silly question

[wolfigor]

Hello faithful witness of Rhye,
I've a silly question for you.
The question is not silly in itself but it may have been already asked and aswered in the past.
If so, just link me to the answer, else ... answer.

The question is two questions.

1. Why Bizantine empire is not playable in the 600AD start?

Even if it's not historically accurate, it will be fun to try to reconquest the west, resist to the Turkish expansion, and dominate the near east.

2. If it could be possible to play Bizantio, how could the UHV look like?

Spoiler :

I may give a try to mod the mod (my main problem is free time, that I don't have)... I already spent the lenght of a Simpsons' episode to modify Victory.py and Consts.py
So far so good... it doesn't crash, and there are some victory conditions (very arbitrary, just to give it a try).
Unfortunately I do not have free time for this work.

 

[Rhye]

Byzantium was a last minute addition to populate the 600AD start.
Adding them as a full civ requires much work (for instance, shifting all the civs id) and it's not coherent with all the others, since they start with a big empire already.
It's possible to play them with a few tweaks though.

 

[Walka]

The Chinese in the 600AD start get several cities flipping to them, though I know not as many as Byzantium starts with. If they were to be added, would there be some way to deny them the ability to build settlers for some period of time, to allow other civs to catch up? Their UHV goals could be designed around not losing cities, maintaining control of areas, etc. and perhaps conquering Rome (because that would have been a desire of them, no?).

Just a few ideas I thought I'd add

 

[wolfigor]

Adding them as a full civ requires much work (for instance, shifting all the civs id)

Yes... it's a "painful" work: easy to miss something and make mistakes.
Anyway (see spoiler) I did shift all the Civ IDs ... however there is much more work to do to tweak it to good quality.
It's not easy to balance the game, code apart, the "balancing" is the greatest result of your work.
Anyway it's not too hard to add some code to yours Ryhe: pretty clean and well commented, much better than what I often see from professional programmers (even if Python does not help readability, but this is personal again weakly typed languages with implicit scoping).

it's not coherent with all the others, since they start with a big empire already.

Yes, true... however many other Civs even if they start with only settlers have a lot of cities (potentially) switching to them.
Balancing could be very complicated, it easy to make them overpowered or too weak.

 

[Rod]

Play Byzantium with many cities AND Cataphracts .. talk about an easy game

I have a real trouble defeating the occasional 1 cataphract coming from there with Russia in its early years. If played by a Human Byzantium would crush Russia in 10 turns ..

So I doubt that Byzantium makes for an interesting game. It is simply way to easy.

 

[wolfigor]

Their UHV goals could be designed around not losing cities, maintaining control of areas, etc. and perhaps conquering Rome (because that would have been a desire of them, no?)

Historically the Byzantine Empire starts with Justinian I around the year 500AD (so a bit too early for the 600 start).
Justinian I was the last "roman" emperor of the east: he still considered himself as the ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire... later emperors did not.
In this view he did try to re-conquest the west:

Byzantine Empire's territory between the rise to power of Justinian (red, 527) and his death (orange, 565)

After that, from the military point of view, it was a constant struggle to:
1. Survive in middle-east (keeping as much territory as possible in Turkey, Armenia, and east mediterranean coast under control) against persians, Arabs, and Turkish.
2. Keep control of the Balkans against Bulgars, and other "barbarians" (only way to reproduce such events in CIVIV).
3. Keep control of Rome and Italy (ideally Carthage as well).

The Byzantine Empire at 717AD Striped land shows land raided by the Arabs.

Byzantine Empire, 867 AD

The Byzantine Empire under Basil II, 1025AD.

FULL VIEW (animated):

the UHV should reflect this history: Struggle to survive in the east, struggle to keep control (Italy and Balkans) in the west.

An other important characteristic of the Byzantine Empire was the identification with the Christian Ortodox Church that they administrated, "protected", and promoted.
The Emperor was as well the top religious authority and used religion as a tool for ruling.
Maybe an other target for the UHV.

