Preview: Putmalk's Ancient Mesopotamia

[Putmalk]

Very good idea but it wouldnt be better if you replace macedonia with greece?

No.

Ancient Greece was called Mycenae, and Mycenae was conquered by Macedonia.

Athens and sparta are city-states, Macedonia starts above them. One of the early game goals of Macedonia is to conquer Athens and Sparta, or expand elsewhere and go to Turkey first.

It's a choice you have to make yourself.

 

[christos200]

Also does this mod want any DLC? ( I hope no.)

 

[Putmalk]

From the looks of it, Babylon (Babylon civ), and Inca (Slinger).

I have plans to produce a barebones version utilizing vanilla artwork to alleviate this issue.

 

[CivOasis]

By one of Macedonia's goals being to conquer Mycenae or Turkey, do you mean that they have goals similar to the RealNameEarth mod? (Which, I understand, was inspired by RFC, though, having never played an earlier Civ game, I have not ever used that mod).

Off-topic, are you going to use the Greece (Macedonia, Alexander), Babylon, Egypt, and Persia (Aechemeneid) leaderhead stills from un-modded civ, just with differing names, abilities, etc? I haven't seen ambrox's, so I don't know how they compare, but I'd try to use the base-game options wherever possible, for their more professional appearances.

 

[Putmalk]

Macedon, Egypt, Achaemenid, and Babylon use the Firaxis default leaderhead screen.

Hatti and Phoenicia use ambrox's awesome leaderhead 2D stills. I might add Firaxian music on those leaderheads, but that's pretty low priority at the moment.

No, Macedon doesn't -have- to conquer Athens and Sparta, but that would be a monumental waste of their UA, that grants an attack bonus vs. City-States. In fact, you could play completely peaceful (right now you can win via Time, Cultural, and Domination).

As of the current moment, nothing is tested at all. I don't even know if a tall empire can succeed at this moment. I've made so many balance changes that Beta is going to have to focus specifically on that. Right now I'm getting my custom assets onto the field and laying down the map. I can't tell if Cultural is possible yet (you still have to complete 5 policy trees) in 300 turns. This is will a pretty big project for me, but hopefully it comes out to be a success.

 

[Putmalk]

I did a quick 60 turn test of the scenario so far. It is clear to me that:

1) Lot more city-states are needed.
2) More civilizations need to be added. However, they will not be playable. I'm currently planning Lydia, Mitanni and the Medes. Lydia is in Western Turkey, Mitanni is southeast of Hatti and the Medes are in the Persian area. These civilizations will not be playable, and will most likely not feature unique traits.
3) Some policy updates are broken, I'll have to look into this.
4) Greece seems too isolated. Hopefully the addition of Lydia will correct this.
5) The map is not very large (Standard size), but the lack of the usual ocean present on most Continent maps makes it seem larger than it actually is. Some areas are full of desert, making them uninhabitable. I'm still 50/50 on adding an Arabian civ, so these areas cannot be inhabited as of yet. As it stands, though, civs are way too isolated so hopefully the addition of non-playable civs will correct this.

 

[CivOasis]

NPC's always dissapoint me.. maybe its just because I like being able to play everyone. (That was not meant to be critical or against the decision, I think its a great idea, from the dev/balance view).
And perhaps a historical objectives option could be available, with benefits if completed, but no penalties otherwise? I.E., as Alexander, get more units or culture for either uniting or conquering Mycenae, for conquering the Achemeneids, etc?

 

[Putmalk]

I'm adding them in as NPCs to start. They can always be enabled if popular demand is high enough.

I tried adding them in now, but I was hit with a littany of errors (most likely because they had no UU or UB). So now I'm going to add them in slowly, with their own custom trait, UU and UB, albeit they won't be balanced to be a playable civ. These NPCs are going to have no starting extra starting technology or culture, and they may have negative bonuses to scientific growth - I don't exactly know yet. We'll have to see.

 

[christos200]

For city states you could add byzantium.

 

[Putmalk]

For city states you could add byzantium.

Good suggestion! Added!

The city-state list is very small and I plan to have a ton more. Right now the Mediterrenean is pretty CS heavy, and so is the Euphrates.


My goal in this scenario is to balance it so that it is fun to play with every civilization. Every civilization will start out next to another civilization that they will compete with. For the Hittites, Phoenicians, and Babylonians their rival civ will be the nonplayable Mitanni (and their amazingly spammable Mariyannu and Shukulthu unique units). I expect Mitanni to be very aggressive with a ton of cheap early age units (they get a 33% unit maintenance reduction) and start problems with everyone they meet, just like in history.

