Modscenario: Playable Byzantines, 610AD.

[TDK]

UHVs added! UPDATED to 3.19(1186): here. To play, just unpack to the \mods directory and click on the Byzantines 610AD.worldbuildersave under public maps.

Leader: Justinian I
Civilization: Byzantine Empire
Start date: 610AD
Unique Building: Hippodrome
Unique Unit: Cataphract
Unique Power: The Power of Greek Fire: Naval units inflict 1 First Strike and 20% Collateral Damage until the end of the Middle Ages

UHV:
Build 2 Christian Cathedrals by 1100 AD
Secure through trade or take control of 3 silk resources by 1450 AD
Be the first to discover Astronomy, Chemistry and Philosophy



Description: Can you hold on to your North African possessions in the face of Beduin incursions, while preparing for invasion by the Turkish tribes? Will you retain control of Jerusalem and secure your rightful position as leader of all Christendom? Can you re-establish trade with the East to retain your dominant position in Europe?

You get the exact start from Rhye's 600AD mod, except you start 1 turn later and the Arab armies have been augmented somewhat.
Stability and settler map borrowed from the Greeks.

Changelog:

Spoiler :

(September 11. 2009)
Stability hit from euros Russia and Germany removed.
Justinian no longer late Roman leader.

(August 31. 2009)
French language added(merci M41d3n.dc)
German Italian and Spanish...ish language added.
1st UHV date moved to 1100AD.

(August 28. 2009)
Typo fixed. The 2nd UHV should be get 3 SILK, not Dyes.

(August 25. 2009)
-UHV's added

(August 20. 2009)
-Augmented the Arab armies somewhat
-Machinery removed as starting tech(Rhye's 1.186 change)
-UP changed to Greek Fire.
-Fixed commerce bug.
-Dynamic civ names implemented for Byzantines.

(June 12. 2009)
Changes from the previous scenario include:
*Removed the insane greek UP and added a new UP(see above).
*Byzantines can now build Settlers.
*Christianity doesn't spread to all your cities as fast as before, so you will face competition in the AP elections.
*You are now at war with the "rebel western provinces"(independents), as Rhye intended.
*Graphics and text in the "select a civilization" screen now show the Byzantines actual attributes.

 

[Duke of Awesome]

when you say create the UHVs do you mean the actual code or the ideas?

 

[TDK]

Ideas are very welcome, but please play the mod first to get an idea of what would be fun/possible.

As for the actual code, help would be great as I'm learning as I go myself.

 

[Duke of Awesome]

i know nothing of code. lol. ill play it. (eventually)

 

[Zagoroth]

One small suggestion. I just started playing the Byzantines and I noticed that the Arabs begin with Al Qahira. This is historically inaccurate as the Arabs did not conquer that land until about 642. A solution would be to make Cairo either under Byzantine control or independent control, but with very few defenders. This would be similar to what Jerusalem looks like, meant to be conquered, but the chance it might not.

 

[Power_of_Beer]

Nice work! It's very refreshing to play another civ in RFC, though it's a bit easy to play the Byzantines as a human player. There is no real competition, the Arab AI isn't clever enough to harm you, and there are only a few barbarian attacks.

One bug I noticed was that I had +1 commerce on each square so I was soon far ahead in techs; was even able to kill the turkish stack with cannons etc.

 

[Zagoroth]

There are a few things that I noticed, I have played to 1415 so far. First off there were two instances where the AI declared war on itself. The events at the top of the screen said, "Vikings declared war on Vikings," and the same for Russia. Also later on the Vikings were vassalized by the Vikings. Besides that I was wondering if the stability map was the same as for the Greeks. I found that my stability became collapsing right after the Turks spawned, and I gave them the three cities in the Middle East. If the area the Turks automatically take is part of the Byzantine core area, I believe that should be edited as the stability hit is pretty big.

 

[Zagoroth]

Played a few more turns. It is 1445 and I just collapsed. I suppose to stop the collapse I am supposed to prepare my military for the Turks arrival and refuse to give the cities? Or reconquer them after I let them flip?

 

[Positronic]

Played a few more turns. It is 1445 and I just collapsed. I suppose to stop the collapse I am supposed to prepare my military for the Turks arrival and refuse to give the cities? Or reconquer them after I let them flip?

