After RomaMini, Throughout AEII

[Harry Tuttle]

I'm thinking of working on a new scenario, one that will incorporate aspects of my aborted exploration/imperialsim scenario. I plan to use:

• High cost, event created caravan units homed to a far off city(used for high value trade or disbandment for shields).
• Mercator's city irrigation bonus (to depict a high yield food area).
• The "Change Terrain" event (used in conjunction with the high yield food area).
• Favoured Flight's mountain units to seal off borderlands.
• An alternate use for the Terrain2.gif.
• Tech's "Railroads On Water" for flavor.
• High shield producing terrain.
• Neutered AI civ used for unit harvesting.
• Weak home cities that need colonial food and shields.
• Player and AI unit controlled events, namely the "Change Terrain" event.
• Others?

I want to use a medium size map, one that's not too cozy but allows for a good amount of exploration and depth. I have no idea what the theme will be, much less the story. I was hoping for a fiction inspired theme, along the lines of the Age of Exploration, or the Victorian Era, or the Early 20th century. The units can be anything, as long as they stick to the theme and employ a little bit of the native species of this unexploited land.

I'm hoping to do this first in MGE, make sure the gameplay is down, and then export it to TOT or at least build a new scenario based on the aspects that work well.

So what do you guys think? Would anyone like to do a collaboration?

[jim panse]

Reporting for duty, sah

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by jim panse
Reporting for duty, sah

Papers? Thank you... Ahh, yes, Lieutenant Panse, nice to have you aboard! What do you think of the situation? What other cool things can we do with the wonderful CivII engine?

[Harry Tuttle]

My general idea for the world goes like this:

• One neutral civ, allied with all civs, including the barbs. The neutral civ will be Nature and will control the lanscape units.
• One neutered civ, with no access to city improvements, and only or two kinds of units can be built by them. The neutered civ will govern the event driven units. Such units will be the high cost caravan units, extra military units, and non movement event trigger units.
• Five competing civs, with similar tech trees.

The map will be split off into different quadrants, each representing an area. Some ideas I have:

• Dammed River Bed - Used for Merc's City Irrigation Bonus Terrain. The area will have settler units spawned for each civ once a unit is attacked. Each settler unit can build a city on the terrain, creating a city with plenty of food (water barrels) that can then have the option of building caravans to ship the water out. Though, be warned, the area can be flooded if a "switch" unit is attacked, thereby destroying the cities within and destroying the food route. Another attack of the "switch" unit and the area is emptied, ready for resettlment.
• Sand Trap - An area where the Neutered Civ has a few cities. These cities will represent hive colonies and will build paratrooping bugs that can be bribed, airbased out of the area, and used to attack the other civs.
• A Jungle Area - In this area there will be fruit-like edibles spawned. Each civ will have a "Mobile Distillery" unit that attacks the fruit, creating a High value, caravan "Liquor" unit.
• A Lake Area - This area will have turtles spawned in it, which can be attacked and will create high value, caravan units called "Turtle Soup".

[Harry Tuttle]

Another idea:

• Transporting multiple high cost caravan units back to a city for disbandment or trade is tedious, so I think I'll make a terrain that will represent a railroad or a "fast moving river". Tech's ocean railroad graphics will be made in a fashion that will make the railroad look like waves, so that they are usable on this special terrain and on the ocean. If a player reaches this "fast moving river" then they can instantly cut the trip back to home by a wide margin.

[Patine]

Here's an idea for the plot. In the late-19th, early 20th Century, geoseizmic activity unearthes Atlantis in the middle of the Ocean. Though seemingly mostly barren, it has deep water channels that can be welled, vast mineral resources, and TREASURE (the caravans) from an ancient civilization. It could say be the British Empire, France, Germany, Italy, and the US competing over it. That's a suggestion for you.

[Arthedain]

Little do they know that another faction appears on the scene. It's an ancient cult, containing relatives to the survivors of the downfall of Atlantis. This Atlantean cult now wants to take back what is rightfully theirs (at least according to them).

Just giving you ideas. Maybe you could use (or modify) the Atlantean units that Sarsstock did.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Patine
Here's an idea for the plot. In the late-19th, early 20th Century, geoseizmic activity unearthes Atlantis in the middle of the Ocean. Though seemingly mostly barren, it has deep water channels that can be welled, vast mineral resources, and TREASURE (the caravans) from an ancient civilization. It could say be the British Empire, France, Germany, Italy, and the US competing over it. That's a suggestion for you.

