TianXia (China Warring States) Scenario BETA

LouLong

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This is the beta (currently v0.8) version of my Warring States scenario.

The link is here (17 MB) :
https://www.mediafire.com/file/bch0p94lkvi2qex/TianXia.rar/file

Download, unzip into Civ3/Conquests/Scenarios

However I put the wrong biq into the file (left debug mod on and gave only one city to the Qiang) so it is better to use the biq attached at the bottom of this post (and that I will probably update once I have feedback). You still need to donwload the file listed above first though.


Remember this is just a beta so there still are many placeholder for gfx (none for units though) such as resources, improvements, leaderheads,... Some resources, techs, improvements have not been yet added, mostly because I am not sure about them yet and the tech-tree without any arrows (TLC has gently proposed to do them but I am not 100% sure of the tech-tree yet) can be a bit difficult to understand.

Governments pedia (as a bunch of other pedia) are not complete but the stats are usually correct.

But the most annoying can be the cities as I have not yet placed all of them correctly AND I haven't done any real city list yet.

So why do I upload this beta ?
Well,

1/ to show there really is something going on which will hopefully make some creators here take care of my requests for improvements (mostly).

2/ to have it tested for balance, gameplay, fun, bugs and others...

3/ to maybe get some new ideas or critics/comments about what can be made better,... or historical help if some things really seem dumb to you.


For your infos, because the pedia is not complete :
Settlers cannot be built but they are generated automatically every 35 (IIRC) turns mostly for the "Chinese" civs. Only grasslands, flood plains and plains can be settled !

If you play Zhao or Yan (but also Wei sometimes) be very careful of the XiongNu which can overrun you easily if you start raging war against another civ and leave your northern flank unprotected. I have seen XiongNu raids devastating Zhao and Wei nearly completely in the early game because Zhao had declared war on Wei and did not have many troops in the North to protect against the XiongNu with whom they have cultural border issues. Later units can definitely stop the XiongNu but at the beginning try to send them against someone else (but not too weak).

Most "barbarian" civs can become part of the Chinese cultural influence after a "long" while as this time saw the spreading of Chinese civilization (especially the Shu/Pa kingdoms in Sichuan and Yue). At the beginning they are mostly annoying with their numerous but weak troops (however not weak by comparison to stats of early Chinese units !).

Ships have a very limited role but I have added some anyway even if the ships chosen are not really correct for that time to add some flavor.
Hoever this scenario remains mostly and land-based one with heavy impact of large formations (literaly real waves of troops).

Some techs are bonus techs (Zhonghenjia, 100 schools of thought, Foreign Ideas) which can be useful in this long tech-tree.

It is possible I will add an extra wheat resource with bureaucracy as well as bamboo and rice (for the Southern part). Other things that can be added later are : assasins, a spaceship victory requiring Heavenly Mandate (tech) and 8 "spaceship parts" requiring a special resource located under each of the original captial-cities of the Warring Sates (an idea I had before but haven't implemented yet).

Ideas (improvements, wonders), comments, bug-hunt welcome !

And hope it is still enjoyable even in beta.
 

Attachments

  • TianXiav0.8.zip
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Last edited by a moderator:
I have one suggestion, use multi-unit flcs for your units.

The reason why I suggest this is because the ancient chinese relied so much on the zhen or formation during warfare and especially during the period for the scenario. So maybe make a few M-units for each type in different formation and give them different attack/defense value to imply the strenght and weakness of each formation?

Just a thought. :)
 
I fired up a game, and there appears to be some very bad transparency issues with the hanzi LHs.

Also, you should make at least the the Chinese civs start with embassies. As it is, I can get all the starting money from the rest by trading communications in the first turn.

The Shu, Qiang, YueShi, Xiongnu, Chu, and DongYue have practically no starting units. This, naturally, makes them complete pushovers early on.
 
1. Title - TianXia is Okay but I don't think it is going to attract people to want to learn about the scenario and then entice them to play. I would suggest finding a title a little snappier, perhaps something like Seven Dragons or Sons of Heaven; you get the idea.

2. The Chinese, Yue, and Nomad techs. I suspect that these exist to steer the three civilization types onto different paths. If that's the case then each civ should only be able to see it's own path and not be able to research the others. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=149597 and http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=102803 discuss this concept. Playing as Shu, I was only allowed to research Chinese which makes for a boring game as the minimum time is I think 200 turns.

