POMARJ scenario released!

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
I can't tell if is this an particularly clever, subtle but nasty piece of scen design or something that nobody who has played this scen from start to finish has noticed?

I never managed to play to a finish when play testing and I rarely bothered to trade, so I never noticed this.

I doubt that it's intended, but Cyrion will have to speak for himself.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
I can't tell if is this an particularly clever, subtle but nasty piece of scen design or something that nobody who has played this scen from start to finish has noticed?

...

Subtle and clever as I am, this wasn't on purpose though...

But I had noticed during my playtests that this happened, and I have to admit I was too lazy to track it down...

The problem lies in Elredd (size 23) building Impassable units until it has used up all the 64 available shields to support them and then continues to build at a rate of 7 shields per turn. This causes the AI to switch government from Democracy (1 shield per unit) to Despotism (1 shield for every unit above city size) in order to free up shields. This makes sense from the AI’s point of view. I’ve attached saves of turn 99, where everything is normal, and turn 100, where things go haywire.

The solution is to start the scen with adequate Impassable units in Elredd and have the city produce Foreign Support (Capitalization). This is what I finally did and it works fine.

Thanks for identifying the cause + providing an easy solution to it!

While we are on the topic of governments, I have a bit of a problem with the Free civ using Monarchy. It really is not meant for large empires. Monarchy is fine in other regards but its high level of corruption reaches 80% for a huge empire such as Pomarj. Admittedly, a high level fighter like Wilfried is usually not too bright (I’ve played a lot of DD) but even he would somehow have figured out that having a Sherriff (Courthouse) as a buildable city improvement would let him squeeze a few more coppers from the dirty peasants. IMHO, 40% maximum corruption would seem more reasonable.

Yeah, I noticed that too, but it wasn't disturbing my game enough to stir me...

But you're right, a Sherriff (excellent! ) would help that! I guess I'll just have to update my files (next week-end!), taking into account your suggestions!

Thanks a lot!

[AGRICOLA]

Unfortunately, the Elredd problem has not gone away. The city switches production from Capitalization to Impassable units almost immediately.

The problem should probably be solved in the same way you handle some other "special" cities. Make GUN a prerequisite for Impassable units and set Elredd to produce Capitalization at the start of the scen. Judging by the results in cities where you have used this approach, it seems to work very well.

Also, in this season of joy and giving, it would great gift from you to long-suffering players if the the rocks at [16,8] were to magically become a nice plains + road square. Four extra trade arrows in Elredd sound like a great Christmas present.

Pioneers play a critical role in this scen although there are only 3 of them. The center of the peninsula is hilly and mountainous and very slow going for ground units. There certainly are many useful rivers but roads are much more direct in most cases. Despite one's best efforts to protect Pioneers from Red Dragons, it is inevitable that sooner or later they will be killed by the flying monsters. I think that this may seriously upset the scen in terms of unit mobility, I wonder if Pioneers could become a buildable but expensive unit? 300 gold sounds reasonable. I'm going to try it.

The Sherriff improvement has reduced corruption to a tolerable level. I initially set its cost at 80 shields but then increased it to 120. A Sherriff needs a major organization: a keep, tax collectors, enforcers and paid informants. That doesn't come cheap.

[AGRICOLA]

@Cyrion

I've reached turn 180 and I don't think that I can finish scen in 300 turns. I have problems with several aspects of Pomarj and am badly in need of encouraging news in order to keep going.

Has anyone actually played this scen from start to finish? I'm asking because I can't tell whether I'm playing it too defensively in order to avoid losing key units or the scen simply cannot be completed. Currently, the 3 front line cities, Evil Eye, Celbit and Hill Giants are under continuous attack and there are not enough Free forces for offensive action. It’s almost a stalemate.

By turn 120 I had finished all research and, except for mainly useless buildable units, I had received all the ~60 land units capable of doing at least some fighting and with which I was going to have to play the rest of the scen. If two or three of the handful of key units, 4 heroes, 2 ents, 2 copper dragons, 3 mages or 3 white dragons are subsequently lost, IMHO the scen becomes impossible. Casualties are inevitable because no Free unit can reliably attack and kill a giant or red dragon on a square with a 100% DB (defensive bonus), and only Wilfried can withstand a red dragon attack if he is in a city with a 50% DB. West of Hill Giants, most of the terrain has 50% or 100% DB and, so far, 35 giants and 6 red dragons have had to be killed.

This scen has me stumped.

PS Over 900 monsters have had to be wiped out so far.

[Boco]

If this has Agricola stumped , then some tips are in order!

IIRC, Cyrion asked for my combat odds calculator, so I suspect a lot of thought went into the af/df/terrain_db balancing.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
Has anyone actually played this scen from start to finish?

