November09 GOTM: Rise of Rome?

[hannurabi]

It's been long time since last game of the month so here is a new one.
This one takes place in Mediterranean world in ancient times. You are the Rome and your goal is to grow as big as possible before 1500 AD. The winner of this GOTM is the player whose empire has the biggest population ( actual population showed in millions ,not the total size of your cities) at 1500 A.D. Post your map and sav file of 1500 AD and screenshot of your population.

This scenario can be awfully difficult as you start only with one city, although it's only a king level game. I'll raise my hat, if someone manages to destroy all Celts or Greeks during this timeline (600 b.c-1500 A.D).If you have problems to get anywhere just rethink your strategies and try again!

Civilizations:

Rome
Greeks
Celts(Germans)
Carthage(Indians)
Babylon
Egypt
Persia(Americans)
Lots of Barbarians

Good Luck! (it's needed)

Pic of the start:

 

[akaneda]

ok im on it.

and youre right, the first few turns the enemy cities fall 1 by 1, but then its struggling and after that nothing moved... looks like a lot of fun that game!
and thanks for that map!

good job!

 

[weevil]

Thanks for the gotm! It was (and is) great fun!

I've had a go at it now, but the scenario is so fun i think i'll play it to the end before trying again.

Spoiler :

First off: I used no kind of cheating! Never loaded my game, didn't edit anything etc.

My first try I thought I'd go science at 100% and spam out chariots and catapults for an ultra aggressive rush of the celts, true Caesar style. This strategy proved very poor, mostly because I constantly lost all my battles for some reason (I remember launching an attack of 7 chariots vs a size 3 city with no wall and ended up loosing all my chariots and killing only a single phalanx). At 1500 AD I had a population of just below 1 million. Back to the drawing board!

For my second try I would go the direct opposite way and go 100% tax and use the pen rather than the sword. An army of diplomats should do the fighting for me, and it worked great! I had troubles keeping peace with any of my neighbors so I had to keep pushing both the Greek and the Celtic fronts all the while keeping my homeland safe from barbarians and those pesky Carthaginians who kept invading with triremes. At some point i suffered a major blow when the Greeks took back 3 of my cities, so there is definitely room for improvement. Generally speaking i must say i was very unlucky again. At one time a single Greek cavaly unit succeded in taking a city guarded by 2 phalanxes and 1 catapult behind city walls. That shouldn't happen!! Based on this game I must say, completely destroying the Celts are definitely possible. Should be no problem if you just keep peace with with the Greeks at all costs and focus on that once front.

My population at 1500 AD was 2.950.000

This is the known world as of 1500 AD:

 

[hannurabi]

Good stuff Weevil, nice to read.You did the right thing to not use cheats or reloading, that is forbidden in rules.

I thought your result was pretty awesome ( my first try i barely got 1,5 million citizens) but then i managed to made even better.

I started my conquest with my instant legions to take Greek South Italy and then I diplo-conquered barbarians from Italy to Germania. At the time I was war with Greeks but not much happened excluding the quick destruction of Illyria. When Carthageans declared war to Celts I switched from republic to monarchy and started spamming Catapults to Gallia. Here I got very lucky and took Bibracte and Helvetii + some other key cities with minimal losses. After that rest of Gallia was piece of cake.I was also lucky that Greeks were so passive and Carthago even paid me tribute several times.After conquest of Gallia I turned my whole army against Greece but had no succes on that front.Then the time had passed and end of history.

I think 4,4 million citizens is pretty good here, let's see if someone can beat me.

 

[Dack]

Thanks for the gotm! It was (and is) great fun!

What tools did you use to produce this?
My attempts at gluing together multi screen shots are not as clean.

Spoiler :

 

[Snail_]

Wow! I'm a long-time Civ player, I just discovered this forum and couldn't help trying this game of the month out.

I must say this scenario has been very well written, quite addictive and challenging at the same time. After quite a few false starts, I managed to find a strategy that was a good compromise for me.

Spoiler :

I started capturing Magna Graecia with the legions I had at the beginning; I was lucky, because the Greeks moved their phalanx out of Taras right away to explore the hut, which meant an easy conquest for my legion (the city was only defended by a trireme). After capturing Syracuse, I made peace with the Carthaginians to avoid being at war on too many fronts. Then I cranked taxes to 100% and focused on the North. I bribed Atria, Mantua, and Rhizon from the Barbs, with the Greeks capturing the city right south of the latter at the same turn.
Meanwhile, I was creating an army of catapults to be sent on the Alps, from which the Celts were starting to come. Fortifying a phalanx on the mountains just east of Lugudunum gave me a stronghold to put my troops on. At that time I got a couple of quite lucky shots: bribing Massilia from the Greeks gave me not only a point to attack the Celts from, but it gave me control of a trireme as well. On the eastern front, a few catapults were able to destroy the Greek city right south of Rhizon, after which the Greeks offered a peace treaty which I accepted.
Focusing on the West, I used the trireme to explore the mediterranean coast of Iberia; I then loaded it with two catapults, which conquered the barbarian city of Edetani for me. I then broke the offense against Lugudunum, unleashing 6 or 7 catapults against that city, and luckily I conquered it with very few casualties. The rest of the war against the Celts went fairly well for me, with the few casualties I suffered being replaced by new troops coming from southeast. I decided not to bother to invade Britannia, and after conquering Iberia I sent all of my troops eastwards.
Collecting all of my troops at Rhizon, I started the offensive against the Greeks. The newly-founded Athens (on the Donau river) and Pharsalus were the first cities to fall, with Epidamnus following. I then suffered a blow, when a Greek horseman took out almost 10 of my catapults stationing on the hills just outside of their capital, guarded by a phalanx. The rest of the conquest was therefore slower; eventually, the Greek capital fell, and from then on I bribed most of the remaining Greek cities until I reached Byzanthium.
It was there that I made contact with the Persians and the Babylonians. My troops were slowly making their way through Turkey when the Babylonians discovered gunpowder, which I knew would change the balance of power, musketeers being a tougher cookie than phalanxes for my catapults. With the strength of desperation (and of luck, this time) my army was able to capture the large city of Gordium and that eventually became a key point to control Mid East. I managed to bribe Kanesh and Trapezus just before the time ran out.