3. Leaderheads. Lots of problems here. Two different leaderheads at the same time and other things.

4. Tech tree. Very crowded. Perhaps dividing it into two arbitrary eras might help. You could call them The Age of Bamboo and The Age of Jade for example.

5. The Map. Were Chinese rivers a barrier to movement at this time? If not, then I suggest changing the coast terrain used for rivers back to river terrain. I think, IIRC, that this is Sarevok's map and his scenario emphasized Chinese riverine warfare.

6. The Great Wall. The Great Wall was much more extensive than you give it credit for. I recommend lengthening it. Perhaps this will compensate some for the power of the Xiong Nu. The standard Civ3 fortification is much more appropriate for the Great Wall than is the Japanese Castle graphic you are using. At this time very little of the Great Wall was stone. It is believed that most of it was of earthen construction probably no more than three or four meters in height.

7. Leaderheads2. I originally thought that using small seal script titles for the leaderheads was a nifty idea. Now I'm not so sure. They seem rather impersonal and even if you read Chinese characters there are recognition/identification problems. Perhaps non-moving portraits would be more effective?

8. Balance. There are some strong civs and some weak civs. So from this standpoint you have some choice on what kind of a challenge you want. I would recommend making the non-seven warring state civs non-human.

9. Flow. No problems or comments so far.

10. General feel. It's a little too early to tell. Mechanically it seems okay. As far as a feeling of Chineseness goes, admittedly most of the 'chrome' (in the form of civilopedia entries, etc.) has yet to be layered on. Is there an underlying theme

11. Size. Once my seven minute queue time was up the download took 36 seconds. Not bad.

12. Nomenclature. Weren't the rulers of the seven warring states referred to as "Dukes?"
 
I've downloaded the beta, but haven't took much time to play yet. Of course, I have got the same issues as the other ones with the leaderheads and this for sure will need a fix.

Concerning the Great Wall, I also recommend a modification, maybe an adaptation from this one (if you are interested, I may volunteer to do it):
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=103993

Also, it seems to be a minimal number (hardcode??) of water squares without interruption necessary to build ships for a city. Under this minimum of water square, it is considered to be a sea, and the city is not allowed to build boats. In consequence, altough Han and Wei (for example) have access to water square, they cannot build ships. Considering the importance the Yellow River and the Yangzi Jiang on the Chinese Civilisation, I decided to mess around with your files in order to make the ship production accessible to the land kingdoms. On the other hand, in order to allow the units to cross the river without using ships, I had to add a new item to the scenario: Bridges !!!

It is mainly an immobile unit that I add, using a .flc from the Mediaval Walls created by Kinboat: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=47683.

The bridges are immobiles and can be captured, but cannot be destroyed or disbanded. Since it's a naval «unit», unfortunately, it can only be captured by other naval units. A Civ who wants to cross the bridge, needs to control it and the army will need two turns to land on the other shore.

Here is a preview of this addition in your scenario and the modified files (biq, Units, PediaIcon, unit32):
 

Attachments

  • avec_ponts.jpg
    avec_ponts.jpg
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  • TianXia_Bridges.zip
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The Last Conformist said:
I fired up a game, and there appears to be some very bad transparency issues with the hanzi LHs.

Also, you should make at least the the Chinese civs start with embassies. As it is, I can get all the starting money from the rest by trading communications in the first turn.

The Shu, Qiang, YueShi, Xiongnu, Chu, and DongYue have practically no starting units. This, naturally, makes them complete pushovers early on.


LHs : I checked and indeed, many have problems. Weird... but will fix it (depending on whether I keep them that way (Hanzi + transcription).

Embassies : yes, should have done that and will.

"Barbarians" : my mistake. Most games I played recently were in debug mod as the Qiang (non active) to see how the AIs fared against one another. The "barbarian" civs were not really threatened so I forgot to give them starting units. Will fix it easily. But if you play a Chinese civ and start to attack a barbarian civ I am pretty sure the other civs won't just let you walk away with it. Anyway better not to take the chance.
 
7ronin said:
1. Title - TianXia is Okay but I don't think it is going to attract people to want to learn about the scenario and then entice them to play. I would suggest finding a title a little snappier, perhaps something like Seven Dragons or Sons of Heaven; you get the idea.

