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                                  THE LOST PARADISE

                             A scenario for Civilization II

                                   By Stefan Hrtel

                               Stefan.Haertel@t-online.de

                          http://www.alexanderthegreat.de/civ2

                      


                                      CONTENTS

                                   Installation
                                   Historical Background
                                   Designer's Notes
                                   The Players
                                   Rules
                                   Credits
                                   Sources
                                   Feedback


I. INSTALLATION

I can only guarantee you that this scenario will work with Fantastic Worlds. I cannot guarantee you that it works with MGE/UCC. It will not work with CiC or lower versions. 
Create a folder under the Scenario directory, call it "Lostpar" or whatever, and move all the unzipped files in.
If you have the German or French copy of Civ2, then you must run the file "Lostparadise.bat" included with the *.zip file for this scenario to run properly.


II. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

It is unknown when exactly the first people settled in the South Sea islands. Melanesian settlers from modern-day Indonesia are thought to have reached New Guinea as early as 2000 BC. A highly advanced culture named "Lapita culture" for a place in New Caledonia, emerged around 1600 BC. Two further groups, the Micronesians and the Polynesians, soon appeared. The Micronesians settled in the Marshall Islands, the Carolines, the Marians and other island groups nowadays known as Micronesia. The Polynesians descended from the Fidji, Tonga and Samoa islands and soon expanded further eastwards, as they were being pushed by the Melanesians, who were reduced to New Guinea and the surrounding islands. The Polynesians soon became the greatest seafarers the world had ever seen, as they had only 'primitive' navigation methods and narrow boats, but colonized a territory that stretched from Hawaii to the Easter Islands, and New Zealand (where they are nowadays known as the Maori). Sadly, little of these cultures is left, especially in the smaller islands, as they fell victim to the European invasion and Christian missons. The South Seas became subject to foreign imperialism, mostly between the French, Spanish, and later Americans, Germans and Japanese.


III. DESIGNER'S NOTES

The idea for a scenario involving Oceania rised on a cold and rainy November evening when I was browsing the internet and atlas maps for places I'd like to be in. Naturally, the warm beaches of islands far, far away from here (Germany) attracted me. Hawaii became a first idea, and I found a website giving a good and detailed coverage of its history. I came to the (at least to me) obvious conclusion, that, if I couldn't get there myself, I could at least make a scenario about all this. Well, the conclusion didn't ripe that fast, but it came eventually. At first, I wanted to do something about Hawaii. But for some reason, my attention soon fell on all those tiny little islands which I hardly knew anything about, and I remembered my visits to the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, many years ago, where I was so impressed by those reconstructed ships, the huge masks, spears skulls on display in the exhibition about the South Seas. Sadly, Berlin was just about as far away back then, and I had to rely on tiny bits of information in very few books, and some dedicated, but less informative websites, so the ideas and inspiration grew slowly through the winter. Finally, and much later, I got to Berlin and immediately visited the Ethnological Museum, where I was once again impressed by the exhebition, and collected every single sheet of paper representing a guide. When I got back home, one of the first things I did was to draw some ship icons and develop ideas for
the scenario (propably entirely confusing a poor guy sitting next to me in a bus when I wrote down a neat list of ideas).
The project grew slowly, and finally became what you can see here. It is propably totally different from other Civ2 scenarios, but I think that is just as well.


IV. THE PLAYERS

All seven civs appear in this scenario, but only five are intended for play. If you want an easy game, you are directed to the Polynesians and the Maori. The Polynesians start with most technologies, and three cities, and a lot of advantages concerning trade and travel. This is to reflect the importance of their culture for the rest of the southern Pacific area. The Maori, being Polynesians themselves, have the same technological boost, plus two wonders, whereas all others (in exception of the Papua, who have none) have only one. Their enviroment, meant to reflect the Northern Island of New Zealand is very different, being a large landmass rather than many tiny islands. Whether this is more difficult or easier is up to you, it's different in any case.
Next would be the Melanesians and the Micronesians. Both have certain advantages and disadvantages. The Melanesians have large islands, and therefore are likely to develop a large population. However, it isn't as likely as with others that they will have an easy time catching up with the development, because they aren't very advanced and their production is rather low. The Micronesians have a huge amount of tiny atolls, which have great shield output, but very little trade and virtually no food around. Growth is a huge problem to them, and they will always have a difficult deciding whether it's north -with very productive cities and little danger, but much isolation- or south with none of the above.
The Papua will have a very hard time. They are the most isolated civ, having a large but dangerous island to explore and colonize. Once they've reached an agreeable situation, most other powers will propably have gotten a huge head start.


