Just Me and the Barbarians

[Son of moose]

It would seem that Snoopy's wonderful post (with details regarding the moddability of Civ 4) has largely answered my question in the affirmative.

I have been playing a Civ 3 game (as Caesar of the Romans versus Gandhi of the Indians) where I have spawned the maximum number of cities possible (before the game crashes). I have recently dispatched Gandhi for good as he was subverting some of my growing cities from his solitary modern armour-surrounded city. However, I have been permitted to continue with this game and am aiming to slowly but surely develop my extremely basic cities into veritable cultural havens.

Indeed, I am strongly tempted to convert the final outcome of this massive city building campaign into a scenario (with the relevant utility) and load it as a DYP (Double Your Pleasure) game so that I can continue merrily with my city (empire) building exploits.

Therefore my question, regarding the soon-to-be-released Civ 4, is:

Will it be feasible to play it as a challenging CB game where it is feasible to build many fine cities in the face of a savage barbarian onslaught?

I am aware that the rules regarding city spawning have been changed but it should still be possible (with careful planning and preparation) to build a really large multi-city empire.

Snoopy's article has suggested that it should even be possible to adapt the city design. Therefore it might be possible to make a mod that will make multi-city building an even more rewarding experience.

Has anyone any ideas about this idea?

[binTravkin]

Has anyone any ideas about this idea?

[Kataphraktoi]

are you insane??


i bet expected barabarian onslaughts could be built in. in fact im thinking of a barb faction,like in medieval total war,except a wole bucnh of them. when your city revolts,every turn it remains that way increases chances to rebel.when it does,# of peeps get changed to army and it joins barbs.and for nations already defeated,they can be reincarnated by taking control of one of these revolts(really awesome feature)

anyone hold off the mongol horders in that game? i was playing as byz from the earliest start,so my army was over built up and 9 star general,so just stomped em,but would be a challange with moscow. my favourite screen is seeing the egyptions popping back up in ireland

[binTravkin]

The other thread just got closed..

[Kataphraktoi]

good thing you already got em eh?

[Son of moose]

Cataphract887:

are you insane??

I could well be.


First of all I must freely admit that I am a great fan of the classic CB (City Building) games. However, I find it somewhat restricting to be limited to building just ONE city. Civ, with the capacity of building MANY cities imho takes the CB concept so much further insofar as one is now genuinely able to build a true empire.

In addition, it is truly rewarding being able to view the number of Happy Citizens slowly but surely growing as well as as one's cultural influence steadily expanding as extra cathedrals (and the like) are built.

After playing a few "conventional" Civ 3 games, I truly feel that this type of game represents not only the ultimate challenge but also the ultimate reward for a long and patient campaign.

Then maybe I am mad ....

[Kataphraktoi]

heh,isnt the max number of cities like 512? well i have a similar game going i suppose in smac. its 2189 and i have 36 bases,with 150 formers and 200 crawlers...maybe dosnt seem as much,but with the WP they are = to industrous.how many workers do you have?5000?

i like empire games,but civ\smac arnt made only for this,so suffer in that department. imho

[Son of moose]

Cataphract887:

I actually haven't counted the exact number of cities .... although I really must do this. [It must be something like 512!!! ].

I have only about 200 workers (about 80 of which are captured Indian workers ) out of nearly 2000 units. I should actually start deleting all these excessive military units so that my government can evolve from Monarchy to Democracy.

I must admit that I quite like "pushing the envelop" wrt most of the games that I own. It would seem that Civ 4 will be extremely open to this type of thing whereby truly ambitious players should be able to design all sorts of fascinating scenarios.

[Kataphraktoi]

well i was just assuming its 512,since civ2 had that limit( now that was a limit i know from experiance)

maybe they increased it to 1024 in light of increased puter strength. i think the archaic practise of choosing arbitrary limits puts irritating constraints on the game-i know i was in one civ3c game where i couldnt put any more cities in because of that although i didnt try to build em up.i just spammed cavalry out of them

[Son of moose]

Cataphract887:

Then we should both be extremely happy with Civ 4 as it seems to have been designed as a game with no such arbitrary limits.

[Addled Platypus]

son of moose

do you have a older computer? never had anything close to that

ok I will go delacre total war in the current sp game I got going

and build build build cities

[Son of moose]

Platypus Rex:

Unfortunately I do not own a particularly new computer.

It is a 2.0 GHz Celeron with a (fairly) large amount of memory (1.024 Ghz). I would like to upgrade my processor sometime within the foreseeable future.

I am sure that those members lucky enough to own 3.0+ GHz P4 processors could possibly play an extremely expanded version of Civ 4.

[sophist]

Not necessarily. The complexity is probably super-linear. In other words, if it takes 20 seconds to do X things , that doesn't mean it will only take 40 seconds to do 2X things. It could be that doing twice as much stuff takes 4 times as long. I'm sure there are many Civ elements that are like that.

[Son of moose]

Sorry for the “bump” but I have recently managed to elaborate this concept of “Just me and the Barbarians …” to form the basis of a possible fully-fledged Civ 4 scenario. In addition, there is now considerably more knowledge regarding the features that will be included in the soon-to-be-released Civ 4.

Ever since I downloaded a NASA satellite image of the greater metropolitan Cape Town region, I have long wished to see whether it would be possible to feature my "home town" as the backdrop to a bona fide strategy game. I had plans to initially experiment with this concept with Battle Goat Studios "Supreme Ruler 2010" but this product's continuing non-availability here in South Africa as well as (imho) a ridiculously user-unfriendly map editor have conspired to deny me this pleasure. However, there is no bigger and better strategy game than CIV!!!

In this proposed Civ 4 scenario, I am keen to be able to place outlines of the circa 200 (or more .... depending upon the size of the map) existing suburbs which might initially be displayed as Barbarian settlements which can be conquered and upgraded to cities (even if one has to build over the ruins of the destroyed Barbarian settlement). The rationale for this scenario is that the player functions as the mayor of Cape Town and the resident ratepayers are actively in revolt (the Barbarians occupying the exact location of the individual suburbs). The mayor must not only re-establish control of the city by defeating the Barbarian hordes (by developing a pretty strong military presence) but must (most importantly) also upgrade this primitive city (and its surrounding region) into a cultural, scientific and religious powerhouse by developing all the individual suburbs (the former Barbarian settlements) into centers of excellence. In other words, the emphasis in this scenario would be on non-competitive building (as there is only one player) in-between fighting the recalcitrant rate payers].

With only one player in the scenario (although the spawning barbarians might actually count as several players), it should surely be possible to develop a fairly large outsized map of this region in order to display as many suburbs and "estates" as possible as well as highlight the fairly interesting (and challenging) geographic features characterizing the region without running into too many “lag-related” problems (as discussed in another thread on this forum).

I have a couple of questions for my fellow forum members who are not already bored and/or horrified with the above outline:

# Do you think that the above idea is viable in Civ 4 (in light of the knowledge of the new features that will be included in it)?
# Can barbarians "own" cities which can be captured ... such as the individual suburbs in my scenario? [Perhaps this feature can be “modded” into the scenario].
# Would one loose more (diplomacy and several other strategic elements) with this type of scenario than one would gain (the ability to build all of the Wonders)? [Are there diplomatic options with the Barbarians … Perhaps they could be “modded” into the scenario].

Any other suggestions or comments …

[Abdul Alhazred]

??????? Very Strange