I'm afraid in my play testing, I never managed to come close to finishing - a lot of turns, but still a lot of cities to capture!

RJM at Sleeper's

[Broken Hawk]

AGRICOLA has done a lot better than me. I kill monster after monster until I'm wiped out.

[AGRICOLA]

Thanks for all your comments.

Here are a few more details on how I'm stuck.

The Free civ holds 13 cities, including the former Suelois city of New Suel and the Kobold cities of High Tree and Deep Roots. I don't like potential hostiles behind my front and I needed the cities.

One of my beliefs is that, excepting short battle or campaign scens, the basis of Civ II success is economic. The Free economy is thriving. As a result of delivering 60+ freights to Elredd, all cities have 3 trade routes, have RB or IRB every useful improvement, those that are big enough are celebrating We Love Lord Fingolfin, the NET monthly cash flow is 650+ gold and the treasury's coffers are full. Except for adding to the fleet of 10 merchant ships there really is nothing useful to build.

Another pet belief is that a good defence is vital. Consequently, the following things have been standard operational procedures:

1. If possible, when a city is captured, pre-charged engineers immediately change the city terrain to improve its defensive bonus. An extra 50% can be very helpful.

2. Land units stay buttoned up in front line cities and only attack monsters on adjacent squares. Where useful, adjacent squares have a road so that Mv 2 units can move out, attack and retreat to the city.

3. Recce is carried out constantly, both by rangers and air units which return to base at the end of the turn. There is no concern about orcs, orc raiders, orc chieftains or warg riders unless they are trying to infiltrate but there is a definite need to know about approaching gnolls and other strong monsters.

4. Monster air units are attracted by Free air units. This allows traps to be set by parking an air unit just out of range of a hostile city and see if anything shows up to be killed. Of course, this is the easy part. Now there has to be a hero in a position to try to kill the dragon/wyvern/demon.

5. Don't get into fights far from cities unless you are certain to slaughter the enemy. Let him come to you.

In this regard, I was curious about the first screen shot posted by Cyrion, "The Knights of Ulek face an humanoid horde in the plains!". I duplicated the situation on my game map in order to see what would happen.

If the screen shot is taken at the end of the Free turn, it's bad news indeed as only a couple of Free units are likely to survive the monster attacks. The situation is better if the screen shot was taken at the start of the Free turn. Depending on how the Free units are managed and some dice rolls, either 1 or no Free units will be lost. IMO, the chance of losing even 1 irreplaceable Free unit just to knock off some low to medium monsters is definitely not worth it.


As I mentioned in an earlier post, I made pioneers (engineers) buildable at 300 shields a pop. The building of 13 additional units has greatly improved mobility but has done nothing for the lack of strong units.

[Cyrion]

Sorry about the delay... RL...

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
@Cyrion

I've reached turn 180 and I don't think that I can finish scen in 300 turns. I have problems with several aspects of Pomarj and am badly in need of encouraging news in order to keep going.

Has anyone actually played this scen from start to finish? I'm asking because I can't tell whether I'm playing it too defensively in order to avoid losing key units or the scen simply cannot be completed.

Yes, I did finish it (or nearly!).

And yes, the trick is not to play too defensively!

You need to take risks with your Heroes, otherwise you won't advance fast enough!

And remember, you are allowed to lose each hero once!

If two or three of the handful of key units, 4 heroes, 2 ents, 2 copper dragons, 3 mages or 3 white dragons are subsequently lost, IMHO the scen becomes impossible.

I wouldn't go that far! OK, if you lose 1 of the 4 heroes, then you're in trouble! But a few casualties among the other ones you mentioned shouldn't be dramatical!

At least, it wasn't for me: I think I lost no hero (that is, not twice!), 2 mages, the 2 ents, 1 White and 1 Copper Dragon, and it didn't slow me that much!

Casualties are inevitable because no Free unit can reliably attack and kill a giant or red dragon on a square with a 100% DB (defensive bonus), and only Wilfried can withstand a red dragon attack if he is in a city with a 50% DB. West of Hill Giants, most of the terrain has 50% or 100% DB and, so far, 35 giants and 6 red dragons have had to be killed.

Yes, the Red Dragons ARE the big nasties! But they are not that common!

What I do is: if they are on a grassland or plain square, I attack them (with Oberon if possible), and otherwise I place Oberon or another Hero on a rivered hill to draw them: they usually attack and lose...

About the cities: always RB Fortifications on the 1st turn!

The Hill Giants aren't so big a problem, above all if you can find their villages!

This scen has me stumped.

PS Over 900 monsters have had to be wiped out so far.

I usually defend really well my frontline city, as it draws the humanoid attacks!

