SCENARIO: The Ultimate ULTIMA X Scenario: Conquest

[Gen. Maximus]

Dear Civers!

The ultimate Ultima scenario is back, now on Conquest v1.22! Based on the famous RPG about a hero known as the Avatar, saviour of the medieval world of Britannia.

Win by be the first to score 50,000 victory points no later than the 260th turn limit. Note that this scenario is substantially different from the one created for CivIII v1.29 in terms of units, advances and strategy. Get victory points by seizing key cities and holding VP locations, AI start with big headstart at 30,000+, while yours is at a measly 200. That is for losing your kingdom that was once yours, now win it back!

Scenario intro:-
In the kingdom of Britannia, Lord British lost hold of his kingdom with breakway of the other seven city states now ruled by deviant warlords. Play as British under civilization group Bards. Forces and castles still loyal to you are now isolated in hostile teritory and may not hold for long. With news of the arrival of the hero of Britannia, the Avatar; the rebelion states begin marching towards Britain, the capital of Britannia for an pre-emptive strike. With the help of the mighty Avatar and his heroic companions, reclaim your entire kingdom!

Total of 9 factions, each with respective special units based on their race characteristics:
Bards of BRITAIN, city of Compassion (human player)
Druids of YEW, city of Justice
Tinkers of MINOC, city of Sacrifice
Rangers of SKARA BRAE, city of Spirituality
Paladins of TRINSIC, city of Honor
Fighters of JHELOM, city of Valor
Mages of MOONGLOW, city of Honesty
Shepherds of NEW MAGINCIA, city of humility
Pirates of BUCCANEER'S DEN

Control hero units such as the Avatar, Lord British, Iolo etc. All unit and city placement redone in this version with minor map alteration. Advance researchable for first two eras. Advances, wonders, improvements renamed/altered to meet scenario tone.
Zip file contains the biq and readme txt.

Feedback welcome.

General Maximus

[Harovan]

I just looked it up, without playing yet. It is a wonderful scenario and I am very sure I will play it with pleasure.

I'm a big Ultima fan, and for a long time had (and still have) the project to create an Ultima scenario for a PBEM game. The 8 virtues just fit into the 8 possible players (the Pirates would have to be removed) and the storyline could be the fight for power in Britannia after LB's death. I created a map, which looks a bit different like yours, by taking in account, that the tiles are twice as wide as high. My map looks distorted in the minimap view, but gives the proper geometry, yours looks properly in the minimap, but N-S distances measured in tiles are twice as long as W-E distances. I don't know, which principle is better.

By the way, I had the idea to give my LB and my Avatar the "tactical missile" flag and let the Golden Ankh transport 2 tactical missiles. This way the King and his Hero could travel in the King's ship (and only on it!). If the Golden Ankh gets killed, both are stuck whereever they are. This added a bit spice into the game. And I made spiders and giant squid as barbarians . But I left the work unfinished, not enough time.

I'll play your scenario within the next days. Thanks a lot for your work!

[Caliban]

Picture! Picture!

[Gen. Maximus]

Ralph,

It's always good to hear from another Ultima fan. You have a good point on the map but having the minimap distorted doesn't look appealing to me when I first created it. Gameplay wise it certainly makes more sense, no argument about it. Well, the many Civ3 worldmap out there are majority if not all has this 'inaccuracy' as they look nice on minimap. NIce idea on the tactical missle flag, we can always use the future functions in this ancient world such as I use moongate teleportation (from Airport) or Armageddon spell (nuke, of course).

Like to hear some feedback on my scenario.

Lets see if I remember how to paste an image...
[IMG]Snapshot of Bay of Britainnia+minimap[/IMG]
dang, looks like i need to upload it somewhere first...

Anyway, jpg attached for those interested.

[Gen. Maximus]

Picture, here it comes



The centre of your empire, Britain and the surrounding villages. Lord British, Avatar, Iolo, Golden Ankh all ready to draw blood....

[Gen. Maximus]

Hey, the pix still wouldn't show , you got to click on it. Anybody who can help is welcome...!

[vmxa1]

Let's see:

[Harovan]

I played about 20 or 30 turns into it (before I got distracted by R:TW, but I will return), and got the situation stabilized a bit. It's quite a bit time consuming, but worth the effort . I lost both holds on the Isle of the Avatar and the Lycaeum of Moonglow. I'm still holding Serpents Hold and Empath Abbey, the latter due to Jaana's diversions. I can see Serpents Hold falling though, if more Paladin knights are coming (which I don't know). I let Sir Dupré cut the iron supply of the Paladins from the North (I didn't check if it's the only one, though). Mariah got hunted down and killed without a chance. She succeeded to kill two archmages, and the enslaved swordsman redlined a third, but this wasn't enough to save the Lycaeum. I could save Stonegate by luring away the stupid AI, which is a great asset.

All in all I love this scenario very much and take my hat off for your brilliant ideas (for instance moongates and the Ultima-ized wonders). I can see all the hard work and the passion you put in this scenario. Great work, indeed!

