Virote's Ancient Greek Scenario - Public Alpha

Merry Christmas! I said I'd get this out before Christmas, and I've made it

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Downloads
So, here is the main download (You'll need to Download this first):
http://www.divshare.com/download/3222221-5a5

Here is the flics download. You must extract it into your ViroteGreece\Art folder:
http://www.divshare.com/download/3230507-024

Updates (all updates require the previous files to be downloaded, and the mod must be updated in order, too!)
(Extract these to either "Conquests\Scenarios" or "Conquests\Conquests", depending on where you installed the mod):
1. 19th February 2008 - Scythian Update
2. 4th April 2008 - Athens Update
3. 15th October 2008 - Trade Update Part I


Fixes (require all previous updates, then all fixes):
1. 15th October Units_32 fix

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Here is the development thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=188382

The Credits aren't complete, I'd appreciate it if someone can help fill the gaps

EDIT: Credits are now located in ViroteGreece

 

Some notes:
Currently, all civs are playable to the extent that they won't crash the game and they can do things. However, only these civs are complete ATM:
-Sparta
-Corinth
-Thebes
-Elis
-Aetolia
-Scythia
-Athens
And these civs have completed tech trees and ancient era unit lines:
-Euboea
-Argos
-Crete
-Ionia
-Iberia
-Lydia
-Thessaly
-Phoenicia
-Bosporan Kingdom
-Messenia
-Sheba
-Magna Graecia
However, feel free to playtest any of the other civs, to see how they are panning out, too

Currently, most of the 'pedia descriptions aren't put in place, although that will be subject to change throughout the Alpha and Beta, depending on my time. However, all of the "effects" should have some kind of description

There are many mythological units which should not be "foot units" which in this version are. This is because most civs would not be able to transport them otherwise. Feel free to exploit this to the largest possible extent, as with any bug you find This has now been fixed

In between turn times are fairly slow, although this is due to the AI moving units around, rather than the AI thinking. The worst turn times are when Persia, Babylon and India have their turns. I'm hoping that when more expensive units come into place later on during testing, these turn times should drop somewhat.

Due to the way I play, I rarely get out of the Dark Ages, at the moment, so I don't know how balanced things are there...

You may experience a large lag at the end of the 2nd turn onwards. Although I do not know the cause, you should not worry; It seems to stop lagging so badly again around turn 5 or six.

What I really need playtesting ATM is Scythia, who have a lot of very cheap units all through the game, and thus may be rather unbalanced...

 

Screenshots
This post has four screenshots from the latest update.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6507963&postcount=66

This post shows some (slightly outdated) screenshots:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6162676&postcount=230



Feel free to post your own screenshots, and I'll link to them from this page!

 

Requests

Units
-Mounted Scythian/Steppe Javelineers
-Scythian Lancer(s)

 

*Reserved, just in case I need it*

 

First post!!!!!!
I will test this one for sure, Sparta here i come ;-)

 

Thanks for the present. It's currently coming down the chimney. I probably won't open it until ...shouldn't it be called Unboxing Day?

 

Right.
Thanks for following through Virote. But is the flics file supposed to be 120 mgs?!

 

Yeah. The only reason it wasn't in the main DL is because it added too much to the file, about 30-ish MB over Divshare's limit

 

At least Divshare doesn't have a waiting queue.

 

I've Updated my "requests" post for some palette help.

 

The problem is that they have too many colours - you should reduce the colour depth to 256.

 

Ah, thanks for that. I thought I'd done it in photoshop already, but I just decreased all the colour depths in PSP and bob's your uncle, it worked!

There is still, however, a continuing problem with one of the icons, GuerrillaWarfare (both large and small, although I may have just forgot to resize and save the large icon as the small one).

 

Can you post the latest Guerilla icon? The one in the zip above was in RGB format, it will need to become 256 colour file.

 

Thanks, Keroro. I'll just send the Large file, and when you're done, I'll resize it

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/48847/Guerilla.zip

 

That icon's in 256 colours, but remember the last two colours should be transparent. I actually find it easier to reduce colours on tech icons to 254 colours and then save the pic as a 256 colour indexed .pcx file. This will usually mean that your pallatte has the right things in the right places. At least it does when you use GIMP.

The one attached should work OK.

 

Thanks, Keroro!

 

The major issue that I am facing at the moment, is due to the removal of any settler from the start, there is nothing which stunts the cities, and therefore from a very early stage, the AI can only build masses and masses of units, with constantly increasing amounts. There are only a few things I can think of to combat this:

1. Give all or some units population costs.
+
-Limits the size of cities happily, and the amount of units
-
-Doesn't just effect the short-run, as cities remain constantly small. This is why I took pop. costs from units in the first place.
-Cities must be size x to build these units, which is a) probably a concept the AI won't get, and b) bloody annoying having to time all unit builds with population growth. It is also annoying when you can only build units, and your city doesn't earn enough food to be able to build them in less than 20 turns.

2. Limit City Growth by taking one food away from tiles, but adding it onto the irrigation output
+
-It only acts in the short term, and can thus be timed to take any real effect when cities have more expensive units/buildings to build.
-
-Some cities will take much too long to grow, and many wouldn't be able to grow at all, even enough to build workers. This I definitely do not want.
-Resources will effect city growth, anyway, thus nerfing the effects of less food.

3. Raising Worker Population Costs
+
-Due to AI building patterns, these effects would probably wear themselves out by the time they are not needed, but hamper AI growth fairly bad when they are (i.e. at the beginning of the game)
-
-Some cities will not be able to build workers. I could try to get past this by allowing later workers requiring normal amounts of population, that are also more expensive, or something, maybe coming with Slavery, or something (like the Spartan Helot currently).
-Scythia does not have workers, but rather units who also happen to have worker actions. This would mean that either they will need to have a population cost for many of their warriors, or have the rather large advantage of no population cost for their workers.

Anyone got any other ideas?

 

Limit some units to autoproduction / involve some kind of "resource in city limits" requirement.

 

I wish I could do that, but improvements and wonders are going to be very tight