Ancient Empires #2

[Peaster]

A barb swordsman landed near Tanis. Egypt lost a skirmisher before vanquishing the invader. We also enslaved a barb village. A barb B.Inf appeared on the frontier of our map and it threatens an undefended town. Egypt is willing to trade for some military tech at this point.

[SlowThinker]

Many barbs around Sparta. A Greek skirmisher tried to kill one, but was slaughtered. The situation of Sparta is hopeless.
Defenders of Argos act well. They killed one Infantry and one Ram and got learned how to fight.

[RobRoy]

Originally posted by Peaster
...A barb B.Inf appeared on the frontier of our map and it threatens an undefended town...

Wow...ANOTHER horde? I wanna name each horde. Libyans? Nubians? Where are they appearing?

Minoans - popped three huts: cash and two mercs. Also conducted two successful slave raids. Minoans regret they don't have any good techs to give Egyptians (or Greeks), but we're looking for the tech-rich Hittites and goody huts.

Hittites - also conducted a slave raid. The (tech) rich get richer as the Hittites popped five huts to reverse last turn's unfortunate redness: three techs, cash, and a merc.

"Scythian" horde is still showing signs of anemia: only seven units outside the initial nine-tile spread. Still a good six tiles from capital.

Plat, you're up.

[Peaster]

Originally posted by RobRoy
Wow...ANOTHER horde? I wanna name each horde. Libyans? Nubians? Where are they appearing?

The B.I. is about 5 tiles SSE of the capitol, slightly east of the Nile. If it is part of a horde, the others are still in the dark to the S and/or E.

Also, a loaded barb early galley is parked near the Nile delta, but last turn only one swordsman got off.

[Addled Platypus]

popped 25 gold
found another civ, cant make out name

5 cats
6 other meanies

when they attack, they will win...gads
will lose 2 cities including capital....gads

will play out

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=22570_ha_b3340.hot

[Peaster]

Assyria: A horde approaches, as was already reported, I think. Pal - Another farmer had "Go To" orders ... from you ??

Egypt: A hut produces a barb "horde" which is actually just one horseman. The real horde will probably raze at least one city before I can build walls or better units. Also, the galley spat out a second swordsman, which should raze my port next turn. And the galley is still not empty ?! (maybe there is another galley nearby ??).

[Palaiologos]

Wow! what the hell? Hadn't realised my turn was up. Terribly sorry.

Mind replaying?

The Go to orders are from me BTW.

[Palaiologos]

The people of Assyria are bracing themselves for a barbarian onslaught.

[Peaster]

OK, same hut result, etc... Let's not taking this practice game too seriously. But I am a little curious to see how nasty the hordes are.

[SlowThinker]

wrong thread...

[SlowThinker]

Persia is without barbs so far.
In Greece surprisingly all cities stand. One skirm lost against a BI on Plains.

[RobRoy]

Houston, we have a problem.

The Hittites have, apparently, been removed from the game. When I finished with the Minoans, the Babylonians were invited to conduct their next turn.

Looking at my and Plat's last save, I have a theory.

The file I uploaded did not include my Ctrl-N - two units hadn't moved, and I hadn't done my rush builds (if anyone cares, I'd saved and flipped through a couple of turns to see when Hattusas would grow, rather than squint and count the little wheat markers...yes it involved a reload and I shouldn't have done it...mea culpa...). But my last moves never made it into the save...guess I forgot...gods of war punishing me for micro-managing, exploiting, reloading, etc....

That should have been the end to it. But....instead of doing a Ctrl-N when he loaded, I suspect Plat, confused by the little flashing Hittite chariot, did a quit or Ctrl-Q in order to play the Babylonian turn. Correct me if I'm wrong Plat. The result is that the Hittites are no longer recognized as a human player.

Since I don't think there is any easy way to fix this short of everyone (except, perhaps Hittites ) redoing their 3340 turn, I unilaterally decided to test out something else ST and I had discussed briefly. Namely, I loaded the Minoan .hot save in single player mode, saved it as a scenario, then started a new scenario from it.

