Mythological Age Scenario

[Uncle Dead Bird]

I've been gone a few monthes teaching English in rural Mozambique, where I had no access to an Internet-reliable computer. I see, reading the backlog of threads, this forum's crashed and been rebuilt while I've been gone.

Last I posted, I had a thread about an 80's fantasy movie-esque scenario with some funky ideas. However, on second thought, I don't think I'm good enough at this stage to compete with Curtsibling's Bitterfrost.

However, listening to African folk tales a lot inspired me; mythology! There's no big multi-mythological scenarios I'm aware of.

I envision a map of the Classical World, plus Atlantis, kind of like the one from that Atlantis scenario that comes with Fantastic Worlds. There'd not only be human units (most of which would be unique to one civ or another), there'd also be heroes and monsters. As well, events triggered by techs would represent the wrath of the gods!

There would be seven civilizations:
-Greeks
-Egyptians
-Babylonians
-Romans
-Celts
-Norse
-Atlanteans

Other cultures (Hittites, Persians, Scythians, Cimmerians, Bulgars, Nubians, Iberians, etc.) would be barbarians, and not made sedentary, either. They'd raid, pillage, and cause trouble.

I'm pretty excited about this scenario, so if anyone has any contributions, please post here.

UDB

[jim panse]

Good to have you back, UDB, how come you went to Mocambique?

Anyway, there are some new fairline Trojan War units recently posted in the Ancient/Pre-steam showcase

Anymore information?

[Uncle Dead Bird]

Actually, jim panse, I went to Mozambique for a bit of an adventure in this short life; teaching English was my ticket, and the whole experience proved exceptionally rewarding. I was warned about guerillas, but they were a ways away from the province I was in.

Anyway, my plan is to largely allow the player(s) a lot of freedom in expansion, research, and diplomacy, much like vanilla civilization 2, but with each civilization having unique human, heroic, and monstrous units, but rough equivalents between civs being tied to the same advance, thus using the same broad tech tree (like in Test of Time's Midgard scenario; I do plan to use Test of Time, btw).

Intervention of the gods will happen by events when certain players research certain techs. Btw, can I have a tech give a different effect to each civ when they research it, all in the same game? I hope so, 'cause that's what I have in mind.

Atlantis will also sink on a random turn, so the Atlanteans will need to build and/or conquer cities on the mainland in a real hurray.

If the creator of those ripoff units from RTS games (or someone else with the talent) could rip off some Ensemble Studios Age of Mythology units for me, that'd be great.

UDB

[N35t0r]

I'm somewhat of a fan of the Age of Mythology game and it's expansion, and will be following this closely

[Uncle Dead Bird]

Thanks for the support, N35t0r! I bought Age of Mythology and its expansion each on their release date (I even updated my computer's RAM to be able to play them). I also own the Godstorm Risk boardgame, which has significant rules beyong vanilla Risk (including god pieces and a separate Underworld board).

I'm wrestling with an issue, actually. Should I have the Atlanteans worship standard Greek gods, should I do like in Age of Mythology and have them worship Titans, or should I do something else for their religion, and if so, what?

[Uncle Dead Bird]

I like your idea, Leonidas! I hope you do it someday!

As for my idea, I'm thinking a bit more multi-mythology; that is, each civ with their own religion, including unique human, heroic, and monstrous units. The only shared units would be a settler-type (slaves?) and a trade caravan unit. Barbarians would have a base infantry to defend their cities, foot raiders, and light cavalry, plus random events would generate the odd barbarian monster.

The tech tree would be broad in scope, with most improvements being available in some form or other (some will have to be supernatural).

I'm open to any more ideas.

UDB

[:) Smiley]

Hmm, how about working some Mozambique mythology in as well? A global mythological game would be both unique and educational.

[Uncle Dead Bird]

Actually, Smiley, I'd love to, save for a few major problems. I only heard a select number of that tribe's literally hundreds of stories, and I don't know all the gods, heroes, creatures, or even fully understand how these and the stories link together. Most of the words the village storytellers used I can barely pronounce and don't know how they're transliterated properly. And I only really dealt with one of 32 tribes native to Mozambique, and over 800 found in Subsaharan Africa. Each tribe's mythology is RADICALLY different from the others. And when I tried to fill the gaps at my local library, the reference material in any meaningful detail just wasn't there.

So it's not that I consider the idea unworthy, it's just that the scope of African, or even Mozambique, mythology is not fully within my grasp.

Sorry.

[N35t0r]

Do you plan to use MGE or ToT? Because the multimap feature could be definitely taken advantage of.

In any case, I like your ide very much. It'd be interesting to have the various different mythological groups have certain advantages and disadvantages, and see how they fare. Perhaps their units should be optimised to fight in their homelands, so they would find expanding locally relatively easy, but then find it increasingly harder to keep up expansion in unnatural terrain. (perhaps leave goody huts, which yield 'mercenaries' among other things, which would be average troops which are more flexible and thus will be crucial to all civs.

[Uncle Dead Bird]

@Leonidas - Thanks! And Atlantis will be a full player complete with however many cities it builds and/or conquers.

@N35t0r - I am using Test of Time, and I'd already considered having an Underworld, possibly where dead human units could fight their way back to the surface to fight another day in the service of their gods.