Well, historically, that makes a lot of sense; by 1445 the Byzantine "Empire" was essentially limited to Constantinople, Nicomedia, a few islands in the Aegean, and a small number of scattered provinces.

If you do want to survive, though, it's best to prepare a huge stack of cannons to rid yourself of the turks before they even settle Sogut. With your huge lead on everyone else, it shouldn't be too hard to do.

 

[Zagoroth]

thanks, next time i will focus more on military technology.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Yeah, the Mali UP should not be given to the Byzantines, especially now that it's got the Great Lighthouse AND its own UP.
There were many python exceptions when I tried to load this, please debug.
The Arabian AI is too easily made to stop warring you. There should be a built in -8 relationship between you and it so that it won't make peace too easily. (I was able to dump all my useless North African cities to him).
I was able to conquer Spain, England and Germany easily with your eponymous exploit, although at great cost to my stability. So yes, reconquest is easily done as long as stability is taken into account.
The impis need to make a major comeback (I have not seen a single one recently).
I would love to see Orthodox Christianity implemented too.

 

[Agent327]

This sounds like a great effort at a RFC scenario.

One small suggestion. I just started playing the Byzantines and I noticed that the Arabs begin with Al Qahira. This is historically inaccurate as the Arabs did not conquer that land until about 642. A solution would be to make Cairo either under Byzantine control or independent control, but with very few defenders. This would be similar to what Jerusalem looks like, meant to be conquered, but the chance it might not.

Actually, Al Qahira/Cairo was founded by the Arabs - so if they fail to take Egypt, it might not appear at all as a city name (not there anyway).

 

[TDK]

Thanks for the feedback.

A few quick answers:
Al-Cahira is under Arab control because in Rhye's it flips to the arabs in 610AD.

I have no idea why the Byzantines get +1 commerce, they really shouldnt.

TDK

 

[Allan79]

There are a few things that I noticed, I have played to 1415 so far. First off there were two instances where the AI declared war on itself. The events at the top of the screen said, "Vikings declared war on Vikings," and the same for Russia. Also later on the Vikings were vassalized by the Vikings. Besides that I was wondering if the stability map was the same as for the Greeks. I found that my stability became collapsing right after the Turks spawned, and I gave them the three cities in the Middle East. If the area the Turks automatically take is part of the Byzantine core area, I believe that should be edited as the stability hit is pretty big.

I have screen of this. Here its a peace between the vikings and the vikings. An other thing, the byzantine empire is mentioned severel places as greek empire or mycean people.

 

[Zagoroth]

I guess I did not know my Arab history that well then. How bout making the area around Cairo part of the Arab core area making them settle there, as opposed to it already being there?

Edit:

Also, I replayed the game and defeated the Turks using the aforementioned strategy. Once they are gone there are no real enemies left to threaten Byzantine, assuming the Arabs collapsed due to the human player owning Jerusalem and capturing Makkah. The only threat would be if Germany decided to go for its UHV, which the AI usually does not.

 

[TDK]

Thanks guys for all the feedback.
I will probably release another version once Rhye's 1.185 comes out for BTS 3.19.

So what I gather is:
-The Byz are too strong, so should I add more Arabian units to ensure that Jerusalem falls?
-Remove the extra commerce that Byz somehow got by a mistake.
-Give negative diplomatic modifiers to Arabs.

I have screen of this. Here its a peace between the vikings and the vikings. An other thing, the byzantine empire is mentioned severel places as greek empire or mycean people.

I don't know why they do that viking-viking thing, I hope it goes away next version.
The "greek empire" and "mycean people" thing you will probably have to live with. The byzantines were referred to as the "Empire of the Greeks" by it's contemporaries, so I see it a "feature" - not a bug.

 

[Fierabras]

What TDK has done in this mod is basically removing an independent civ and activating the Greeks as Byzantium. A very clever concept, but with some consequences.

It's possible to change the "mycean people" problem by modifying the dynamic names for the Greek in CIV4GameText_DynamicCivNames_04GRE.xml.

The "viking-viking" problem is very likely due to the missing independent Byzantine civ, but it can be solved with a change somewhere in the Python (have to look it up).

Justinian needs to be removed as leader for Rome as well to prevent some other problems.