2. The Chinese, Yue, and Nomad techs. I suspect that these exist to steer the three civilization types onto different paths. If that's the case then each civ should only be able to see it's own path and not be able to research the others. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=149597 and http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=102803 discuss this concept. Playing as Shu, I was only allowed to research Chinese which makes for a boring game as the minimum time is I think 200 turns.

3. Leaderheads. Lots of problems here. Two different leaderheads at the same time and other things.

4. Tech tree. Very crowded. Perhaps dividing it into two arbitrary eras might help. You could call them The Age of Bamboo and The Age of Jade for example.

5. The Map. Were Chinese rivers a barrier to movement at this time? If not, then I suggest changing the coast terrain used for rivers back to river terrain. I think, IIRC, that this is Sarevok's map and his scenario emphasized Chinese riverine warfare.

6. The Great Wall. The Great Wall was much more extensive than you give it credit for. I recommend lengthening it. Perhaps this will compensate some for the power of the Xiong Nu. The standard Civ3 fortification is much more appropriate for the Great Wall than is the Japanese Castle graphic you are using. At this time very little of the Great Wall was stone. It is believed that most of it was of earthen construction probably no more than three or four meters in height.

7. Leaderheads2. I originally thought that using small seal script titles for the leaderheads was a nifty idea. Now I'm not so sure. They seem rather impersonal and even if you read Chinese characters there are recognition/identification problems. Perhaps non-moving portraits would be more effective?

8. Balance. There are some strong civs and some weak civs. So from this standpoint you have some choice on what kind of a challenge you want. I would recommend making the non-seven warring state civs non-human.

9. Flow. No problems or comments so far.

10. General feel. It's a little too early to tell. Mechanically it seems okay. As far as a feeling of Chineseness goes, admittedly most of the 'chrome' (in the form of civilopedia entries, etc.) has yet to be layered on. Is there an underlying theme

11. Size. Once my seven minute queue time was up the download took 36 seconds. Not bad.

12. Nomenclature. Weren't the rulers of the seven warring states referred to as "Dukes?"


1. Well, I thought of keeping TinaXia (under Heaven/under the sky) for the name and the Warring States of China in parenthesis to make it clearer. 7 dragons sounds nice but I am not sure it will be any clearer.

2. Well these techs have two uses. One is indeed to give flavor but another one is to allow some peripheric barbarian civs to join the mainstream of Chinese civilization after a while (hence the long delay for researching Chinese). On the other hand the other flavor civs are never researched by other civs played by AI (and humans would be real dumb researching them as they have no benefits) so I think they are OK as that.

3. Yep, cf my reply to TLC.

4. Well I 'd be all for it and planned to do it that way first but I just could not make it work as the research paths are mixed. Now if you find a brilliant way out, I am all ears !

5. The map is mine, it is quite different from Sarevok's, especially since it focuses on the North (HuangHe). I just made some major rivers navigable because they started to play a role by then and it also allowed for the construction of important strongolds-gateways. However my city placement is not really optimal for that now. I could switch back to mere rivers but I will try to get the navigable rivers system working first.

6. Agree. It was longer (or actually its parts were longer) and indeed they were earthen walls, definitely not like the one used here. So I will change that. I also wondered whether I should make them units (low stats, immobile) as well. Could work but I think it would also look stupid if they are made to belong to a civ then another civ cultural frontiers engulf them and that civ asks you to move them...

7. Could be. I haven't really looked for static portraits yet but it might work better. I agree seals are impersonal but at least (when transparency issues are corrected) they work so I will use them for now until I have a better solution (like the portriats) but for every civ.

8. Well I wanted to do that but then I am sure some people will start asking to play the XiongNu or other barbarian civs. So Why not let them "open" and, if you don't want to play with them (which they were not intended to) just disregard them ?

10. Why do you mean by underlying theme ? An interface ? Then so I would welcome one gladly but I cannot make it myself. Pedias are growing up but indeed I miss some really Chinese-looking improvements,...

11. Good

12. They were Dukes until the beginning of the period but then they started to become "kings" (this is shown with the advance monarchy) a bit like the diadoques after a while took on the title basileus. The title "Duke" is then used as honorific title in the feudalism government while king appears with monarchy and has been given generally to the leaders as they were called kings for most of the Warring States era.
 
beboy said:
Ah! also, just wanted to notified that the Archer unit doesn't have the right sounds. It's making boat sound..:rolleyes:

Arghh ! I play with sounds off so I must say it is a bug I have problems noticing... I did not do the INI file but I will correct it.
 
beboy said:
I've downloaded the beta, but haven't took much time to play yet. Of course, I have got the same issues as the other ones with the leaderheads and this for sure will need a fix.

