No Treasure for Pirates

classical_hero said:
I might be interested but what is the state of the scenario?
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In addition to what Eclipse said: I have played a long test game with this back in 2009/10 and found that the game itself is stable. No strange crashes, missing units or icons or the like. The only slight problem is, that the Civilopedia is incomplete in some areas. E.g. there are a few buildings where the Civilopedia doesn't say, what this building actually does, or a few units that don't have a description. But we can look these things up in the .biq file, if we really need to know...

@Eclipse: the .biq file you posted is basically the same we were using back then (except for the corral reefs)? And I think Bowsling never got around to submitting his work on the Civilopedia, did he?
 
Lanzelot said:
@Eclipse: the .biq file you posted is basically the same we were using back then (except for the corral reefs)? And I think Bowsling never got around to submitting his work on the Civilopedia, did he?
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It is exactly the same except I removed all of the Corral Reefs

I know he did some work, but that works is lost in time. I have lost contact with him as well
 
Ok, I checked the scenario a bit and I think, Spain is so powerful, that giving the other European nations one Pirate faction each does not matter. However, the Undead Pirates are indeed not equivalent to the Peglegs and the Swashbucklers. So if we want three "alliances" between a European nation and their "Privateers", we need to strengthen them and move their base closer to the Caribbean. (And probably remove the Sea-Monster unit?!)

Do we know now, how many players we will be? classical_hero, have you made up your mind, whether this is something for you? Depending on that I would then either invest some work into pepping up the Undead, or just leave it at two "Privateers" and set the Undead to AI.


I also compared the scenario properties of the old .biq file from 2009 I still had in my C3C installation with the new one, and I think I found the reason for the date bug:

time_settings.PNG


One turn is accidentally set to 100 months... In your new .biq file, this error is already corrected, so we should no longer see the strange behavior. However, there are a few other glitches, that need correction, e.g. I'm not sure whether the Free Techs for the Brits are meant that way:

techs_britain.PNG


If I look on the same screen for the French, I only see the "French Only" and "European Only" techs. (Though I'm not sure, what these "Only techs" are used for in this scenario?! They don't appear in the tech tree. Perhaps used for limiting some units/buildings each nation may build?!?)
 
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Lanzelot said:
Ok, I checked the scenario a bit and I think, Spain is so powerful, that giving the other European nations one Pirate faction each does not matter. However, the Undead Pirates are indeed not equivalent to the Peglegs and the Swashbucklers. So if we want three "alliances" between a European nation and their "Privateers", we need to strengthen them and move their base closer to the Caribbean. (And probably remove the Sea-Monster unit?!)

Do we know now, how many players we will be? classical_hero, have you made up your mind, whether this is something for you? Depending on that I would then either invest some work into pepping up the Undead, or just leave it at two "Privateers" and set the Undead to AI.


I also compared the scenario properties of the old .biq file from 2009 I still had in my C3C installation with the new one, and I think I found the reason for the date bug:



One turn is accidentally set to 100 months... In your new .biq file, this error is already corrected, so we should no longer see the strange behavior. However, there are a few other glitches, that need correction, e.g. I'm not sure whether the Free Techs for the Brits are meant that way:



If I look on the same screen for the French, I only see the "French Only" and "European Only" techs. (Though I'm not sure, what these "Only techs" are used for in this scenario?! They don't appear in the tech tree. Perhaps used for limiting some units/buildings each nation may build?!?)
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By all means make any adjust you feel will improve our experience, we can adjust thereafter.

Note that there is 4 European nations but only 2 Pirate factions
 
classical_hero said:
Well one problem I had is that you said that the game is very volatile, but what you mean is the game play.
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If you are referring to me what I was trying to portray is that you will do everything you can think of to get a treasure from the New World to Europe to including possibly paying another European to Convoy and Escort both of your Treasures to Europe and your entire fleet of transports are captured right out from under you by either Pirates or another European or even the player you've just trusted to aid you. Believe me this could be unsettling especially if you more fond of growing an empire and using the power YOU'VE created to rule the world. Not really the case here.

Here you will have ships and units you will value far more than you ever have in any Civ game you've ever played in my opinion. You will research technologies that unlock better Canons and/or better/bigger Sails and your ships become more revered, and with this too your Captains will be Promoted to ADMIRALS and further revered and loosing such an extraordinary ship will be felt and that is what I mean by volatile.
 
So far we have 4 players

Eclipse
Jarovid
Lanzelot
Classical_Hero

At a minimum I recommend one more player

Undead AI
1 layers controls both Pirate Factions
France
England
Spain
1 European as AI but I can't decide which
Portugal/Netherlands which ever wasn't chosen as AI

I am also in acceptance of Lanzelot's proposal of 2 humans controlling an additional Pirate Faction but we would ALL have to be unanimous on this vote, as I said early in this thread that we need players that will 100% see this through! No one can win if someone quits because they can't win.
 
I would like to share that long ago I and others tested this, in my test I played all 8 leaders myself in a Hotseat, after about the 2nd turn I developed a strategy for each of the Europeans and played the Pirates without such a plan. I give you my word that this did not influence gameplay and I discovered I was very entertained.

Playing 8 players per turn is a task and keeping each player independent was difficult at best but I used pen and paper and reread my notes before proceeding and I can tell you that when you open a turn and you can visually see another players ship(s) I couldn't help but imagine myself on that ship saying to myself "oh sh..!".