Persia will have to conquer the Medes to expand. Darius is going to have a high expansion, militaristic, and happiness flavor. This is not good on higher difficulties, I can imagine.

Greece will be a militaristic state as well, focusing on destroying City-States and expanding as fast as they can. Their Hoplites are stronger (10 Strength) but I still can't see them taking out Athens or Sparta easily (Athens and Sparta are extremely defensible). Any suggestions on how to improve the capturability of city-states?

Egypt will be isolated, just as in real life. They have beautiful fertile land, but in very small amounts. So playing small and focusing culture is probably their best bet. Phoenicia is their closest rival and may challenge them for territory.

Phoenicia focuses on gold production and not too much expansion. They start near Egypt and Mitanni. Building up a naval empire can be nice to protect your cities from the coast. Their UB really helps rake in the gold and their Unique Great Merchant and Unique Trait that benefits Custom Houses will make focusing on Great Merchants a good strategy.

Babylon starts out with moderate terrain but their great Bowman unique unit gives them the edge early on. I don't know what I'm doing with the trait yet so they may remain great with Science or may be entirely different.

Hittites are a production workhouse, with a great unique building and trait that makes mining Iron extremely beneficial for your empire's production. Their unique chariot can travel quickly on rough terrain, making early wars on their turf much easier to manage.

Sorry I went off on a tangent here, just wanted to give a bit of insight into my thoughts on the design process on the scenario. It's going great and I can't wait to release it - I can't give a specific date at the moment, but work on the scenario is going faster than expected.

Any suggestions are more than welcome. Perhaps later today I'll roll out another screenshot update.

 

[christos200]

Greece will be a militaristic state as well, focusing on destroying City-States and expanding as fast as they can. Their Hoplites are stronger (10 Strength) but I still can't see them taking out Athens or Sparta easily (Athens and Sparta are extremely defensible). Any suggestions on how to improve the capturability of city-states?

I think you should make sparta and athens be at war.

 

[Putmalk]

Greece will be a militaristic state as well, focusing on destroying City-States and expanding as fast as they can. Their Hoplites are stronger (10 Strength) but I still can't see them taking out Athens or Sparta easily (Athens and Sparta are extremely defensible). Any suggestions on how to improve the capturability of city-states?

I think you should make sparta and athens be at war.

Some war...haha. No city-states start with any units at the beginning of the game, as of yet at least. A war wouldn't cause much damage to the city-states.

Then again, I've only done 50-turn tests and I think I've determined that the scenario's time scale should be more consistent and longer (400 turns, 300 turns from 2500 BC to 0 AD, then 100 turns from 0 AD to 100 AD). I'll implement this today and see how it goes, while increasing tech costs to compensate. By doing this, it gives you more time to conquer the city-states with catapults and Triremes, and more time to expand and conquer nearby empires and city-states.

 

[CivOasis]

I don't know how you're doing navies, but I think they should be stronger than they are in Vanilla (of course, the AI still can't use them well, but it would make them a little more fun).

 

[Putmalk]

Navies are simple at the moment. Trireme, Quadquereme, and Quinquereme, each linearily better than the other. Quinquereme requires Iron to build.

Navies are pretty low on the priority since the majority of combat is land-based. Mediterrenean battles are possible, of course.

 

[Putmalk]

Hey guys.

I really need your help here, looking for some quality feedback.

Problem: Culture victory. 30 policies, 400 turns. No renaissance, industrial, modern, or future era buildings. Need to balance it so culture is possible by 350.

My solution: More culture across the board. Wonders give a minimum of +2 culture. In total, the max amount of culture available via culture is 40 + 33% per city + 10% off social policy cost.

Total amount of culture available via buildings: (6 or 33% of culture in city) + 8

Policies:
Tradition: +5 culture in capital
Monarchy: +50% culture for every Wonder
Finisher: 33% less policy cost increase per city

Polytheism: Landmark +4 culture
Celestial Worship: +3 Culture per Temple
Chthonian Worship: +1 Culture per military building
Heroic Triumph: +2 Culture for each WW

Monotheism (can't be chosen with Poly): +3 Culture in Capital, +1 Culture in all cities
Transcendance: National Wonders provide +5 Culture
Holy Trinity: +5 Culture for each Church
Covenant: Epics provide +5 Culture
Finisher: +2 Culture for every Pasture


This is my question. Is this enough culture to boost you past 30 policies in 400? Should I add more? Any suggestions or feedback on these policies (there are other effects in some of them, just focusing on culture)? I will be doing playtests myself but just putting this out there for you guys to help me, in case you wanted to.