Concerning the Great Wall, I also recommend a modification, maybe an adaptation from this one (if you are interested, I may volunteer to do it):
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=103993

Also, it seems to be a minimal number (hardcode??) of water squares without interruption necessary to build ships for a city. Under this minimum of water square, it is considered to be a sea, and the city is not allowed to build boats. In consequence, altough Han and Wei (for example) have access to water square, they cannot build ships. Considering the importance the Yellow River and the Yangzi Jiang on the Chinese Civilisation, I decided to mess around with your files in order to make the ship production accessible to the land kingdoms. On the other hand, in order to allow the units to cross the river without using ships, I had to add a new item to the scenario: Bridges !!!

It is mainly an immobile unit that I add, using a .flc from the Mediaval Walls created by Kinboat: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=47683.

The bridges are immobiles and can be captured, but cannot be destroyed or disbanded. Since it's a naval «unit», unfortunately, it can only be captured by other naval units. A Civ who wants to cross the bridge, needs to control it and the army will need two turns to land on the other shore.

Here is a preview of this addition in your scenario and the modified files (biq, Units, PediaIcon, unit32):


The bridge unit is an idea I have always liked and plan to use for the Nile Gift. Did not think it would be necessary here but since the city placement does not work very good with navigable river, since (you are right) the civs would not build ships on too small bodies of water I could use it.
I see one major drawback though. In my experience and in my tests in the Nile Gift (where I used boats simply called ferries as there were no bridges) I have never seen the AI load troops on ships that are not within a city. Hence when a civ land a troop on an island of yours it will never pick it up from shore again (AFAIK). Off course if I am proved to be wrong I am all for it.

A dedicated Great Wall would be nice indeed. But not sure yet whether it should be a fortress or a unit so no rush. But thanks ! I will remember !
 
Does the AI understand the concept of the bridge units? Unless I've missed something, it only ever loads units into transports inside cities.

I believe that to count as "sea", a body of water has to be larger than 20 tiles, and/or contain at least one tile of Sea or Ocean. Other bodies of water are "lakes" and give extra food while disallowing the construction of ships (this is a hack trick to prevent the "battleship pond" phenomenon from Civ2).

What you can do, however, is have improvements spawning ships in cities on "lakes". You could had a Wharf improvement spawning boats every few turns.
 
As I said in the post above I don't think it works with the AI either.

I am not too much in favor of unit-spawning wonder/improvements if I can avoid it (could not with the feudal house for instance) but if I must why not. But then for what ship and for what civs ? I mean the Qin if they remain in the West should not really have them...
 
Bridges:

As far as I remember, the were no bridge crossing the HwangHe or YangTze. Even as late as the 13th Century there were none. The Southern Song was able to deter the Jing from the North because they had a better Navy to guard the river. :)
 
I am not sure if I can give you the right answer cause when I learned my Chinese during school we don't even have the simplified version, much less the romanised one! :p

But if I am not mistaken, all names appears as one word with the second syllabus capitalised except for sirnames that are two syllabus. For example, the sirname 司马 will be written as Sima and NOT SiMa. Thats because the same characters also stands for a title in the royal court of China. ;)
 
@ Dark Sheer : regarding multi-units (sorry I just saw your post). It could be an idea but altogether I am not a big fan of Munits. They clutter things a bit and the different formations might not be that able to spot. I could consider it if playtesters overall think/feel there is a lack of differences among units.

@ all : about transcription. Yes I agree with Dark Sheer. Except for people's names normally it is two syllabs in one word with a capital letter for the beginning of each syllbe. However I did not follow the rule perfectly as some ciy names are so well-known in the West they have become just names with only one capital-letter at the beginning. ie Beijing should be written Beijing (forget about the Chinese, I have always failed to install it on my system ... but probably will one day). If it is a nuisance no problem for me to actually follow the same and one rule for all, either way actually. Don't want to deter some purely Western players from playing it just because they find city names are written in a strange way.

@ Dark Sheer again : that would favor a "bridge" version but if the AI cannot use it I think it is better to use the city as bridge-strongpoints for that.
 
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