, Greeks and Carthaginians) also have respect with each other. Romans and Greeks surely dislike barbarians (Huns, Goths, Russians), however their respective worts ennemy are of course Carthage and Persia and this is reciprocical. Strangely, Romans like the Greeks as they learnt a lot from them, but Greeks do see them barely more evolved than barbarians tribes and have no respect for them. Alaric's worst ennemy is Rome but he also dislike Brennus and Attila as he sees them as competitor for the fall of the City. Attila almost hates everyone except Vikings but his worst ennemies are Russians (reciprocical) and Persians. Vikings are quite binary, liking people they are commercing with (Greeks, Persians and Carthaginians) and their relatives (Goths and Russians) and dislike others but their hate is mostly devoted to Cassillevaunos who also would like to see them dead. This last one don't care about other continental peoples (except their Celtic cousins). No ones care about the Jews except Hannibal who like them and Attila who hate the concept of civilization itself. Hannibal surely hates Rome and he also would like to vassalized Spain before conquering the eternal City.
So Mr Soupalognon, you are in charge of this challenge. Of course you are a man of Honour so you cannot do anything you would like. You must be kind towards your relative Brennus, this means accepting all his demands, being tech gift, religious, warring, civic switch. Hopefully his favorite civic is organised religion, not bad one and we are spiritual. You also have to make sure they remain relevant in this Game of Thrones so you must declare war on any civs able to conquer a Gaul city (a true gaul city, not a barb outpost conquered in other side of the world due to AI craziness). Side note, if they happen to DOW you (you must do whatever you can for that not to happen but we can never trust the AI), this is a trahison, so you are allowed to capture any cities you want to bring them back to reason and extort some reparations on peace treaty. However you are a forgetful man, so as soon as the peace is signed you must liberate back their cities. Celtic people have a huge pride of themselves so of course you should never vassalized them.
Cassillevaunos is our cousin, so you must please him as well. However, being lonely on his own island brought him a bit further from the true celtic spirit, so he has no word to say about our foreign or souverain policy. More explicitly, we should give him whatever tech or gold he asks for but we don't have to swap civic and religion or declare war or embargo the way he'd like us to do. Of course they must be defended if it appears that Brittany is in peril.
And finally, we must of course defend our homeland with all our heart. That is to say we have to declare war on any competitors settling in Iberic peninsula. But since we are quite civilized we may agree to trading post in this peninsula (a trading post is a city controlled by a civ which is friendly towards us). By the way we won't declare war to friendly civ, unless we have a very good reason for it. Reminds that Brennus wanting to do so is a good reason.
I will play this challenge at marathon speed and prince difficulty, a level I am (very) comfortable with. But Monarch is still a challenge for me (moreover with some added constraint) and for this kind of roleplaying I want to allow myself some freedom of stategies.
I finish this introduction by comments from the mapmaker's point of view. Notice that I already played this exact scenario once (a year ago) as Pyrrhus of Epire and I liked quite well. I don't have good memories about our starting position but I think we have a lot of brown land. I am pretty sure to have given at least one strategic ressource to every one, if not in initial BFC, reachable via a second city. This is important as raging barbs are no jokes ! (even in prince). In the Pyrrhus game, David was crippled due to horde coming from egypt and Hannibal never found a second city and got eliminated around 500 BC. In spain we have less empty space so this might not be so hard but Great Wall is a possibility (no idea whether we have stone or not). Caesar and Stalin did pretty well in land grab and were major power. Actually, Julius completely overexpanded from Italy to Poland and Black sea, crippling Alaric but falling behin in tech and was then almost conquested by myself. However, I don't trust Pyrrhus AI to be such an adversary and AI Caesar could be a major threat in future (which is quite accurate from roleplaying point of view). With Caesar going east, Brennus slowly raised his power and territory and became a major power, so even if he is our friend, he may be a rival. Cassillevauno, Ragnar and Darius also did quite well, not expanding so much but leveraging their financial trait and were tech leader. And I think that Darius would have been a major threat without the Great Kahn to give him some trouble, he really did his job of slowing down eastern civilizations even if he collapsed in late 18th century after being dogpiled (Pyrrhus actually played a major role in this diplomatic event...) For our game, I think we should be careful not being boxed in by Brennus who start notso far from cote d'azur, finding a way to expand out iberia may be a challenge. Iberic peninsula might be enough to space win. However at marathon speed, this will be very boring and I plan to get more territory. Crossing mediterrannean and settling Morrocco is a definite possibility as this land has lot of ressource rare on Europa but we will have to handled lot of barbs and maybe Carthage as well. Otherwise a war towards Rome is the most straightforward expansion road.