I cannot comprehend how many civ games I've played in the last 15 years and how many individual turns that means but I can tell you that I can count on my hands where opening a turn and you are in AWE. And now currently I am reliving that exact experience,

I am about 15 turns into a new Hotseat and last night I played out a turn I had planned for Spain, I loaded several treasures on a few ships and sent another few as decoys or bait and played a few rounds it was at this point my Portuguese ship met these ships getting close to Europe so I sailed up to the Spanish Galleon's Port side and sent volleys of cannonballs at her but it wasn't to be and the Galleon's big cannons began to out fire my Frigate and I became lucky when my Frigate escaped at the last second.

When I opened my English turn I loaded a Line Infantry I wanted to transport to America to aid in a future land attack on a Spanish city and I set sail, nearly out of movement points I came a crossed a damaged Spanish Galleon and a near dead Portuguese Frigate, Looking at the way the ships were facing I concluded that these 2 ships had engaged each other so I decide to move in closer and engaged the Spanish Galleon sinking her but she was empty, with my remaining movement points I sunk the Portuguese Frigate which exhausted my movement point for that turn.

My point is this was 3 players and each of them had a fascinating turn, just one of many more to come I know and I hope we can a few more players, I would even accept setting a Rule of 5 or so turns enabling late comers to join. I think TomYo689 knows how this can be done.
 
Eclipse4449 said:
I do not have this file either but it has not called for it
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Why is it asking me for that file? Every time it gets to that the game shuts down and I can't even load the game past picking a side.
 
Strange. I do not have that file either, but the game starts just fine, with and without sound turned on.

Perhaps the following workaround helps you: there are 5 files in the ...\Conquests\sounds\Build\Misc directory:

sounds.png


Just create a copy of one of these and rename it to ee2.mp3 ... ;)


I did some more play-testing, and I think, Portugal and The Netherlands are both too weak to provide a "balanced" game. So if we are 4 human players, I would suggest that we merge these two nations into one. It would still be slightly smaller than the English and the French (in terms of number of cities), but it would then have two cities in Europe (instead of only one), and the European cities can become quite some powerhouse with their ability to produce the advanced units (Line Infantry, Ship of the Line, City Defender, etc.), which can only be produced in Europe. (They require a certain resource, which exists only in Europe and is not tradable via ocean squares.)

That would then allow us a setup like this:
1. Player: Spain
2. Player: England + Peglegs
3. Player: France + Swashbucklers
4. Player: "Merged Portu-Netherlands" + Undead Pirates

Spain is the Super-Power in this scenario with three times the number of cities as anybody else, so it should be clear, that Spain will be quite difficult to play: it needs to make sure to avoid getting into a dog-pile of the other three nations, while at the same time trying to make the most out of its starting bonus, before the other nations have caught up.


I fixed a few glitches I noticed in the .biq, and while playing a Hotseat test game, I noticed one severe bug: Plymouth, the English capital, has one tile called "LM Grassland", which produces 24 food, 49 gold and 25 shields.

LMGrass.png


This will quickly turn Plymouth into a monster metropolis! The other European capitals don't have such a tile, so of course we will have to add it for them. The questions are only:
  • Give such a tile also to Cadiz (the Spanish capital)?
  • If we merge Portugal and the Netherlands: give both their European cities such a tile, or only one of them?
 
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Man, there are still more glitches... For Example, the Small Wonder "British Military Academy" auto-produces the unit "Dutch Officer", instead of "British Officer". And the unit "Dutch Officer" is of course only buildable by the Dutch... (No wonder that in my test game 6 years ago I have never seen any of these Officer units in the game... :D)

Also corrected...
 
Great work Lanzelot!
Super tile, if no other capital has this then Plymouth shouldn't either.

Combining this civs like you noted is an absolutely great idea! As you mentioned earlier of England having their Navy and their Privateers etc.

As for the Undead, it think their Sea monsters should be limited to just one. I tried to edit their area to add to their production but it always crashes to my Desktop.

Did you find that things are auto produced other than Treasures?
 
PPS: Spain (Cadiz) already has two of these "Landmark" tiles, one LM Hill and one LM Grassland. So in view of this I would give one such tile to the French and two of them to Portu-Netherland.

Something else, that I noticed: the two units "Cavalry" and "Dragoon" are almost equivalent.
Cavalry: 25 shields, 10/6/2, requires "Homeland", 3 extra Hitpoints
Dragoon: 30 shields + 1 population, 10/5/2, requires "Horses", "Saltpeter" and "Homeland", 2 extra Hitpoints

They both come with the same technology. I think this doesn't make any sense. Why sacrifice one pop point and 5 extra shields only to get a weaker unit?!?? :confused:
This must be a mistake. Should we beef up the Dragoon a bit, or just drop that unit?
 
Eclipse4449 said:
Did you find that things are auto produced other than Treasures?
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The "Naval Academy" (Small Wonder) auto-produces Frigates. This seems to work ok.
Then there are four Military Academies: "Spanish", "British", "French" and "Dutch Military Academy", which are small wonders that can only be built by the corresponding nation. According to the Civilopedia they should auto-produce these "Officer" units (one for each nation), but in fact, they were all wrong... The Spanish Military Academy even produced "Pirate Workers". (Or rather didn't produce them, as Pirate Workers are available only for Peglegs & Swashbucklers...) Now I hope they also work as expected. Attached a new biq, if you want to play-test a bit. (I also added one LM tile to the remaining European capitals. I think we should keep these tiles, as it was probably intended by the scenario developer to turn the capitals into powerful production bases for these strong warships and Line Infantries. Otherwise it would take too long to build them, as we have only one city that can build them.)
 

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