Pie's Ancient Europe

[pie_at]

Thank you very much dispalor!

I am very happy, that PAE gets discovered even today although it's about 5 years in development.

First of all, I am having a modding break (due to reallife) till about september. Yes, it's seems hard. But I am not able to short the break (holidays, projects at work, kids, school, trainings, music, planning to buy a house...)

But then, I promise, PAE gets more historical facts and new ways to play with, a big update in late antiquity, more adventures, quests and kind of role playing...

In the meanwhile, please start creating your scenario. Open a new thread for that in this PAE subforum.
Start creating the map and set everything you want. Then write down your scenario events and I am sure Boggy (or me) will add those scripted things in your scenario you want to.
Let's use my break for making user scenarios! And if it's done (a finished scenario needs some months!) then it's certainly ready to add it into the next PAE update.

You will certainly ask: how does PAE knows that your map is the map when your special scenario events shall work.
Give your scenario a certain name in x=0,y=0 with ScriptData=YourUniqueScenName
That's the trick

 

[dispalor]

I'm curious, how that translates into a story for a PAE scenario. When I worked with Boggy on the Peloponnesian scenario, I got a little more sense, for what's possible in terms of one event triggering another – and there's quiet a lot doable, which I had regarded difficult or impossible before. So what would be, of all your remembered scenarios from Civ's past and from your own ideas, top of the list for a new, super heavily scripted PAE scenario theme?

I cannot pretend to know your mod, I'm still learning the basics. And I certainly don't want to suggest something specific. I'm just talking possibilites and get information from you by doing so.

But if you ask me like this, I could imagine a couple of stories. 2 suggestions.

Let's talk arminius-style. You have a small village and a couple of units. YOu are vassal to Rome. By event you get quests, like destroying some farm, conqering a fortress or killing some units and you get slowly stronger. The questgivers are neighbours, your elders, the romans, personal choice... You get money, experience, normal and personal units (heroes with names), technologies and so on. Along the way you forge alliances and get enemies by event, the landscape slowly changes, you get more important and at some point even larger factions recognize you as someone they can talk to. Then the old king of your tribe dies and all tribe-factions vote a new one. If that's you, you get a load of allies and kick some roman butts.

After everything I read I assume it would be possible to do that. Don't know if's possible to tell some roman legions to head towards some coordinates. Then you could actually really doing the historic Arminius-Story. Personally, I think that would be boring. I go for fictious events. I'd have my fun to see Arminus tearing apart the limes piece by piece A fictious egyptian tribeleader becoming pharaoh would be fun aswell. The game would be the same, just a different setting.

The focus in those cases would be very small. Even litereally. A square of terrain could be just a couple of miles, even less maybe and every specialist is a huge thing for you, because you don't have a lot.

Bigger focus could be Caesar/Octavian. Depending on how you set that up, divided in four parts.

Caesar and his conquerings, till he gets murdered. His faction is just his conquerings in Spain and France. Rome is just another player, that demands things and gives other things in return. You win a war, you get some units. You send some slaves, you get some money. You conquer a city, you get some cheers. You conquer another city, you get some weird looks. You conquer another city, your friends get scared. The chapter ends with you returning home. WHile playing you get a zillion texts about the political situation in Rome and how much people hate you in the end. Of course there is a lot of war-stuff. Alliances and Betrayal within the ranks of the gauls, the battles with vercingetorix, decisions what to do with certain tribes. I mean... you play Rome. Even if you are just a couple of units and a few cities, ACTUALLY a whole empire stand behind you. And you decide the fate of tribes.

You inherit a good part of the empire now. You are the big boss. Lots of executions? What a fun! You reorganize your empire, fight the rebels, some great battles, some heroic death, people commit suicide, you can be mean or gratious. You go to egypt, fall in love with cleo and so on. That is great, because in the first part you play only in a small area, now its the whole of the empire. The focus grows. You do things with your relatives, you marry them off or place them as gouvernors. Carefully, since you cannot ignore the other families, who could still decide to fight you. Then you get murdered. Ceasar has the advantage in this scenario but struggles with the political stability of the empire. He can still loose a lot, because provinces could decide to switch sides. We simulate that by families that like you more or less depending on your actions. Are counters possible? Family x has a feel-good value of 20, family y of -55. That would be nice. But even if not, it should be possible to make it worthwile.