Culture and weath were (at some point) a clear characteristic of Constantinopolis... maybe something else for the UHV.
lot of information at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Byzantine_Empire


As a suggestion for a rather militaristic UHV, I would say (open for discussion):
1. By 1000AD Control Italy (Rome), North Africa (1 town in the Carthage territory), Greece, Balkans (2 towns), Egypt.
This is to reproduce the willingness to rebuild the lost Roman Empire... you just need to have these territories at some point before 1000AD.
2. At 1500AD Control Italy, Greece, Balkans, near east, and control or make vassal Turkey.
This to reproduce the struggle against the Arabs and the Turkish in the east... well knowing the AI, the fight is mostly against the Turkish.
The date (1500AD) is a bit arbitrary... but it's also the date for the Turkish to conquer Constantinopolis: and ideal counterstrike of UHV.

The 3rd UHV can be harder to define...
Option a. At XXXXAD Control 2 Shrines
One can be Rome and one can be Jerusalem... rather historical in the intentions, but pretty much already covered by 2nd UHV condition.

Option b. By XXXXAD Have all Euro powers converted to Christianity and Christianity spread to all cities in middle east, Egypt, and north Africa.

Option c. At XXXXAD Costantinopolis top cultural town in the world.

Discussion is open!

 

[wolfigor]

If played by a Human Byzantium would crush Russia in 10 turns

Yes, but that probably would be not in the target for your UHV and could have huge penalities for stability.
This is RFC not vanilla... However you are right that balancing could be complicated.
A good mix of UHV may make the difference.

 

[Rod]

I understood your intention when I read your post. As you force the Player to go for other targets things get more difficult and as your UHV includes to survive the onslaught of Turkey it could make for an interesting game.

However we really already have enough civs, dont we ? You know I also see the performance issue.
If Byzantium becomes a playable civ then it has to have an inbuilt time bomb.

What I mean is that it should collapse automatically soon after its UHV timeframe expires.

The same should be done with Mongolia.

What about (generic idea) a general stability hit for a civ for every year passing after its individual UHV-time frame ?? This hit would only apply to original civs, but not resurrected ones ??

In this case we need to change the UHV of Mongolia into Raze 7 cities until 1500.

 

[wolfigor]

I understood your intention when I read your post. As you force the Player to go for other targets things get more difficult and as your UHV includes to survive the onslaught of Turkey it could make for an interesting game.

Yes, you got the point.
Not only you have to "survive the onslaught of Turkey" but also you need to "irritate" other powers like Germany and France for the domination of Balkans and Italy.
Condition 1 of UHV also force you to over-extend outside your own core area: stability and economic hit.
As you said the game can be really interesting... painfully interesting.

Do you have any suggestion for UHV condition 3?

However we really already have enough civs, dont we ?

Yes, we do... the thread is appropriately called "Silly question".
I also share your concern for performances.
My initial intension was to create a mod of the mod to play Byzantio, not to play any other Civ (for that you can use the vanilla mod).

What about (generic idea) a general stability hit for a civ for every year passing after its individual UHV-time frame?

For the specific target of improving performances, it is a good idea.
For the target of fun playing, less civs may make a less interesting game: who is going to oppose you?
The independents have no guts for it.

 

[Rod]

For the specific target of improving performances, it is a good idea.
For the target of fun playing, less civs may make a less interesting game: who is going to oppose you?
The independents have no guts for it.

True, but the civs I am suggesting are not opposing you anyway. Mongolia is normally a huge land of ... barren deserts and mountains ....

As nice as it is to see the Mongols rising I was never ever afraid of them (but actually I also never played China ) Especially in late game the Mongols can not keep up. It would be better if they collapse for good at around 1500 - 1600 and then respawn with advanced tech in the 1900s on their core territory.