Doing that is easy, the problem is more resuming the advance afterwards, for me too...

The scenario is winnable, but I have to admit I'm not 100% satisfied with it, sorry...

[Cyrion]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Boco
IIRC, Cyrion asked for my combat odds calculator, so I suspect a lot of thought went into the af/df/terrain_db balancing.
[QUOTE]

Indeed I used it (thanks again), but I'm afraid you credit me with more seriousness than I deserve...

But I am quite happy with the relative strength of the various units! If (when) I change something about the scen, it won't be that I think!

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
One of my beliefs is that, excepting short battle or campaign scens, the basis of Civ II success is economic. The Free economy is thriving. As a result of delivering 60+ freights to Elredd, all cities have 3 trade routes, have RB or IRB every useful improvement, those that are big enough are celebrating We Love Lord Fingolfin, the NET monthly cash flow is 650+ gold and the treasury's coffers are full. Except for adding to the fleet of 10 merchant ships there really is nothing useful to build.

True, after about 150 turns you should be at the end of the tech tree and have nothing really interesting to build anymore (that's when I build Mercenaries and Catapults!)

Maybe that could be a good time to introduce a variation on the spaceship theme?? Any idea??

Another pet belief is that a good defence is vital. Consequently, the following things have been standard operational procedures:

1. If possible, when a city is captured, pre-charged engineers immediately change the city terrain to improve its defensive bonus. An extra 50% can be very helpful.

Never thought about changing the terrain, I was only rush-building walls (which wouldn't help much against Ign. City Walls units...).

But I usually draw the enmy fire outside of the cities on good defensive terrain (a fortress on a rivered hill is quite interesting...)

2. Land units stay buttoned up in front line cities and only attack monsters on adjacent squares. Where useful, adjacent squares have a road so that Mv 2 units can move out, attack and retreat to the city.

I do that too

3. Recce is carried out constantly, both by rangers and air units which return to base at the end of the turn. There is no concern about orcs, orc raiders, orc chieftains or warg riders unless they are trying to infiltrate but there is a definite need to know about approaching gnolls and other strong monsters.

Ditto

4. Monster air units are attracted by Free air units. This allows traps to be set by parking an air unit just out of range of a hostile city and see if anything shows up to be killed. Of course, this is the easy part. Now there has to be a hero in a position to try to kill the dragon/wyvern/demon.

And re-ditto!

5. Don't get into fights far from cities unless you are certain to slaughter the enemy. Let him come to you.

re-re ditto

In this regard, I was curious about the first screen shot posted by Cyrion, "The Knights of Ulek face an humanoid horde in the plains!". I duplicated the situation on my game map in order to see what would happen.

If the screen shot is taken at the end of the Free turn, it's bad news indeed as only a couple of Free units are likely to survive the monster attacks. The situation is better if the screen shot was taken at the start of the Free turn. Depending on how the Free units are managed and some dice rolls, either 1 or no Free units will be lost. IMO, the chance of losing even 1 irreplaceable Free unit just to knock off some low to medium monsters is definitely not worth it.

Hum, about that screenshot...

Sorry, but it was a pure "marketing feature": it didn't happen in a game, I cheated units to display the nice graphics I had pilfered...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I made pioneers (engineers) buildable at 300 shields a pop. The building of 13 additional units has greatly improved mobility but has done nothing for the lack of strong units.

Yes, I think buildable and really expensive engineers (after a long tech tree, which would give you more techs to research ) might be really useful!

But then ONLY with a house rule saying you are NOT allowed to build cities with them!

[Harry Tuttle]

Well I tried this sucker out. I have to say this one is hard! I took Blue and Twin Fang almost immediately and then started to move my other units over after that annoying pirate attack after I landed. Bastards caught me off guard!

After I established some control I started setting up a defense point in Blue where I stationed my highest defense units. After a few turns of playing corner butcher shop I said to "hell with this!" and started to make behind the lines attacks on the closest cities with my heroes, eventually making it to Moon Beam(sp?).

After a bit of using my pioneers to establish a road system in friendly territory and using some settlers to found new cities near high shield terrain I sat back and researched what I could.

A long while later I finally got the Horn and eventually the Rock to Mud scroll, wiping out the hill giants and gaining a boat load of extra units from the twisted forest.

After that, well, I took a few more cities, and after about 200 turns I'm where I'm out now, with half the peninsula taken.

The scenario is decent, and very keen to detail. I really enjoyed the descriptions! However, like Agricola said, the units were really expensive and I'd love to have some more pioneers.

The gameplay got a bit boring in the middle with the constant smash and kill of weak units and the near constant recce for heavy hitters. I don't know how the story of Pomarj goes, but some variation might be nice.

