RomaMini - Development

[Harry Tuttle]

This is a quick and dirty scenario I'm working on. I'm taking a little break from AE2 at the moment, as I'm all world-warred-out at the moment.

The scenario is based on a very small map, 40x60 if I can remember correctly, and is based around the 2nd century B.C..

Playable Civs:

Romans
Carthaginians
Macedonian Greeks
Seleucid Empire
Ptolemaic Egypt

Placeholder Civs:

Western Barbarians
Eastern Barbarians

Now you may wonder, why the emphasis on Barbarians?

One of the interesting phenomenons that helped the Roman Empire to collapse was the migration of Barbarians toward and into Western Europe. I hope to use events and the Barbarian city/region units to depict this traffic jam. Afterall, encroaching AI units will eventually help to starve your cities and prevent movement, just by taking up resource tiles.

I'm planning on accurately projecting the influence of barbarians and minor kingdom states on the Mediterranean about this time and up to the 2nd century AD. There will be about 15 extra barbarian peoples represented with their own city/region unit.

Each civ will start off with a couple cities to start, depicting major cities at about this time. The Barbarians will have identifiable spawn points around the map which need to be taken to remove the threat of invasion from your lands and to expand. Each spawn point will churn out a city/region unit and a Barbarian army unit. Expand, conquer the barbarian units, and place your standard on the spawn point to stop these mini-nation states from appearing.

I'm also hoping to involve some economics in the game which rely on disbanding valuable units for shields. Some of these economic units will be:

Gold Tribute
Wheat
Slaves

I'm going to make a bare bones scenario for MGE, release it, and then port it to ToT after the major bugs are worked out. How's this sound to everyone?

[Harry Tuttle]

Reserved

[curtsibling]

@Harry:

Nice idea, change of scenery is always beneficial!

If you make it, and someone converts it, I will provide you with any GFX help you need!

[Harry Tuttle]

Cool Curt, thanks. I'm actually using your classical cities for this one. I converted them to MGE palette and dropped them in so I can get the graphical feel down. Looks great right now, even for MGE.

[Eivind IV]

Can't wait!

[techumseh]

I'm down with it.

[Harry Tuttle]

Thanks guys Here's the latest save with the latest map. It's probably not true to life, but then again this scenario isn't supposed to be totally perfect, just fun.

[fairline]

Excellent! Have you got a list of units yet?

[curtsibling]

The map looks great!

But one word of advice...I would use the map edit utility to add about 30 more
squares of space/ocean to the west of the map, and make those 'derived' cities impossible
to reach, as at the current time triemes and boats will be ablke to reach them...

[Arthedain]

Sounds like a great idea. But from a map freaks pow I think you could do some major touch ups on the map, but as you said, this is not a priority for you.

[fairline]

These may be of use Harry - they're newer than the ones I posted years ago. If you let me know your complete unit list I can have ago at all of them

BTW, I thought you were making this for Freeciv?

[curtsibling]

Those Roman troops are excellent!



PS
If harry can post the map, I can carry out a quick operation to extend the sea to the West...

[Harry Tuttle]

Thanks for the comments and help guys. I've been out of town for the weekend so let me catch up.


@Curt & Arthedain:

Feel free to work with the map any way you wish. Just leave me a water way from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf and another from the North Sea to the Barents Sea. Also, please keep a small bridge at Gilbraltar and at Byzantium. Oh, and no canal at Suez either. Don't wory about the tundra/glacier terrain on there, it's not static at the moment.


@Fairline:

Those units look great! Thank you very much. I think I will use almost every one on there. Any help you can give is very much appreciated.

As for my list, it is a bit odd, but stay with me.

I have 4 economic units already made:

Luxuries
Slaves
Gold Tribute
Wheat

I plan to have a tribe unit for each barbarian tribe that stayed settled in the theatre. For barbarians that did not settle (Huns) I plan to only have a military unit. I hope to have a military unit for each barbarian tribe specific to the tribe. I.E. Germans -> German Axe Guy. Closely related barbarians, like the Ostrogoths and Visigoths could share the same unit.

So, the barbarian list, as it stands right now is as follows:

Saxons
Franks
Lombards
Ostrogoths
Gauls
Germans
Celts
Numidians
Arabs
Slavs
Bosporans
Dacians
Britons
Visigoths
Vandals

I'm also thinking of adding in "Persian" barbarians to depict the changes in Iran from 200 BC to 200 AD. What other tribes could I add?

The regular civ units are the usual mix as you have already depicted perfectly. I do have a request though for a siege weapon for the Romans and Roman cavalry. Also, an elephant unit would be great for Carthage.

As for using the scenario for Freeciv, I can always convert the scenario using John Bauman's new converter. If you think this is a good idea, would you want to make the units in full color and not just the MGE pallete? I can always convert the units down to MGE pallete if you wish.

[fairline]

What time period is the scenario running to Harry? Are you thinking the fall of the Western Empire? If not, then the later German tribes (Franks, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Saxons, Langobards etc) would be better replaced by their earlier cousins (Allemanni, Quadi, Marcomanni etc). Either way, the generic 'German' tribe is probably superfluous. Likewise the Britons; they were Celts who looked the same as their Gallic relatives, with maybe the exception of the use of Chariots in Britain up to the 1st C. AD.

I think you need to include Sarmatians/Alans, Parthians, Iberians and if your scenario runs to the 5th/6th Century I would include Sassanians. BTW, there is an Iberian infantry and Numidian cavalry included in the Carthaginian units in my last post.

I am revamping all my ancient units ToT-stylie, so I'll be able to cover your list; you're going for a warrior and settler for each of the Germanic tribes and warrior only for Huns etc, right?

Do you need later Romans as well? It'd be neat to simulate the fundamental change from the early Imperial legions to the later fixed frontier Limitanei and mobile field force Comitatus. The cheap to produce Limitanei would be pretty poor easy meat for the Germanic invaders forcing the player to rush his expensive Comitatensis from hot spot to hot spot. The old Imperial legions could be downgraded to Limitanei in the 4th Century using Leo's workshop. Just an idea...

[Arthedain]

Actually I'm too lazy to modify the map you have now (just woke up). But I did resize two gigamaps, to only cover the area your map did (well almost, maybe you should cut it some more, and I'm not sure how much of the Atlantic etc. you want). The first one is used by Curt in his scenarios (made by Mercator IIRC) and the second one (dunno who made it) is used in a bunch of scens really.