Ok so let's begin. Here is the start :
A good cottageable site even if low on ressource. We also have some production. It is a shame not to have seafood with fishing starting tech. The northern mountain makes me think about pyrrennean, so we may be further north than I initially thought. Since Brennus will likely found a religion, I think we should let him do this and start worker tech. Probably the tech plan should be agriculture → animal husbandry to improve our two ressources, then the classical bronze working sounds good or maybe pottery to start cottaging. Not sure worker first is the best plan though, as he will spend some turn inactive but what else ? We already have two warriors (Every civ start with an extra military in this scenario), we cannot build scout, a barrack maybe ? Note that border pop is due in 11 turn which grant acces to three food rice or three hammer forested hill, useful for worker production as expansive leader.
I will try to play 2 to 3 round per week, starting this weekend. I expect to play about 60 turns per round (obviously more in the early game). Then, if there is any interrest in this forum, I will post a report in an (hopefully) enjoyable narrative format.
P.S. Apologize for the few (or many) english mistakes and nonsense, I hope it remains plesant to read.
I am quite new at civfanatic even if I have been a lurker from one year. And all of this stories inspired me to start my own variant game with a narrative report. I post the introduction here.
Here is the abstract version if you don't want to read the lengthy introduction
Spoiler :
Mr Soupalognon, the Sun rises in 4000 B.C. on iberic peninsula, and you have been chosen to lead the spanish people to become a major european power. An omniscient god has revealed you lot of informations about the surroundings civ, so you may want to listen carefully the following map description :
This game takes place on the Europa map provided with Beyond The Sword, this includes all of northern Africa coast and Israël and mesopotamia. It has been slightly customized mainly to ensure ressource and capitals surrondings balance. However, this has been done a year ago so we don't know a lot about our initial positions. This is supposed to be sort of Antic european history oriented but ther are a few inaccuracy for game balance purpose. 12 Civ are known to compete for Europa's domination, being cultural, military diplomatic or scientific.
First ourselves, Iberic peoples led by Soupalognon (Isabella of Spain). We start on the east coast of Iberic peninsula (somewhere between nowadays Barcelona and Valencia if I remember correctly) at the city of Carthagène. No more is known around our position, except we should have source of both strategic and precious metals and a relative dry land for historical accuracy.
To the north, lives our ethnic brother Brennus of Gauls (Celts). He is currently on the collins in central Gaul, but there is a very fertile valley to his north, to the east stand the Alp mountain and after that, we have :
Julius Caesar himself : His starting position is a bit small but he has lot of ressource and his legion may try to conquer Gaul or pacifically expand to the awesome Danube valley east of italy.n the former case he will have to compete with the two following rivals.
First Alaric leader of Gothic horde (Charlemagne of HRE) starting in the fertile and flat valley, not far from baltic sea. He'd like to saccage Rome one more time but his starting position is low on production, exept for ton of forest.
Then Pyrrhus of Epire (Alexander of Greeks), the famous roman rival starts in Athens with horse and copper availlable. He has two main expansion choice. Either the Balkan and Danube valley or the turkish peninsula, not so fertile but more productive with marble availlable. Controlling Constantinopolis might be a very good spot.