Originally posted by Arthedain
Little do they know that another faction appears on the scene. It's an ancient cult, containing relatives to the survivors of the downfall of Atlantis. This Atlantean cult now wants to take back what is rightfully theirs (at least according to them).

Just giving you ideas. Maybe you could use (or modify) the Atlantean units that Sarsstock did.

I like both ideas! They flow quite nicely into eachother! I can see adventurers from New York combing the island with their Tommy Guns on their backs. German engineers and army officers fly around in zeppelins. British expeditionaries land on the shore with their Zulu guides. The cult can be a constant harrassment throughout the island. They can have some neat weapons at their disposal. Yes, I can see this happening.

[Sarsstock]

Well I'd like to think I've learned a thing or two about 19th century unit making in my adventures with the "World of Jules Verne" project. I'll lend a helping hand if needed!!

I also love that visual of the classic american, british and german expedition.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Sarsstock
Well I'd like to think I've learned a thing or two about 19th century unit making in my adventures with the "World of Jules Verne" project. I'll lend a helping hand if needed!!

I also love that visual of the classic american, british and german expedition.

Good man Sarsstock! Your help will be much appreciated! I think that we'll need some good units for this one. What sort of units do you think we should have?


@Everyone: Ooh, I just had an idea about the scenario.

Remember the irrigation bonus cities and the weak home cities?

• Well, how about, since we're making this an expedition we have the cities represent camps?
• What if food is replaced by water, as I eluded to earlier, and the home cities need the well city (irrigation bonus cities) water to use in their pumps to mine diamonds? As the home cities grow they would be able to "mine" more tiles in their radius? The terrain around the home cities would be high shield producing terrain!
• These home cities would have tents and as they get bigger the city graphics accumulate barrels of water.
• As the cities grow they can afford to pay for more men thereby covering the build ability of the cities!

What do you guys think? Kimberly mines?

[Harry Tuttle]

Hmmm I was just thinking. The AI will probably not get the idea to build food routes.

One solution to this is to have seperate scenarios built, each one for the playable civs. The only difference between these scenarios is that at the start the AI civs have food routes in place from a city at the edge of the map. The human player would have to create food caravans themselves and compete against the AI's already established routes. The Irrigation cities would still work though as the human would still have to compete over the irrigation city land.

[Harry Tuttle]

I worked up a quick map.

The island has a cauldera in the middle of it, mimicking a possible reason why the Atlantean/Mystery island disappeared in the first place. The cauldera has a crater lake in the middle of it surrounded by what could be the city irrigation bonus terrain.

There is a jungle tile next to the crater which represents a steam vent that vents pressure out away from the crater lake. Beside the steam vent there could be a large boulder unit that would act as the trigger for the change terrain event. If the boulder is killed then it reappears over the steam vent, blocking the pressure, causing the crater lake to expand due to the buildup of heat underneath it. Crater lake expands, submerging the city irrigation tiles.

If the boulder is killed again it reappears next to the steam vent causing the pressure to subside under the lake and lowering the water level. This reveals the city irrigation terrain again.

[Harry Tuttle]

the screenshot...

[Harry Tuttle]

Been working on the graphics this weekend. I think it would be cool to provide a backstory to the scenario so I thought up the following:

Island was found years earlier by an exploratory crew from a mining company. Exploratory crew managed to build a small guage railroad through the middle of the middle of the island before mysteriously disappearing.

So, anyways, I hope to use the railroad graphic in terrain1 for just that, a railroad. Difference is that the railroad will be built on water and the railroad graphic will overlay the water making it appear as though it is solid ground. A rail car (ship) can be used transport down the railroad, ala Indiana Jones 2.

I think for thr regular roads we can use something like a boardwalk for the graphic. What do you guys think? I was hoping to make this on the same scale as Gold Gulch to provide more detail. Ideas?

[Sarsstock]

Well everything you just described sounds mighty interesting, especially the Indian Jonesesque rail car ride through the mysterious island's interior. I am curious about how this boardwalk graphic that will be used in place of roads will look like, do you have one stashed away somewhere or will you be making it up from scratch?