V. RULES, DETAILS AND INFO

This scenario is basically a completely modified standart game, and should be played as such. To make the AI more agressive, though, the capital cities of the Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians, Papua and Maori are set as objectives. Therefore, the scoring system isn't the same as in an original game. This isn't very much of a problem, as I believe the scores according to the original system wouldn't have been very accurate compared to real achievements in the game.
I think it's time to tell you about the map. It's ugly. Well, that may not be true. This scenario is set mostly for naval strategy, with very little land and very much water. Large land masses can only be found in the south of the map, but these territories (New Zealand and New Guinea) are already occupied by the Maori and Papua. So, why not build your cities on one of those nice and empty little islands... empty? Well, they may look so at first. But you'd better double-check. At rare occasions, you will see a little settlement on one of the larger islands. Those are tribes that reached this island before you. They are hostile. Fight them.
Sometimes, however, the island is already populated without you seeing it. The people living there are fierce, bloodthirsty cannibals. If you leave them alone, they will leave you alone, but having cannibal neighbours isn't such an attractive thing. Sending out your fearless warriors against them is a good idea. However, you never know if the island is inhabited by cannibals or not, unless your troops actually try to set foot on it. You have to live with it.
Well, settling down beside one of those villages until you have the power to destroy them is always an option. Sadly, they often occupy the more beautiful settling place. More sadly, you are usually left with a piece of land unprotected against the forces of nature. A flood may suddenly make all your units and cities perish. You have to live with that, too. Especially because it occurs more than once in a spot most of the time.
That having said, beware of lower terrains. Higher places aren't that safe either, though. Maybe you have heard of the pacific "Ring of Fire", a ring of volcanoes and earthquake territories along the border of the pacific plate. Here, this is represented by the Melanesian islands. Volcanoes have the tendency to errupt and turn the territories around into rubble. They do this only once, and when you spot some rubble, settling down near it is quite productive. But if you see a volcano that hasn't errupted, beware of it. You never know which ones might errupt, and which ones don't (unless you look into the events file, which is strongly discouraged). 
Concluding, be careful with islands that have volcanoes on them, or such that are three squares or more in size. Floods will occur in light jungle, swamp and grassland squares (though not on NZ and NG, and not those islands you start on), and will turn one terrain square into swamplands. They might do this again and again, so be careful. You should better check out if everything is still there at the start of each turn.
Each civ, in exception of the Papua, starts out with at least one WoW. These are meant to suggest the role the certain civ is meant to play. You can easily find this out by consulting the pedia. The same goes for any stats, such as units, improvements, advances, terrain, etc. You should really do so, though, as it's important for you to know.
This scenario is propably more suited for multiplayer games than for single player ones. It will definately be more interesting, as the AI propably screws up most of the carefully planned game concepts you are to find out. Revealing them all here spoils this game entirely. They aren't hard to find out though.


VI. CREDITS

Most of the unit graphics have been made or modified by me. I am especially proud of some of the ship graphics, which I made from the scratch. You may use any of my units (marked with "SH") in your work, provided you don't erase my signature and a word of credit is given. So many people simply seem to forget this. The Frigate unit was taken from John Ellis' scenario "Colonies 3". The Dugout graphic is the common canoe featured at so many places, so I can't really remember where I took it from. Propably from Harlan's collection of ancient units. The slightly modified European unit propably also comes from there, though it could just as well be Microprose's War of Independence scenario. The Storm unit was taken from Kull's "Seeds of Greatness" scenario. The "Blue Whale" unit was made by Morten Blaabjerg. The "Humpback Whale" unit is from Mr. Temba's "Charlemange" scenario; the idea of using whaling also originates from this scenario (although the original inspiration came from Dan Scheltema's scenario "Slash And Burn").
The "Maori" type city graphic was taken from Harlan's city collection. The "Polynesian" type city was made by myself. The flags were taken from the flag collection whose author I've forgotten. I don't remember where I took that fortress icon from, but it's so common that I propably wouldn't have credited the original source anyhow.
Most of the icon graphics were taken from Harlan's icon collection, some of those, in return, are Microprose's work. I modified some of those. You will propably easily recognize most of the ones I made. They are just resized pictures from the net. And as for the other ones I made - well, I might feel more comfortable if you don't know that I made them ;-)
The terrain icons are mostly either from the large terrain collection, whose author I still do not know, or they are from the tropical terrain collection by Stefan de Jonge. The "weed" graphic is from Field Marshal Klesh. The moa-ressource graphic is a resized pic taken from a website I was guided to by Prometeus (I believe). I am responsible for the recolorized ocean and atoll graphics. The frames and pop-up box background are also my work.
Special thanks goes to my two great playtesters, who invested very much time, and whose extensive comments have helped a great lot in making this game what it is. They are: Javier Muoz Kirschberg (yaroslav) and Vincent Frachebourg (Cyrion). A very big thank you to you, guys!


VII. SOURCES

I consulted so many books and websites for this scenario, that I can only list the most important ones of those I can remember.

- Oliver E. Allen: "Die Entdeckung der Pazifik-Inseln" (Time-Life Books, 1981)
- Ninian Smart (publisher): "Atlas der Weltreligionen" (Knemann Verlag, Cologne, 2000)
- Marie-Henriette Alimen/Marie-Joseph Steve: "Weltbild Weltgeschichte Bd.1: Vorgeschichte" (Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg, 1998)
- Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin; Fhrungsbltter Abteilung Sdsee (Berlin)
- James Cook: "Voyages Of Discovery" (Chicago, 1993)


VIII. FEEDBACK

For questions, comments notes or anything else, you can write me an eMail
to Stefan.Haertel@t-online.de
You can also write something to one of Apolyton's forums, preferably the SLeague forum. Please visit my homepage at http://www.alexanderthegreat.de/civ2/
Please don't write to tell me that your version of Civ2 doesn't load this scenario.
I'm not going to answer these mails. Your game doesn't support the version this scenario was made in (FW; 2.72). You can download a patch to update your game at http://www.civfanatics.com
Here you can get the latest versions of all my other scenarios, as well as my other creations for Civ2.