My final population at 1,500AD was 6,390,000 people. However, seen in retrospect and considering a few instances of bad luck, I think there could still be room for improvement.

Needless to say, I didn't use any of the cheats and I reloaded only once, of course without redoing any moves, for the simple fact that yesterday night I reached 1250AD at 1:45AM

Good game! Let's see who can improve this

 

[Snail_]

A screenshot of the world map in the year 1500...

 

[Dack]

I may try again as my results were dismal. One question; what version are the other posters using for this GOTM. I used version .05, I think I’ll do it over with version .01.

The entire length of the game was a struggle to expand the Romans land area.

A population of 1,510,000 is hardly worth the effort of posting but I wish to encourage all CIV DOS fans to participate in the GOTM. Also to thank hannurabi for the effort on an excellent scenario. The use of barbarians to continual harass was outstanding.

 

[hannurabi]

I used version 05.Besides bug fixes what are the differences between versions of CIVDOS? Is AI better?

 

[Snail_]

My version is 474.04

 

[weevil]

Wow very nice result snail! good job!

One question; what version are the other posters using for this GOTM.

I'm using 474.05

I used version 05.Besides bug fixes what are the differences between versions of CIVDOS? Is AI better?

The major difference in the version is from .03 where they introduced eroding unhappiness. It was a measure to stop REX'ing which proved a superior tactic in pre .03. There is a discussion of this new rule in several threads on this forum, but basically it just means that the more cities you control the more unhappy people you will have in your cities. At around 20 cities under emperor/despotism every new city will start with a "very unhappy" citizen, which counts a two normal unhappy citizens. So yes it makes REX'ing very hard compared to pre .03. Other changes includes city size requirements for specialists and improved AI.

To be honest, I would consider playing 475.01 as cheating, as it is much easier than 474.05, especially on emperor.

 

[trada]

Just dropping by to say well done to hannurabi for putting this together. It is really a fantastic GOTM.

 

[jpciv]

Great GOTM hannurabi! Very difficult.

 

[Blake00]

Wow this is a really cool scenario too @hannurabi, especially as it reminds me of the cool Civ2 Roman scenario but more hardcore haha! So many out there probably have no idea that there was a Civ1 scenario making community, I sure as hell didn't until I first joined this forum a few years back lol! However it of course makes sense when there's excellent map & game editors out there like JCivED (although this predates that so presumably you used one of the old editors). I'm definitely gonna have to cover your work in my big HD Civ scenarios video series I'm working on!

I understand why you guys used CivDOS instead of CivWin (bad graphics & sound lol) however these days we have Honza's awesome DOS graphics CivWin mod and my Soundtrack Overhaul CivWin mod so I thought it would be fun to convert your excellent scenario to CivWin using the CivCracker map & game editor (which can convert save files from DOS to Win) and have attached the file to this post if others wish to play it. CivWin also supports custom save file names which makes scenario sharing and collection organising much easier!

Here's some screenshots comparing the two. Map is revealed just for the pictures to show how cool your work is but kept the window small (instead of an HD one) to avoid big spoilers.

Converted scenario with DOS graphics mod:


Converted scenario with original graphics:


Attachment removed at 22 hits and moved to downloads area here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/rise-of-rome-scenario-civdos-civwin.29032/

 

[Blake00]

Quick update!

As promised I've showcased your work in my big new Playing Civilization 1 in HD with Mods & Scenarios video tour here:


I've also included your scenario in my big scenario preservation project I'm working on!
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ1-scenario-mod-preservation-project-log.672488/

I've removed my download from the above post (counter was at 22 downloads) and I've now added it (along with your original DOS save files and a info text file crediting you) in a 7zip file to the CFC Civ1 downloads area along with Moddb & Internet Archive to ensure your work is never lost. Should you wish to make any updates or changes to the files just let me know.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/rise-of-rome-scenario-civdos-civwin.29032/

As you'll see I got the admins to create a new Civ1 scenario downloads area to put them in! I also saw people posting here a while back this old GOTM sub forum should probably be renamed to a scenario creation forum since there hadn't been monthly activities in a long time so I got them to partially rename this forum too.

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