FYI, restarting the scenario does indeed give everyone an extra turn's worth of production, as ST warned, since everyone got an extra 3340 turn. I just cycled through these real pseudo-turns and deployed any newly created units wherever they seemed most desirable, so I could get to the Hittite turn. ST, the Greek's new skirmisher was the only unit to give me pause. I decided to send it toward Argos, rather than using it immediately or sending it to Sparta. The Hittites also made out, since I decided to finish out the remainder of the 3340 turn that hadn't made it into the save, which I probably shouldn't have done. Anyway, download the file and see whether anyone objects to my decisions. If so, just sing out before 24 hours and we can do what we'd probably have to do in a real game - redo all the turns from Plat's 3340 on.

The other question we had was whether restarting in this manner would change or reset any counters for barbarian production. So, I took the libery of looking at the whole map both before and after saving the new "scenario", and we got a new horde right after the pseudo-turn. ST, you'll be happy to hear, Persian is no longer the only player not being immediately threatened by barbarians. In fact, since the Assyrian's horde and the Babylonian horde are DIFFERENT, and to their east, either/both could send fringe units toward Persia, to blend with a newly created horde right in your neighborhood.

In fact we currently have not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but SIX currently active barbarian hordes, plus four pirate ships. I've lost track of what I'm naming each horde. However, the sixth (or was that the second) horde ("Scythian") mostly vanished this turn, except for a few strays. Before anyone uses this as an objection to my "restart", I double checked barbs from my originally posted save, and it mostly disappeared, anyway...still not sure why, none of the other hordes had such dramatic attrition, but that horde had been looking anemic for the last few turns.

If everyone agrees to accept this and move on from here, watch the next couple of turns fairly closely and let me know if any other anomalies appear, perhaps due to the "restart". If people decide to take the more correct approach (redoing from Plat's last turn), no heart feelings here, I'm punished by the Civ Gods for being lazy.

Assuming the thesis is correct, Plat, in the future, feel free to Ctrl-N, if someone's forgotten it. But if anything looks wrong or odd, report it, either in an e:mail or on the forum, immediately, rather than playing through it. In a real game, I don't think we'd have any choice but to have you and everyone after you replay their turn, and the sooner that decision is reached, the less correction would need to be done.

But that what tests are for.

If we continue, from where I've played:

Minoans - found an advanced tribe of "Macedonians" on the northern shore of the Aegean.

Hittites - popped four huts for three horsemen and some cash. Unfortunately, all three horsemen were red, two are now dead.

So either way, Plat, you're up! But wait 24 hours and let anyone who objects chime in. Then either continue with the attached file or go back to the MU-3340 turn and replay, after inserting an CTRL-N.

Different issue - I'll be out of town next week. I should have a laptop and (slow) internet connection. Now if I can only locate my original MGE disk, I should be okay. But if 24 hours passes, please feel free to play my turn(s), assuming something isn't working right.

[Addled Platypus]

maybe taking notes evrytime I load and play just to catch weird going ons...

really cant remember anything to weird

hit enter as promted to get my turn going
did my turn
ctl n
save
exit hot seat

brb

[Addled Platypus]

save was not in dark area-that is all

popped 50 gold

Barb count
6 cats
8 others

what are they waiting for?

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=22570_ha_b3330.hot

[RobRoy]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex
...hit enter as promted to get my turn going
did my turn
ctl n
save
exit hot seat...

Can't be. Reload my originally posted 3340 turn. You should see two blinking Hittite units. Hitting ENTER shouldn't do anything. I think only CTRL-N or CTRL-Q or their menu equivalents would have enabled you to hit ENTER to get your turn going. Well CTRL-R (retire) would have as well, but then you'd have gotten lots of prompts and scores and stuff that would've rung alarm bells.

But hang on and see if anyone wants you to start a replay process, since that should be the standard, if somewhat lengthy, solution. ST, especially, might object, if I moved his unit inappropriately, although I'm sure he won't be influenced by the new horde he now has to contend with.