The same is true for most civs when their prime is over. Why not let them collapse and then later respawn, if possible ? Therefore I am suggesting let civs collapse after their prime and reemerge with advanced technology in the Modern Age, in the meanwhile you can make yourself busy trying to capture the Independents and keep your own fledging empire together.

Btw. this condition should not effect a human player.

 

[wolfigor]

I'll think about your suggestions... there is a very delicate balance with Civs.

If you play China or Russia the Mongols are important, even when retrograde.
They may declare war on you, "distracting" troops and production, causing war-weariness.
They are a sting in your side.

For the mod of mod I proposed they are pretty much non-influential and your idea may apply nicely.

Like many other ideas in RFC the best way is to implement it and see how it develops.

 

[captain beaver]

If you want to make the Byzantine playable, I would suggest removing from their control a couple of cities. Egypt and Africa should be made independant while Jerusalem should also be made independant. It isn't technically historical, but the empire lost these territories very rapibly following the "spawn" of the Arabs. There's no way to represent this with a very shy Saladin, but by removing those cities from Byzantine control, they at least stand a chance to cause some trouble. Further, since Jerusalem flips to the Arabs, this would force the player to conquer the city and Egypt for the first UHV. Finally, by recentring the player on Constatinople, Athena, Trebizond, Iconium and Alexandretta and removing some of their starting techs, he shouldn't be too powerful. If you add more barb spawns in Europe, it should keep Byzantium busy for a while.

Suggestions for UHV:
1) Eastern Reconquest: Conquer Dacia, Illirya, Italia, Egypt, Mesopotamia by 1000AD
2) Western Revival: Conquer Spain/Portugal, France, England, Africa by 1600 (1700) AD
3) Trade hub: Add 6 great merchants to Constantinople by 1500AD
Alternativelly:
3) Eastern trade: Import at least 10 resources from India/China/Japan/Khmer by 1500AD

Just ideas, but should provide enough balance not to make the Byzantines a push-over. And when the Turks spawn and all of Turkey flips, expect a bloody battle!

 

[say1988]

Justinian I was the last "roman" emperor of the east: he still considered himself as the ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire... later emperors did not.

From my knowledge, the Byzantines always considered themselves Romans and the Byzantine Empire the Roman Empire, as did most people in the East (Persians, Turks, Russians). It is only the West that made the distinction.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Actually, the Russians called the Byzantines Greeks, not Romans...

 

[kairob]

Maybe but he is right in that the Byzantines called themselves Roman and it is only modern/western historians who call them Byzantines so as to differentiate between them and the old Roman Empire

 

[say1988]

I have always been tought that they considered them to be the continuation Roman Empire (unlike the Westerners that seem to have viewed the Byzantines as a distinct Empire), not neccesarily using the term Roman though.

 

[Rhye]

Anyway it's not too hard to add some code to yours Ryhe: pretty clean and well commented, much better than what I often see from professional programmers (even if Python does not help readability, but this is personal again weakly typed languages with implicit scoping).

thanks for your appreciation, but I think that some parts of the code (rise and fall) are written very badly. As time went by, I improved (I hadn't been programming for a few years) and the later systems like the plague are better written.

 

[wolfigor]

some parts of the code (rise and fall) are written very badly.

However I referred to the readability of the code (not strictly at its quality and efficiency): Being able to to easily read and understand the code is extremely important, allowing people other than the main programmer to modify the code.

 

[ijnavy]

It's possible to play them with a few tweaks though.

How can we add them? I really want to have the Byzantines in my game
The Byzantines called themselves Roman, until they got very weak in 1204 A.D. Then they started calling themselves Greek.
Also, I think that the Byzantines started in 330 A.D. when Constantinople became the capital of the East Roman Empire.

 

[Rhye]

330 AD when the scenario starts at 600....

anyway, you can just press alt+z until control them, once cheatcode chipotle is enabled in the ini.
Stability won't work for them though, so it might produce some python exceptions.