Scenarios from the Community: The invasion of Russia

[La Fayette]

This scenario, designed by Markus Eklund, should be the first scenario that you play if you are not a scenario player.

It is very simple (and at the same time very difficult to win): you are the small Swedish civ (3 cities), with a small Swedish army (about 20 units) and you MUST conquer Moscow after a long trip through Russia, meeting LOTS of Russian units on your way.

I played at deity level, as usual, and finally managed to conquer Moscow on week 73, but it was not at first try.
I usually play a few turns to get acquainted. This time I played more than a few turns, more than once , since there are many details to think about, and if you forget too many, you just don't do it.

Details next post.

ATTENTION PLEASE: NEXT POST IS A SPOILER

[La Fayette]

The key to winning this scenario is taking great care of your precious Swedish units. Anytime you destroy a Russian unit, you MUST be convinced that there are 10 more behind.

The ratio of my casualties to Russian casualties was about 1/7, and I suppose that if you manage better than that it will be good for you.

1) Early game: the Swedish army is non vet, but Sweden owns a wonder that is equivalent to Sun Tzu. You should therefore fight as much as you can with non vet units in order to make them vet.
Be very careful if the walls tumble down when you take a city: Russian counter attacks can be devastating.

2) Midgame: you have mainly 3 problems to solve.

2-1 = choose your way to Moscow (the shorter path is not always the better)

2-2 = choose your replacement units (you need a cocktail, but not necessarily all kinds of units = I built no grenadiers and no siege artillery)

2-3 = don't forget the Russian winter

3) Endgame: you have ONE (and only one) objective = MOSKOW

Don't forget to sell improvements and rushbuy units.
If you don't, you won't finish in time.

One more tip: I finally gave up meeting Mazeppa and the Cossacks (nice units but not numerous enough to make it worth the effort IMO).

[Shark Fin 101]

Russia Scenario

I'll play it out if I have time this weekend. I usually play on lower difficulty levels like prince, but I give it a try.

[Bloody Monk]

M. de La Feyette,

I have almost no experience with scenerio play. Where did you find it; or could you, per chance, post the starting save here?? And any tips on how to begin the process of figuring out the rules of the game and where to start. Thanks.

Monk

[La Fayette]

Shark Fin 101,

Welcome
This scenario can certainly be played at Prince level, if that is what you are accustomed to (but IMO you should try to play at higher levels now and then, since it is the best way to improve your gameplay).

Monk,

1) Happy to see that you get interested

2) I downloaded this scenario from the Spanish Civ Site (hosted at Apolyton), like most of those I played recently, because almost all scenarios on the site are bugless and interesting to play.

3) What you must do:
- Find the Spanish Civ Site (this should be easy from Apolyton's front page ),
- Click Civ2, then Bestonet, then XVIII century,
- Download the scenario, unzip it and read the Readme file,
- Follow the instructions given by the author (the most important is to create a 'Scenario' folder and transfer 'Karl' folder there ( the path should be c:/civ2/scenario/karl)).
- Don't forget to run 'winterbat' in order to get the snowy terrain
- Start playing (this is the best advice I can give you IMO, since most of the pleasure when playing a scenario is derived from discovering what differs from the 'vanilla' game).

4) Let me know if you really have problems after playing a few turns.

[Bloody Monk]

Thank you very much!! I look forward to trying this after I complete the current Civ2 competition. It is a no-wonders spaceship game. The rethinking required is very enjoyable, something like what I expect playing scens must involve.

Monk

[Bloody Monk]

La Fayette,

When starting the game I get a dialog box saying:

"There was an error encountered in the 'events' file. Please read the manual to find out how to debug this file."

Does this mean anything?? What to do?? What manual??

