Scenarios from the Community: American Civil War

[La Fayette]

This scenario, designed by Captain NEMO and Alex Mor, is very enjoyable IMO.
The authors advise to play as the Union at King level.
I played at deity level as usual and achieved decisive victory (24 objective cities conquered) in february 1863.

Details next post.

Attention, please, next post is a spoiler.

[La Fayette]

Attention, please !
Don't read this post now if you intend to play the scenario soon.

Contrary to many other scenarios, this one allows wonder building, research and economic growth, which makes the strategical choices in the early game much more difficult to ponder.

I chose economic growth through transatlantic trading (not a single dollar spent on military in the early game, only fierce defense against attacks by the Confederates, with the units available from start).

But I gave top priority to wonder building (somewhat alike the race to ancient wonders in the 'vanilla' game), because all 4 wonders I was offered to build looked interesting (equivalent to SunTzu, Magellan, Darwin and JSBach). I managed to grasp them all, and I think it gave a fairly strong start.

Right after that, I built a double shipchain between New York and Western Europe (allowing 3 deliveries/turn) and built hordes of caravans ("traders") in order to build up a strong war Treasury.

(to be followed next post)

[La Fayette]

Next step: after completing Darwin, I was able to discover the tech required for building Monitors and therefore conquer all coastal cities (since there is no ship able to send a monitor to the bottom in this game).

Therefore I went for conquest of coastal cities and this was probably my main strategical mistake. The reason why is that monitors travel rather slowly (7 moves with "Magellan") and need time to recover after hard fighting. It would probably be more efficient to build more RR sooner and conquer inland cities with mortars (more or less equivalent to howies in this game).

Anyway my biggest mistake was that I didn't get conscious soon enough that I was becoming so rich that I could plainly bribe the remaining Southern cities.

I achieved decisive victory in february 1863 with almost 10000 gold left, which means that I could certainly have won in 1862, had I started to bribe Southern cities sooner.

[Elephant]

Is there a way to disallow bribing cities in a Scenario?

[La Fayette]

I know one way: "no diplomats, no spies"

but there may be other ways that experienced scenario makers would be able to talk about.

(I play "no bribe" when playing GOTMs, just because I find it more fun, but when a scenario allows bribing, I bribe)

[Boco]

In the @SPYMENU section of game.txt, if you replace any line but the first with a blank line, that option will not appear in the game. IIRC, you still need the empty line. Has no effect on the AI, though.