To the north lives Cassillevauno of Britons (Victoria of England), our ethnic cousin. Britain island is very good, lot of rare ressource (Deer and beaver). And Ireland is looking good as well if he wants to set up a scientific civilization. However Londinium is one tile off the coast so if he wants to expand on the sea, that's a though competition with :
Ragnar of Vikings. This guy even has a galley at start to play with. His homeland, Scandinavia has only a few but very good spot. Still he his a prime candidates to settle denmark, western russia and perhaps some brittons trading post.
On the central and cold russia province you can met the completely slightly inaccurate Oleg the wise of Rus' (Stalin of Russians) Russian has no antic leader and we cannot let all that land to barbarians. He start in an heavy forested region, has a lot of polar ressources and a lot of good land he may claim to his west and south. However there is someone not so far away, he had better to keep an eye on.
ATTILA himself, leader of the Huns (Genghis Kahn of Mongolia), the furious barbarians hordes. They even got two keshiks at the start. (By the way the Keshik is so more appropriate for Huns than for Mongols as an UU). Lot of horses live in this region which is a bit dry, the best territory nearby is the Black Sea coast.
More to the south, in mesopotamia, we have Darius of persian Empire. A very good region for starting a civilization with a lot of flood plains (almost the only ones with egyptians) along Tiger and Euphrate. However there is a few deset in the surroundings and with map borders (By the way Earth is flat and there is nothing but Dark Hell beyound World's border) he is kinded of screwed. At this time Mesopotamia was well advanced compare to Europe, so to reflect this Persepolis already has a barracks and Darius has a worker availlable.
To his east, live the jewish led by King David (Gilgamesh of Sumeria), they also got good starting position and nice expansion possibilty in Egypt (Egypt civilization is already in decline and there is only barbs there now) and in Turkia. Another advenced civ starting with a farmed wheat and of course the judaic holy city of Jerusalem.
Finally the last one Hannibal of Carthaginians, the famous roman's worts ennemy. He his very isolated, His starting position looks quite good after OG's intervention (my god, it was so useless by default, only plains and desert tiles). He his quite isolated, so he will have to compete for mediterrannean possesions if he wants to be relevant in this story. He has a starting galley to help him in this task, though.
Finally, last one : since Europe is kind of backward barbarians are ragings in this region, be careful !
I had fun in the workbuilder editing the diplomacy, so I have a few thing to say on that point. There are two coherent ethnic groups slightly in love with each other, namely the Celts (ourselves, Brennus and Cassillevauno) and the Germans (Ragnar, Alaric and Stalin). Other than this, commercial civ (Viking, Greeks and Carthaginians) also have respect with each other. Romans and Greeks surely dislike barbarians (Huns, Goths, Russians), however their respective worts ennemy are of course Carthage and Persia and this is reciprocical. Strangely, Romans like the Greeks as they learnt a lot from them, but Greeks do see them barely more evolved than barbarians tribes and have no respect for them. Alaric's worst ennemy is Rome but he also dislike Brennus and Attila as he sees them as competitor for the fall of the City. Attila almost hates everyone except Vikings but his worst ennemies are Russians (reciprocical) and Persians. Vikings are quite binary, liking people they are commercing with (Greeks, Persians and Carthaginians) and their relatives (Goths and Russians) and dislike others but their hate is mostly devoted to Cassillevaunos who also would like to see them dead. This last one don't care about other continental peoples (except their Celtic cousins). No ones care about the Jews except Hannibal who like them and Attila who hate the concept of civilization itself. Hannibal surely hates Rome and he also would like to vassalized Spain before conquering the eternal City.
So Mr Soupalognon, you are in charge of this challenge. Of course you are a man of Honour so you cannot do anything you would like. You must be kind towards your relative Brennus, this means accepting all his demands, being tech gift, religious, warring, civic switch. Hopefully his favorite civic is organised religion, not bad one and we are spiritual. You also have to make sure they remain relevant in this Game of Thrones so you must declare war on any civs able to conquer a Gaul city (a true gaul city, not a barb outpost conquered in other side of the world due to AI craziness). Side note, if they happen to DOW you (you must do whatever you can for that not to happen but we can never trust the AI), this is a trahison, so you are allowed to capture any cities you want to bring them back to reason and extort some reparations on peace treaty. However you are a forgetful man, so as soon as the peace is signed you must liberate back their cities. Celtic people have a huge pride of themselves so of course you should never vassalized them.
