Your ideal Civ 3 fantasy scenario

[Buttercup]

The part I enjoy most in any civ game is the early stages, Ancient Age perhaps up to somewhere in the medieval era. The annoying thing about civ games is that it's normally wise not to actually do anything until late medieval/Industrial or to just go total war from the get-go and make the game end too quick.

What I'd like is a game where 4000BC to 1000AD is the game time limit, but the turns don't get progressively shorter in years, they stay the same time-length per turn, so ten years per turn is exactly 500 turns.

Techs wouldn't be learnt, instead, beakers give you bargaining power to buy techs off of other civs, techs can't be traded otherwise. At the start of the game you are allowed to choose, say, 5 techs (with 2 being the usual default) and every 15 turns you get to pick another one.

I'd do away with both Resistors and potential Flipping with captured cities and just have the similar system 2 used by having 1-3 rebellious guerrilla units appear in the city's outskirts after a conquest.

Horse units should cost 3gp per turn or cost 3 units of your Allowed total, professional soldiers 2gp or 2 Units of Allowed and defencive/Warrior/scout/worker etc Units 1gp or 1 Unit of Allowed. Unique Units (inc. Ancient Cavalry and Crusaders) would be +1 of their regular counterpart but cost the same shields. Civs with no Unique Units in these two eras would have one assigned to them.

This way the game would be much more about the ancient style of warfare and society building with genuinely diverse factions coming into combat with each other while adding greatly to the tactical side of warfare and the strategical thought before warfare.

They tried to give the option of an extended Ancient Age in civ4, but it really didn;t change the game much, everything flowed the same way as things like production were slowed to compensate, so it was the same just in slow motion, which is not what I'm on about.

Which is your favourite era and how best would you manipulate the game to give you more of what you like?

 

[Desertsnow]

Personally I like the rapid expansion phase, middle to late ancient age, and into the early medieval age; my empire really is expanding rapidly. I usually have a good settler farm going so I'm founding cities left, right and center, and generally am faring well in my wars, taking more cities by force pointy-stick diplomacy. I haven't thought much about how to change the game to improve this. I like it pretty much as it is, really.

 

[timerover51]

The part I enjoy most in any civ game is the early stages, Ancient Age perhaps up to somewhere in the medieval era. The annoying thing about civ games is that it's normally wise not to actually do anything until late medieval/Industrial or to just go total war from the get-go and make the game end too quick.

I am not sure what you mean by "it's normally wise not to actually do anything until late medieval/Industrial". That would depend partly on the size of the map and the number of opponents. On the Huge or larger maps that I play on, a large portion of the early game is spent exploring the map, either Archipelago or Continents, and determining where the opposition is, at the same time developing my civilization.

What I'd like is a game where 4000BC to 1000AD is the game time limit, but the turns don't get progressively shorter in years, they stay the same time-length per turn, so ten years per turn is exactly 500 turns.

That can be readily done by adjusting the setting for game turn in the editor. You also might want to try some of the earlier pre-made scenarios that come with the game.

Techs wouldn't be learnt, instead, beakers give you bargaining power to buy techs off of other civs, techs can't be traded otherwise. At the start of the game you are allowed to choose, say, 5 techs (with 2 being the usual default) and every 15 turns you get to pick another one.

A couple of thoughts on this. First, if you are able to buy and sell techs, you are engaged in tech trading. As for having more techs to start with and then choosing one every 15 turns, that can also be done in the editor. To add additional starting techs for a civilization, you go to Scenario Properties and go to the Players menu, where you can add as many additional starting techs as you wish. To get techs every 15 turns, you would go to General Settings in the editor, and reset the maximum research time for a tech to 15.

I'd do away with both Resistors and potential Flipping with captured cities and just have the similar system 2 used by having 1-3 rebellious guerrilla units appear in the city's outskirts after a conquest.

I think that you can avoid Flipping in the editor, but the Resistors appear to be hard-coded, and I do not think that you can set guerilla units to appear with a city capture. That would take some coding work as well.