I also like your idea of territorial bonuses; how to implement it though, I don't know.

I'd also considered a way to work monsters and heroes in a fashion similar to Age of Mythology, but I'm not certain about it.

You see, monsters would be air units with a range of 0, an attack role, high attack and moderate defend and the flag that makes them slowly run out of fuel disabled.

Human units would be land (or sea) units, and be incapable of attacking monsters (they could only defend, and usually not too well).

Heroes would also be land units, but would have high attack, hit points, and firepower, and the attack air units and AEGIS flags, and thus would be exceptional monster-killers.

This reflects that in most myths, heroes slew what armies couldn't.

As well, SAM Batteries would represent some sort of divinely-granted protection from monsters civs could research and build.

UDB

[Uncle Dead Bird]

First thing I need is a good map of the Classical World with enough room in the Atlantic to add an Atlantis. Anyone know where I could find such a thing?

I also need good Norse, Celtic, and Babylonian human units, as well as heroes and monsters (fairline's Greek, Egyptian, and Roman ones I got from another thread are amazing!).

And, oh yes, ships. If anyone has any of these, or knows where to find them, please let me know!

UDB

[fairline]

Here are some Vikings - the last one is actually a Varangian guardsman from the Byzantine Empire, but they were Norsemen. There are Babylonians included in the same compilation you found the Egyptians BTW.

As for the ships, BeBro probably has everything you need (check out the ancient graphics thread where you got the Greeks from).

[Elok]

I don't see the point of the Atlanteans for this scenario; they don't really have a distinct mythology to take advantage of. I suppose that since Atlantis is ultimately derived from distorted accounts of the Minoan civilization of Crete, as in the FW scenario, you could just give them half of the Greeks' units. The Greek myths have a lot more well-known monsters and distinct cultural wotsits than most others you named. Try to list them:

Norse: Jotunn, Troll, Nicor, Valkyrie, Berserker, Dragon, Svartalf/Dwarf, Longboat
Egyptians: Devourer of Souls, Bennu Bird/Phoenix, Aphophis, Nile Bark, freaky winged serpent spirits, Sphinx/criosphinx...um, Court Magicians?
Babylonians: I don't know enough about them. The sirrush is all I know. And those winged bulls with human heads.
Celts: Firbolg, Fomorian, Danaan/Fairy, Pookas, Boggarts, etc.
Greeks: Centaur, Minotaur, Lamia, Gorgon, Griffin, Hippogriff, Hippocampus, Chimera, Siren, Harpy, Triton, Hydra, Fury, Cyclops, Satyr, Myrmidon, Trireme, Hoplite, Gigantes, Titan, Nymph, Phoenix, Sphinx, Amazon, Cerberus, Typhon.

The thing is, the Romans have relatively little of their own, they mostly ripped off Greek myth. The only distinctly Roman thing that comes to my mind is Legions. So you'd have to work with the same basic set of myths for three separate civs if you included Atlantis. I don't know how many units you can have in TOT, or how big of a map, but you might want to go with fewer civs and more detail for each. Just Babylon, the Celts, the Norse, Egypt, and an "Olympian" culture of Greece and Rome together would be my suggestion.

Also consider balance. The Celts are in the NW, the Norse in the North. The Babylonians are East, the Egyptians South, the Greeks and Romans around the middle. The Atlanteans might start on a doomed island, but they'll have a LOT more room to grow than any other civ. Most of the others are crammed right next to each other geographically, but none of them start near Spain or NW Africa. The Celts are kinda close, I guess, but they have the Norse to worry about. If Atlantis has any naval power, the loss of its continent won't be all that crippling.

[N35t0r]

Originally posted by Uncle Dead Bird I also like your idea of territorial bonuses; how to implement it though, I don't know.

Well, you could give, for example, mostly fast units with a high attack and poor defense to the egyptians, and other dwellers of mostly flat places. This will make them rule flat lands, but make them gratly stall and have to be very careful wherever land is not flat, as their speed advantage would be cancelled and they'd be left as sitting ducks.

The norse would have amphibious units, which would be deadly when making amphibious assaults, but a low defense and low movement would mean that they are weak when attacking by land. They would also be able to traverse impassable mountins, allowing them to sneak atatck if not watched closely.

More rugged terrain dwellers would have units with a higher defense, which combined with some terrain bonuses would be able to defend against the other two, but they'd be quickly trampled over on flat terrain (no defense bonus) or suffering from an amphibious assault (cities built on flat land).

I'd guess that from that group, the romans would have an edge in attack power, whereas the greeks would benefir from better defensive units.


The atlanteans could, like in the game, have more powerful units but which cost more. (limited manpower, maybe making all their units settlers? won't work well with the AI though...)

[Uncle Dead Bird]

Some good units, points, and ideas there, actually. I appreciate the help with this scenario.

Now, as for the Atlanteans, I do want to keep them as a civ, but they maybe hard to work, given, as Elok pointed out, their free range to roam and build at the start, moreso than any other civ. Not to mention the lack of their own monsters and gods.

I'd very much like to work around this problem, but I may need some advice. I'll consider it myself, but if anyone's got possible solutions (or even patchwork quick-fixes), please let me know.

UDB