Clicking past the box starts the game but I don't know if it "good to go" as it is. Thanks

Monk

[La Fayette]

Monk,

Unfortunately I am not a specialist of scenario design

Here is what I know:
The "events" file is used by scenario makers to add some surprise features different from the vanilla game (for example a message when you take a city, or 'you have lost' if your king gets killed).
If the events file doesn't work properly, you can usually play the scenario, but not according to the will of the author (I remember having played a long scenario ("2194 days of war") after having clicked upon a wrong events file, which compelled me to play again ).
If you downloaded from the Spanish site and played MGE, I don't understand what happened, because it's exactly what I did and it worked nicely.
Perhaps you could post to the scenario forum.
I can also send you the file I used if you give me an e-mail address.

[Bloody Monk]

Apparently--hopefully--this error message was meant to remind the player to "run" winter.bat. If "run" means click on that icon, then I should be okay. If something else needs doing to "run" that .bat, then I may be in trouble as I know nothing about handling DOS.

Monk

[La Fayette]

It is easy to verify:
If 'winter.bat' works you get white snowy terrain
(if summer.bat works you get green terrain).
I don't think I know much more DOS than you do , but I clicked upon the icon and it worked .

[Straybow]

Spoiler:

We need a Persia in the "Ancient Empires" PBEM

[Peaster]

Originally posted by Bloody Monk
La Fayette,

When starting the game I get a dialog box saying:

"There was an error encountered in the 'events' file. Please read the manual to find out how to debug this file."

Does this mean anything?? What to do?? What manual??

Clicking past the box starts the game but I don't know if it "good to go" as it is. Thanks

Monk

Monk,

I have designed a scenario (almost, anyway) and agree with LaFayette. IIRC this message probably means one event (among many) is not working right, maybe because you are playing with a different version of Civ2 than the designer. I used MPGE and had no problems.

Most events are not important, or even noticeable to the player, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Hopefully, you got a short text message at the start about Karl and his goal of taking Moscow, and another one after about 12 turns reminding you to run summer.bat.

I ran winter.bat by clicking the icon (in windows explorer) and played about a dozen turns today. It looks like fun. Maybe not easy to win, but pretty simple to play.

Thanks, LaFayette.

[Bloody Monk]

Thanks, all. I think it was a failsafe kind of reminder to save and run winter.bat, even though the game starts with the winter scape. I am playing along a few turns at a time. Wish I had more Drabant units.

Monk

[Bloody Monk]

Objective in Week 51

La Fayette,

Thank you very much for suggesting we try this Scenerio. It was great fun. It took me a very long time to complete, but I have finally finished. Part of the delay resulted from my forgetting that my initial start--to have a look around and see how the game worked--was at Prince setting. Because I play so slow now, I forgot that I was not playing Deity, and had to begin again after getting close to the end.

SPOILER ALERT*****




Looking at my game compared to yours, I think I must have been exceptionally lucky to have finished 11 turns before you, especially as I took six more cities, too. I think I made better use of worker placement and Taxmen because I was getting a higher amount of gold per turn, I met and benefited from the Cossacks, and the one thing that stands out is I did not use/lose so many Musketmen (7 fewer).

The extra cities I took caused some problems with "Number of Cities" unhappiness, but, maybe it reduced the number of Russian Units generated each turn (if the events.txt extra Units are based on total Russian cities and or preexisting Units; there being many places that they could spawn.)

My Battle Plan was to mass "High-Attack" units behind a fortified Musketeer, two or three tiles from the Russian city, and then attack next turn with many movement points for each attacker still available. Almost every time the Musketeer was not attacked and never did the AI extend the attack to the stack behind the Musket. Those 'Fortress' things were the only problem. Several times I took very large Russian cities and then made most of the citizens Taxmen. This starved them down to a manageable size 9 while generating the gold for colosseum/temple building.

Thanks again for the suggestion to play Scens. If there are other highly regarded ones, in your opinion, please make more suggestions.

Monk

[La Fayette]

Great game, "Bloody" Monk!
You could almost have conquered the whole map

Anyway, I am really happy that you enjoyed it.

The problem is that I know you can only play short spells, and many scenarios are long or very long ones.

Yet, among those I played lately, there is "Exodus - The partition" that I very much enjoyed. The scenario is divided in 2 parts and it is really thrilling until you have played 20 or 30 turns into the second part.

Perhaps you could try it and play until you know for sure that you are on the winning path.