Cassillevaunos is our cousin, so you must please him as well. However, being lonely on his own island brought him a bit further from the true celtic spirit, so he has no word to say about our foreign or souverain policy. More explicitly, we should give him whatever tech or gold he asks for but we don't have to swap civic and religion or declare war or embargo the way he'd like us to do. Of course they must be defended if it appears that Brittany is in peril.
And finally, we must of course defend our homeland with all our heart. That is to say we have to declare war on any competitors settling in Iberic peninsula. But since we are quite civilized we may agree to trading post in this peninsula (a trading post is a city controlled by a civ which is friendly towards us). By the way we won't declare war to friendly civ, unless we have a very good reason for it. Reminds that Brennus wanting to do so is a good reason.
I will play this challenge at marathon speed and prince difficulty, a level I am (very) comfortable with. But Monarch is still a challenge for me (moreover with some added constraint) and for this kind of roleplaying I want to allow myself some freedom of stategies.
I finish this introduction by comments from the mapmaker's point of view. Notice that I already played this exact scenario once (a year ago) as Pyrrhus of Epire and I liked quite well. I don't have good memories about our starting position but I think we have a lot of brown land. I am pretty sure to have given at least one strategic ressource to every one, if not in initial BFC, reachable via a second city. This is important as raging barbs are no jokes ! (even in prince). In the Pyrrhus game, David was crippled due to horde coming from egypt and Hannibal never found a second city and got eliminated around 500 BC. In spain we have less empty space so this might not be so hard but Great Wall is a possibility (no idea whether we have stone or not). Caesar and Stalin did pretty well in land grab and were major power. Actually, Julius completely overexpanded from Italy to Poland and Black sea, crippling Alaric but falling behin in tech and was then almost conquested by myself. However, I don't trust Pyrrhus AI to be such an adversary and AI Caesar could be a major threat in future (which is quite accurate from roleplaying point of view). With Caesar going east, Brennus slowly raised his power and territory and became a major power, so even if he is our friend, he may be a rival. Cassillevauno, Ragnar and Darius also did quite well, not expanding so much but leveraging their financial trait and were tech leader. And I think that Darius would have been a major threat without the Great Kahn to give him some trouble, he really did his job of slowing down eastern civilizations even if he collapsed in late 18th century after being dogpiled (Pyrrhus actually played a major role in this diplomatic event...) For our game, I think we should be careful not being boxed in by Brennus who start notso far from cote d'azur, finding a way to expand out iberia may be a challenge. Iberic peninsula might be enough to space win. However at marathon speed, this will be very boring and I plan to get more territory. Crossing mediterrannean and settling Morrocco is a definite possibility as this land has lot of ressource rare on Europa but we will have to handled lot of barbs and maybe Carthage as well. Otherwise a war towards Rome is the most straightforward expansion road.
Ok so let's begin. Here is the start :
A good cottageable site even if low on ressource. We also have some production. It is a shame not to have seafood with fishing starting tech. The northern mountain makes me think about pyrrennean, so we may be further north than I initially thought. Since Brennus will likely found a religion, I think we should let him do this and start worker tech. Probably the tech plan should be agriculture → animal husbandry to improve our two ressources, then the classical bronze working sounds good or maybe pottery to start cottaging. Not sure worker first is the best plan though, as he will spend some turn inactive but what else ? We already have two warriors (Every civ start with an extra military in this scenario), we cannot build scout, a barrack maybe ? Note that border pop is due in 11 turn which grant acces to three food rice or three hammer forested hill, useful for worker production as expansive leader.
I will try to play 2 to 3 round per week, starting this weekend. I expect to play about 60 turns per round (obviously more in the early game). Then, if there is any interrest in this forum, I will post a report in an (hopefully) enjoyable narrative format.
P.S. Apologize for the few (or many) english mistakes and nonsense, I hope it remains plesant to read.
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