Horse units should cost 3gp per turn or cost 3 units of your Allowed total, professional soldiers 2gp or 2 Units of Allowed and defencive/Warrior/scout/worker etc Units 1gp or 1 Unit of Allowed. Unique Units (inc. Ancient Cavalry and Crusaders) would be +1 of their regular counterpart but cost the same shields. Civs with no Unique Units in these two eras would have one assigned to them.

I definitely agree that horse units should cost more in upkeep that infantry units, as you have to feed and house both the horse and the rider. I can see having professional soldiers cost more as well, but unfortunately, it is not possible to set variable upkeep costs with the editor. Your alternative would be to have variable population costs for units, with horse and professional units costing more population.

This way the game would be much more about the ancient style of warfare and society building with genuinely diverse factions coming into combat with each other while adding greatly to the tactical side of warfare and the strategical thought before warfare.

While you can definitely simulate the strategic side of warfare in the game, the tactical side gets a bit iffy. To really simulate that takes a miniatures game.

They tried to give the option of an extended Ancient Age in civ4, but it really didn;t change the game much, everything flowed the same way as things like production were slowed to compensate, so it was the same just in slow motion, which is not what I'm on about.

As I have not played Civ4 to any extent, I cannot comment on that. I also dislike slow-motion games, which is why I am not a fan of having a large number of civilizations in the game, especially in the later eras. The between turn time gets to be far too long for my taste.

Which is your favourite era and how best would you manipulate the game to give you more of what you like?

I probably prefer the Ancient and Medieval Eras the most, with a little of of the early Industrial Era. As for how I manipulate the game, I busily mod away with the Firaxis editor, Steph's editor, and Quintillus' editor.

I will work up a scenario in the editor with some of your ideas and post it here, as well as the scenario section. Would you also like to have a bit of a slower expansion rate for the computer as well, which would more accurately reflect the slower population growth in Ancient and Medieval times?

 

[timerover51]

My ideal fantasy scenario would be one based on TETurkhan's Test of Time scenario, where I can both have dinosaurs wreaking havoc on the civilizations and also Triceratop cavalry units to wreak havoc on my opponents. I am presently working on getting it working properly.

 

[justanick]

I definitely agree that horse units should cost more in upkeep that infantry units, as you have to feed and house both the horse and the rider. I can see having professional soldiers cost more as well, but unfortunately, it is not possible to set variable upkeep costs with the editor.

What you can do is to make some units cost no upkeep. This allows an admittedly poor approximation of the intended differentiation in upkeep.

 

[Buttercup]

Yeah, I'm aware some bits and pieces can be done in the editor, I'm not really a fiddler though myself, I can find enough enjoyment from vanilla Conquests to keep booting up new games, it was just a little fantasy thing, which even still doesn't work very well because even just restricting Techs to beaker trade would result in very rapid Tech expansion as people swapped beakers with each other - to which the only answer would be to remove beakers, but then that removes some building's/tech's relevance and it starts to get silly.

I suppose I'm kind-of trying to imagine a completely different game, more like an expansion scenario than a proper full civ-game, sort of like "Wars of the Ancients" expansion set or something.

So I probably should have described the question as "what would be your ideal mini-expansion/scenario".

 

[Theov]

Yeah, I'm aware some bits and pieces can be done in the editor, I'm not really a fiddler though myself, I can find enough enjoyment from vanilla Conquests to keep booting up new games, it was just a little fantasy thing, which even still doesn't work very well because even just restricting Techs to beaker trade would result in very rapid Tech expansion as people swapped beakers with each other - to which the only answer would be to remove beakers, but then that removes some building's/tech's relevance and it starts to get silly.

I suppose I'm kind-of trying to imagine a completely different game, more like an expansion scenario than a proper full civ-game, sort of like "Wars of the Ancients" expansion set or something.

So I probably should have described the question as "what would be your ideal mini-expansion/scenario".

mine is linked to in my signature

 

[Immortal7777]

Ancient times is my favorite era. But like the fantasy mods that let me play as dwarves and kill elves. The map should be interesting. I don't think the Random maps do it that well. Usually just a circular piece, Make the civs in close enough proximity.

 

[walletta]

I like the ancient era for making optimal starts and the industrial age for interesting warfare.