You take over as Caesar's heirs. Some of those units you already had before that. Like Ceasars general Marc Anthony. Now you get Octavius as well. Again a war against a part of the empire, mainly africa and greece. A pity, it seems to be very similar to Act 2. Different story, but somehow same gameplay. You organize the whole of your empire again, you fight a war. Hmm...

In act 4 half your empire disappears, because Marc Anthony takes over the east and Lepidus gets africa. So you build up your army again, you should know that by now, and then the last war. This is more storydriven and very short. It's mainly a big battle and maybe it's just the end of act 3 instead of one act on its own.

Could be incredibly historic, epic and still personal. While writing this Im getting really invested....

How realistic is that?

 

[pie_at]

How realistic is that?

Completely

So, just start one type of your "story" scenario with an own thread. When you have set all cities, improvements and units you want in turn 1, we continue to the next step:
The story scripted in python with my (or Boggy's, or another one's) help.

 

[dispalor]

Oh, I'm not talking about making a scenario. IF I would do that, then I'd play a long time with the mechanics first.

But thanks for the offer. Who knows, maybe in a month I actually do it. Right now I'm talking possibilities in general. Thought it might be fun for people to exchange ideas.

Just as an example. I was thinking for the last hour how to actually do such a scenario. And it already stopped because I dont know what's better. That you have direct control over the whole of an empire, or that every province is controlled by its own roman faction that give you money, troops and whatnot in times of crisis. Im wondering if its possible to tell the AI to use certain troops just for attack, not for defense in the cities. The idea would be that cities are very easily conquered once an army is in the province. So its not about defending cities but battling armies in the field. Can one teach the AI to behave like that? Can you tell a faction to take those 30 legionairies and try to reach the City of Rome? Once they have done that, the game is over for you. Ah, questions, questions...

 

[Thorik]

I'm playing a game as Persian in the Orient scenario. It's great, but I noticed that there is a lot of unoccupied space between Persia/Parthia and Bactria/India.
So I decided to add 1 or 2 more Civs in this space, that is modern days Afghanistan and south Pakistan.
I'm open to suggestion, which PAE's CIVS is the more appropriate to represent the peoples who lived in that place?

 

[Keinpferd]

I'm playing a game as Persian in the Orient scenario. It's great, but I noticed that there is a lot of unoccupied space between Persia/Parthia and Bactria/India.
So I decided to add 1 or 2 more Civs in this space, that is modern days Afghanistan and south Pakistan.
I'm open to suggestion, which PAE's CIVS is the more appropriate to represent the peoples who lived in that place?

Would be a great addition to have a version of that map that goes with the 40-civs-dll.

As longs as you're restricted to 18 civs, it's tricky to fill the abundant map space in a balanced way. Which civs did you add in your version?

Would be possible to add Gedrosians. Or Arachosians. Sogdia? But you know how difficult it is to even find a proper name for a leader of such rather little history-charged civs or make them distinct in a meaningful way.

I'd say, between the Persian and Parthians in the West and the Bactrians and Indian civs in the East is lots of dersert, which makes it quiet okay for me, that this space comes out so scarcely inhabited.

 

[Thorik]

Would be a great addition to have a version of that map that goes with the 40-civs-dll.

As longs as you're restricted to 18 civs, it's tricky to fill the abundant map space in a balanced way. Which civs did you add in your version?

Would be possible to add Gedrosians. Or Arachosians. Sogdia? But you know how difficult it is to even find a proper name for a leader of such rather little history-charged civs or make them distinct in a meaningful way.

I'd say, between the Persian and Parthians in the West and the Bactrians and Indian civs in the East is lots of dersert, which makes it quiet okay for me, that this space comes out so scarcely inhabited.

I play with the 40-civs-dll. I already added Hebrew, Athens Thebes and Sparta instead of the Greek (very crowded Greece), split Egypt in two (upper and lower).

I know that land was scarcely inhabitated, but as it is Bactrians and Indian doesn't interact with the the western Civs. It's kind of a sub-game with only 3 civs.

There is a lot of desert as you say, but the fertile Indian Ocean coast and the Indus valley are empty. Indus valley civilizations are as ancient as the sumers, maybe they are a good addition.