As for a possible UHV I was thinking culture, religion and wine as typical for the Byzantine, so maybe:

- have 5000 culture before .... (insert tough date here, challenge is to prevent the Great Scientist as first GP from Alexandria)
- control 5 wine resources (this will force the player to settle on the Crete/Cyprus island, which is historically relevant)
- 30% Christianity (challenge is to survive long enough with the Turks spawning to reach this goal)

EDIT:

After some more contemplation, I realized that there's a much cleaner way to create a playable Byzantine mod. That is without creating a new WBS file (610 AD). Instead of making Byzantines playable and using coding from Greece, one could make a playable modified Greece/Byzantium in 600 AD and remove Byzantium altogether. For the player it wouldn't make a difference, but from a coding perspective it's a much shorter route.

 

[Zagoroth]

The issues with the early war with the Arabs is that all they care about is Jerusalem. In my games once they capture Jerusalem, they are very easy to reach a peace treaty. After ten-twenty turns, once they spread out their troops, you can just declare war again and recapture Jerusalem. Also it is very easy to capture Cairo in the early war by using your extra defensive units in Africa to capture it. After either of those situations the Arab threat is diminished and they expand towards India. On that note, did you change the coding for Arab expansion? In none of my other RFC did the Arabs ever expand towards India, like they historically did.

 

[TDK]

What TDK has done in this mod is basically removing an independent civ and activating the Greeks as Byzantium. A very clever concept, but with some consequences.

It's possible to change the "mycean people" problem by modifying the dynamic names for the Greek in CIV4GameText_DynamicCivNames_04GRE.xml.

Got it.

The "viking-viking" problem is very likely due to the missing independent Byzantine civ, but it can be solved with a change somewhere in the Python (have to look it up).

Great.

As for a possible UHV I was thinking culture, religion and wine as typical for the Byzantine, so maybe:

- have 5000 culture before .... (insert tough date here, challenge is to prevent the Great Scientist as first GP from Alexandria)
- control 5 wine resources (this will force the player to settle on the Crete/Cyprus island, which is historically relevant)
- 30% Christianity (challenge is to survive long enough with the Turks spawning to reach this goal)

Good ideas there. What do you think about a goal concerning re-conquest of Rome very early like Justinian tried. Maybe it could be construed so Byz would have trouble taking Rome and at the same time defend J'lem.

EDIT:

After some more contemplation, I realized that there's a much cleaner way to create a playable Byzantine mod. That is without creating a new WBS file (610 AD). Instead of making Byzantines playable and using coding from Greece, one could make a playable modified Greece/Byzantium in 600 AD and remove Byzantium altogether. For the player it wouldn't make a difference, but from a coding perspective it's a much shorter route.

I think the conclusion from the previous thread on Playable Byzantines was that the Byz spawn was somehow hardcoded into the mod(whatever that means), but it would be great if you could.

The issues with the early war with the Arabs is that all they care about is Jerusalem. In my games once they capture Jerusalem, they are very easy to reach a peace treaty. After ten-twenty turns, once they spread out their troops, you can just declare war again and recapture Jerusalem. Also it is very easy to capture Cairo in the early war by using your extra defensive units in Africa to capture it. After either of those situations the Arab threat is diminished and they expand towards India. On that note, did you change the coding for Arab expansion? In none of my other RFC did the Arabs ever expand towards India, like they historically did.

I agree something will probably have to be done about the Arabs. If they can take J'lem and hold it, that would go some way in tipping the balance of power(shrine income etc.).
I didn't change the coding for the Arabs, but I did give them a few more Camels to play with.

 

[Fierabras]

I think the conclusion from the previous thread on Playable Byzantines was that the Byz spawn was somehow hardcoded into the mod(whatever that means), but it would be great if you could.

I have been looking at the source files for RFC and I found out that a lot is hardcoded in the DLL. I still think a "late start Greece" (Byzantium in 600 AD) is feasible, but it requires some accurate C++ changes. I'm going to attempt it after the RFC 3.19 release. I just have to learn how to compile a DLL (reading the CFC guides on that), because I usually work exclusively with scripting languages.

Good ideas there. What do you think about a goal concerning re-conquest of Rome very early like Justinian tried. Maybe it could be construed so Byz would have trouble taking Rome and at the same time defend J'lem.

As it's 600 AD the reconquest of Rome doesn't quite fit in from a historically perspective. I was thinking more of the Heraclian dynasty and therefore a more defensive game, trying to survive long enough against the surrounding civs to achieve an UHV.