I did like the units, but some seemed to be more or less copies of each other, as far as strength goes. Maybe less is more?

The two big events I found in the game are nice. I like the dam idea as well as the twisted forest. That change terrain event is fun.

I did have to turn the sound off after awhile. The mounted hero unit has this really loud attack that might need to be turned down a bit. I almost hesitated to use him because my girlfriend was asleep in the other room.

Overall I enjoyed the game. There are some aspects that need polishing, but I liked playing it.

[AGRICOLA]

I have mixed feelings about this scen.

Technically, Pomarj is very innovative. It has a number of very ingenious and original features (no spoiler info from me, try it yourself) and has been very carefully designed. The idea of a scen based on a D&D game should work but, IMHO, does not entirely in this case. The concept of a small group of heroic, high level D&D adventurers, who sequentially eliminate groups of monsters to build an empire, does not seem to translate well into world of CIV II. The major difference may be that in D&D, the protagonists do not need to concern themselves with holding on to conquered territory. Once they have cleared the monsters in an area, the monsters stay dead and the protagonists are free to go on their next quest. The whole idea is that the small group stays together and spearheads the conquest. This cannot be duplicated in CIV II, because the heroes must continually fend off monster attacks on all front line cities.

The Pomarj protagonists, the Free civ, stop becoming more powerful about 40% of the way through the scen (~turn 120 if research is pushed hard) whereas monsters continue to spawn or build powerful units so that conquered territory is subject to ongoing attacks. By necessity, Free forces are spread ever more thinly as their territory expands and only weak units can be replaced.

In a nutshell, Pomarj is an empire building scen, almost as long as regular CIV II game, which follows much of the usual CIV II pattern of building cities, conquest and research. It departs from the pattern in that, although events triggered by research do provide some additional units, research does not allow the building of increasingly powerful units. The 4 heroes and other strong air and ground units that are present at the beginning of the game or are gained through events are the keys to success but they cannot be replaced if killed. Only catapults and mercenaries can be built. These are cannon fodder and much too weak to alter the balance of power.

From reading Harry’s post, it is clear that, excepting minor variations, our games have followed roughly the same path and are more or less at the same stage. I echo his comment that there is a lot of boring butchery, especially after 80+ orcs wipe out the kobold hamlet of North Village and then head en-masse for Highport where the Free defenders have a busy time for 10 or so turns.

Around turn 200, I was ready to quit the game because the treasury had ~15,000 gold, I had built ~20 Pioneers @300 shields and I was less than enthusiastic at the thought of building more useless catapults and mercenaries. The scen had degenerated into a stalemate of shuttling strong units between cities to fend off enemy attacks. Drastic changes were in order if there was much point in continuing playing.

To try to breathe some life and interest into the scen, I made the following units buildable:

Ranger @ 200 shields
Legion @ 300
Knights @ 400
Copper Dragon @ 600
Ent @ 700

The enabling tech for all is Wenta Clerics. My marvelously self-serving rationale was that the clerics would attract lawful types like rangers and knights, legions and dragons would work for whoever has enough gold and the ents would believe the clerics’ promises that, unlike eastern Pomarj where most forests have been cut to make room for farms, the vast forests of western Pomarj won’t get chopped down. How’s that for typical DM BS rationalization?

Because of the high cost of units, the changes have not unbalanced the scen. Instead, they have provided a reason for sending more caravans to Elredd and a glimmer of hope that, after the capture of XXXXX caused another major change in the balance of power (the mother of all events), it may be possible to finish the scen. In particular, the buildable units may make it possible to kill the 22 monster units that have gathered in an inaccessible city in hill country and who, seemingly, are determined not to leave it. Push has come to shove because I can’t bypass this %$#@& place and have positively, definitely been unable to entice them to come out. The latest information puts the garrison strength at 7 giants, 7 gnolls, and 8 assorted orcs. I can’t think of a way to crack this particular nut with the units normally available in Pomarj. Hopefully, 5 or 6 new Copper Dragons might do the trick.

Also, IMHO, the problems posed by the hilly terrain of western Pomarj can only be overcome by building additional strong units so that it is possible to attack more than one city at a time. The terrain in much of eastern Pomarj is a piece of cake by comparison.

I agree with Harry's opinion that the first half of the scen is both interesting and fun to play but some changes would be welcome in the second half.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Can anybody convert this to ToT format? I have Angelo Scott's CivConverter but I'm having difficulty changing the scenario to the right format.

[Alex Woehr]

I have already converted it. I don't have it with me at the moment though.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Cool. If you do happen to get it converted, please email it to amazonian_mage[at-swirly-snail-thingy-symbol]yahoo.com