 

[CedricSoubrie]

Cedric: oh.. sry. shouldn't be like that. is it with a certain scenario or just in every type of random map?
if it happens in a few turns, either the scen has a fault or your versions are different (check file size of the full pae folder)

We use the 17 civs + Barbs map and when trying to load our game we have direct oos (we were about 100 turns). Our maps have the same size.

Any idea why ? What should we check ?

 

[CedricSoubrie]

And if we want to have something that don't have OOS, what config would you suggest ? (Wichh map/scenario, number of AI etc...)

 

[pie_at]

Oh damn, does this error comes again and again....
I don't know why this happens after loading. 100 turns played... hm... there's nothing that could cause OOS.
Can you try with an auto save?

 

[CedricSoubrie]

Yeah, we've tried loading some of our games but OOS keep on arriving just after loading finishes. We are using autosaved games.

 

[pie_at]

oh damn. I know a case, where the saved file was broken (BTS saved something wrong from the players, so that an OOS occure when finished loading). We could continue playing with an auto save. I can't imagine that all your auto files have this error too?!

hm.. and you did check that everybody of you have the same PAE version?
Strange. The host loads the file. All others have to connect to the host. So that every client uses the saved file from the host.
OOS can occur, if somebody changed something in the meanwhile. settings? new version? edited an txt file? added the video package?

 

[mourndraken]

Removed half of the scenes from the original PAE movie and reduced the runtime.
​

 

[saddam_who_sane]

Hoplits, pezois and the same advanced spear-bearers evolve into skirmishers in the mod. It seems very strange, because skirmishers are significantly weaker than elite spear-bearers. It also makes persian pezois almost untrainable, they evolve into immortals, which are available to train notably earlier. Is it kinda bug?

 

[mourndraken]

Hoplits, pezois and the same advanced spear-bearers evolve into skirmishers in the mod. It seems very strange, because skirmishers are significantly weaker than elite spear-bearers. It also makes persian pezois almost untrainable, they evolve into immortals, which are available to train notably earlier. Is it kinda bug?

I like an answer Kienpferd wrote in the Bug report section :

This solution may not seem perfect, but what it reliably does: You don't meet any hoplites in the days of the Roman Empire. They are so out of place in late game, that they must go obsolete earlier somehow. That hoplites "upgrade" to something obviously inferior, is odd – but consistent with what Polybios says. – In Total War Rome II, they offer Macedonian style phanlangites, who in later eras take the place of classical hoplites. How would you solve it?

 

[saddam_who_sane]

Nevertheless, these elite spear bearers should evolve to stronger units, not weaker. And there should be the way to make pezois trainable (not by delaying Civic Soldiers tech till mid-classical era ).

It seems Drill I promotion is too unique. May be general's Military Academy building should grant nothing but Drill I promotion instead of other bonuses?

The mod has too much uniquity for Romans and Greeks, IMO. Would it be nice to make some more techs, buildings and even units less unique?

I like the mod as a whole though. My favorite feature of the mod is cultivation system. Is it possible to apply tile choice option for cultivation?

 

[Drakarska]

Nevertheless, these elite spear bearers should evolve to stronger units, not weaker. And there should be the way to make pezois trainable (not by delaying Civic Soldiers tech till mid-classical era ).

It seems Drill I promotion is too unique. May be general's Military Academy building should grant nothing but Drill I promotion instead of other bonuses?

The mod has too much uniquity for Romans and Greeks, IMO. Would it be nice to make some more techs, buildings and even units less unique?

I like the mod as a whole though. My favorite feature of the mod is cultivation system. Is it possible to apply tile choice option for cultivation?

That would be awesome. OGI mod has this enhancement, and I would dearly love to see it added to this mod.

 

[Hunkbis]

The next patch will have some new units. One of them will be the thureophoroi. The upgrade for hoplite.



I have the model, inspired by the last image.



Probably, 8 str, 2 mov, can shoot like a skirmisher.

It's not finished. I need to add skirmisher animations to hoplite animations. I will see some tutorial for that. But more later.

 

[mourndraken]

Units look rightous !!

nice work

 

[jimmygeo]

What gives? After upgrading to Windows 10, I can't get this mod even to load. It worked fine in Windows 8.1. ?????????????