Also, on a miscellaneous note, I've renamed the Heavy Archer to the Peltast and replaced its and the Clibanarii's icon, Calendar was moved to Ancient and now leads to Alphabet, and Lydia and Mitanni have been added successfully, and I think they're great additions to the scenario.

Thanks for the help, if you can provide it.

 

[Putmalk]

Help is also requested for city-states that would be near Persia, since I cannot find any good maps of Persia on the internet.

Attached are the new Clibanarii, Peltast, and tech tree with alphabet and stirrup changes.

 

[Kwadjh]

Excellent, this look really good.

I am also impatient to see how you manage to remove the later Eras properly.

 

[Maniac]

I would suggest renaming Stirrup to 'Saddle' or 'Selective Breeding', as the Stirrup was invented after the time period of your scenario.

 

[Putmalk]

With Stirrup, I took a bit of an artistic liberty. Seeing as:

"The earliest manifestation of the stirrup was a toe loop that held the big toe and was used in India, possibly as early as 500 BC."

but they didn't appear in Europe until 700 A.D., I'm going for a bit of an "alternate history", but then again, this scenario takes place in the Middle East, so it might be a bit more believable. Haha.

Thanks for feedback, but this culture situation is going to drive me nuts.

 

[Putmalk]

Welp, I've been playing my scenario from start to finish, at least once. I am doing this because I believe I am nearing Beta phase of the scenario. Which means soon you'll be able to test it!

I'm having tons of fun right now. Played Macedon, rushed Triremes, Archers, and Axeman and blitzed Athens and Sparta by turn 120 (they're not very easy to destroy + I've made some scenario changes). Macedon's trait really helps in warring the CSs, as your archers and catapults can really pound even Strength 17 cities.

Few issues with the scenario I've noticed so far, and I can't seem to fix them. And random thoughts:

1) On the select screen, you can only play as Macedon, Achaemenid, Hittites, Egypt, and Babylon. There is no option to play as Phoenicia or Random, and I really need that bug fixed, since Phoenicia is my favorite civ. They're playable just fine on a random game, but not the scenario. Playable box is checked. I don't know what the issue was, it stopped working like last week.
2) I've removed the whole starting techs/units thing. It was unbalancing the early game and I wasn't happy with it. So I kept the +6 Happy from Palace, started you off with one warrior/settler and I'll let you expand at your free will. It also keeps beelining the tech tree from happening (for a point of reference, by turn 60 I was working on the 5th column of the tech tree, and now on turn 120 I'm just finishing the 4th). I did this by increasing Classical and Late Classical Era costs by a ton (the jump from Ancient to Classical is 60 beakers to 275 beakers). And as it's looking, Late Classical has to jump from currently around 700-1700 to the neighborhood of 1200 - 2500. I'm still tweaking the figures but the scenario is flowing much more smoothly than before. I've had a blast so far warmongering on my city-state neighbors.
3) AI civs need to be warring more. Ancient times were much more violent than what they are now. I'll be upping expansion and war flavors by a bit to make them more likely to attack each other. As it stands, Mitanni is a war freak; he declares on everyone yet fails to make a push. Which is good; Mitanni in history only lasted for a hundred years before getting rolled over by the Hittites, I think. He's also smack dead in the middle of three empires, so it creates a lot of tension. Very happy I added them.
4) I'm very unsure about policies. At the moment they seem overpowered, but I want to keep them this way because of how short the scenario is. In fact, I've been thinking about upping it to 500 turns! But I'll have to wait and see, I have 280 turns left to conquer the Mesopotamian landscape. If I need to, I can make this scenario really long and start upping tech costs to compensate. I've been hesistant to touch production costs - in fact, I want to see lots of units, so unit maintenance may go down.
5) I've been doing some thinking, and I believe I want Mitanni, Lydia, and the Medes (NYI) to be playable civs. Mitanni will most likely be the hardest civ to play; their starting area sucks, their unique units are only cheaper, and their UA is modest (33% less land unit maintenance). You'll be able to spam a bunch of units, but Babylonian Bowmen, Hittite Three Man Chariots may tear them to pieces. Lydia plays similar to Phoenicia, but they get their gold from their improvements/buildings instead through trading (Phoenicia focuses on trade route gold, and Great Merchant gold).

And because college is coming around the corner, I want to put the mod in your guys hands to give me feedback on it so I don't have to work everyday to balance it. I can't wait to push this out to Beta, it's almost there! I need to finish the Trade policy branch, then add the Medes, and then fix this scenario issue.

My apologies for the wall of text.