Here are some things I would change:

- Jaana is a Lady, not a Lord, pretty please . Don't you remember the brown clothed lady in The Black Gate (with the Falcon familiar, found in Cove), or the Wyrmguard ***** from Ascension, who told that she loved the Avatar, but he never paid attention? Rename it and change the leaderhead of the Darklord to a female one (Catherine?). Also, Hammurabis leaderhead of the female Mage Darklord looks a bit confusing.

- Change city names of East, North and West "Brittany" to "Britain". That's the name of the city.

- The Pirates have 3 workers in their capital in the beginning, and will trade them and their 150 gold for 2 of your techs. Move the workers out, they are too valuable to let them go to the human player so cheap.

- It seems to be too easy to cut the resources from the AI, especially since they're far away and the supply lines are long (not sure about this point).

- The AI tends to rabidly pillage roads even on neutral territory and thus, hurts the advance of it's own reinforcements. I don't know a solution yet, but may be (heresy alert!) we can take the ability to pillage from units? This would solve the previous point as well.

- More heresy ahead: I just don't like the map of Britannia being "Civ style developed" by cutting forests and mining everything in sight. I saw your pre-development, and it is done by almost pure irrigating, but in order to be productive, these tiles would have to be mined. This takes away a bit of the "Britannian" feeling. What about pre-developing the land by reasonably irrigating and mining, and then take away workers from the game? Of course I am aware, that this would question the whole concept of Civ3.

- Once more about forest: A map of Britannia looks weird with forest cut. Proposal: Add one food (make it 2 food, 2 shields), like in the Middle ages Conquest. This way, not even the AI would cut it, even if you leave the workers in the game.

But these proposed changes are of minimal influence to the game fun. Once more kudos to you for your excellent work!

[Gen. Maximus]

Thks, vmxa1! I was sure somebody would had helped out!

Thks too to Ralph for all your comments. What difficulty you played? I'm at 20+ turns too and hanging on to the Codex, the free advance (Great Lib effect) to valuable to lose. Yep, my Serpent Hold ain't holding much longer, got some very lopsided battles that robbed me of my survival
Empath and Lycaeum fell too after a hard fight. I manage to get Mariah to Lycaeum but she no chance to heal!
FYI in the readme, Serpent Academy in Serpent Hold generate a mounted swordman every 5 turns.

Oh dear, Jaana's sex was certainly I typo, knew she's an old lady! For the Darklord, didn't thought of getting different unit graphic for the ladies, just simply didn't.
Regarding Britanny, in Ultima5, Britain was surrounded by East/North/West Britanny if I'm not mistaken.

On strategic resource, I tried to be realistic. For both human player an AI, the resource can be far away. So one will not expect the sherpards on the farmland of New Magincia Isle to be mining Iron. Strategic resource are normally located in mining area/dungeons. Also, most of the UU units do not require iron to built such as Pirates, Longbowman, Rangers, Mages... Armoured clad warriors of Fighters and Paladins will need it for obvious reasons. You did say that Serpent Hold will soon fall right? That will have given Paladin a permanent source of iron that is difficult to pillage

I have created this scenario with non-ultima players in mind so I practically sticked to all default rules of the game. No modification unless have to, to keep Ultima tone. To improve production base, grassland around key cities has shield bonus. I know the AI will probably mine all the grassland to maximise shield but I afraid without workers, we cannot built back pillaged improvements. And, yes as you said... makes it very un-civ like. Actually i was quite surprise the AI army was especially noted for doing road pillaging in neutral teritory. Thsk agn for all your feedback, tell me more at later stages

With the cancellation of Ultima X:Odyssey , it's up to us fans to keep the flames of virtue alive! Long live Lord British!

[Harovan]

I'm playing it on Emperor. I was tempted to play higher (demigod or deity), especially because the food bonus and free start units doesn't play a role here, but then I chickened out, choosing fun over difficulty.

I barely remember Ultima 5, long long ago .

I can see your argument about the workers/improvements. Despite all possible Ultima feeling, this game is still Civ.

By the way, I loaded my media player up with old Ultima MIDIs (mostly from U6 and both U7's), this added greatly to the atmosphere.

I will let you know how it further plays out.

[vmxa1]

Glad to assist. Even though I know almost nothing about Ultima, I appreciate people creating full scale scenarios.

Now if someone would do one for Master Of Orion, like they did for CivII.

[Gen. Maximus]

I am playing at Sid lvl. THe AI is certainly throwing stacks of hostile units to me. If you have notice, the score for destroying enemy unit is 1 instead of 10 as in default or in COnquest scenarios, e.g. a Longbowman that cost 40 shield gives u 4 pts instead of 40pts. This is to emphasize on city/town conquest. My unit score is 917 in only 20 turns due to the rampaging AI, but still a long way from catching up with 'em.

I believe I have seen Master of Orion scenario, it has space tiles, probably in older civ version. Maybe you can post your request in other forum topic. WIth some luck, your wish may come true.

Edited unit score, wrong number earlier.