Decline of the Empire

[Joe R. Golowka]

I'm trying to set up a scenario in which a couple of things happen. First I'm trying to figure out a way to punish a player/civ if they don't expand (preferably via conquest or via building new cities is also acceptable). Second, I want a Civ that gets to a point where it can no longer expand to slowly decline and eventually die off. Ideally these two could be inforporated into one mechanism, ie. the thing that makes them expand will kill them if they can't expand any more. Any suggestions on how to do this? I've tried playing around with events to decrease their money, but that doesn't seem to be working.

[Mercator]

How about this...

Expansion: Limit the units the civilization can build and use creatunit events to create the better military units. But, to encourage conquest the createunit event creates these units in nearby enemy cities. This will mean the createunit event will only work if you have conquered that city.
Decline: Have some kind of special zero-move defensive unit in the enemy cities furthest away from the human player´s civ (or wherever you want the conquest to end). Once one of these units is killed by a human, the AI civs will receive huge reinforcements.

[BeBro]

Mercators first idea is very good. Use low RANDOMTURN values for these events that create strong enemy units directly in enemy cities. You can even "move back" the creation points of these enemy units with wisely chosen coordinates, then the player has to take even more cities before the creation stops...

[H Tower]

another way to make a civ want to expand is making them cash poor and unable to balance the budget without conquering cities. Then just give the computer huge sums of money every turn or whenever you conquer on e of their cities.

theoretical code:

IF citycaptured (smolensk)
Then trigger defender(1000 gold)

(I know this isn't the actual code because i haven't done an events.txt file in months but you get the idea)

[Sava]

So you want to punish the player for not expanding? And then, punish him when he expands? This doesn't sound like it'd be very fun.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
So you want to punish the player for not expanding? And then, punish him when he expands? This doesn't sound like it'd be very fun.

Putting it like that makes it sound rather paradoxal. I don´t think that´s what he means. I guess he more or less tries to model rise and fall of empires.

[Case]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
So you want to punish the player for not expanding? And then, punish him when he expands? This doesn't sound like it'd be very fun.

Sonds like fun to me
(I like challenging scenarios)

[Joe R. Golowka]

Originally posted by Mercator
I guess he more or less tries to model rise and fall of empires.

Yes, exactly. And you wouldn't necessarily be one of the Empires who rises and falls, you could be one of their victims instead if you want.

Thanx for your help everyone. I'll play around with these suggestions and see what I can do with them. I'll probably wait until Civ3 comes out before I make the full-fledged scenario though, since it'll be out by the time I finish it. Plus it may have other features which will make the scenario better.