Aeterna Civitas

[Jerec]

That fort idea...paradrop...has got to be original, and personally, I love the idea!

Are the Gauls/Germans playable? One of my fav historical eras was the Gallic Wars.

Just thinking...Gaulish/Germanic warbands usually meant huge hordes of yelling warriors with families and food tagging along in wagons. IMHO you should give the warband alpine ability, with a movement of say, 1. This way the unit can move just as quickly, but can't rush into battle, it has to wait a turn to have a full unit move to fight. I'm hoping this would simulate the fact that the warriors usually had to wait for the wagons, to catch up. In a lot of battles the warriors would have the families cheer them on in battle. Of course it would be simpler to leave it as it is... I wouldn't blame you if you left it alone, McM.

I would think of elephants as shock troops along with scythed chariots. I'll admit that they were stupendous shock weapons, but just ONCE. The next time, the enemy would get smart and immediately kill the rider, or use light skirmishers to madden the elephant, and make it uncontrollable. I think there were even some light cavalry trained to fight elephants...look it up on wikipedia.

Pikes. Phalanxes. Why does everybody think that they are invincible? Against cavalry charging straight at them, sure, but what about the versatile Roman infantry formation? The Romans beat the Greek phalanx rather badly. All they had to do was flank the stupid thing! In a phalanx, to face the troops a different way required all the men bringing the pikes straight up, changing direction, and then bringing the pikes back down. This is NOT feasible in a combat situation. Sorry about raving, but please make sure that Roman infantry can beat the phalanx.

[Jerec]

btw, wonderful looking units. Makes me want to do a Gallic Wars scen with all those lovely Gauls and Romans!

[Jerec]

You mentioned a PBEM game where the player can be Celts or Germans... Oooh Ooooh me me me! I'm totally new of course, but I've read the PBEM faq on the PBEM thread and would love to try! Two things: how often do I have to post my save? And what do you advise-Celts or Germans? (You made the scen after all, McMonkey!)

[Jerec]

Went ahead and just assumed. I began a game as the Celts. Fun! Noticed a few things...

It's spelled WAREhouses, not wharehouses.

Are you sure that chariots were used by Gauls? I thought only the Britons used them...

Same thing goes for woad-covered warband. I thought only the Britons used woad. Or is it easier to lump together? Wouldn't blame you if you did to save unit space...

Not quite sure, but I think that cavalry was only used by the Germanic tribes. The Germans used scrawny, small ponies as a sort of highly mobile infantry. In the Gallic Wars Julius Caesar hired a bunch of these Germanic horsemen to fight the Gauls, with excellent results.

A temple and ampitheatre with 2 units in-city are required to keep a size 3-4 city out of unrest? Didn't you fix this already, though?

As the Celts my tax ratio was 52 g earned, and 100-120 g cost. So I would constantly raid the village units with chariots. I could only kill the villages on a grassland square, but did you intend for any civ to kill the villages and get gold, or just the Romans?

So far I've razed 4 barb cities, and lost 2 of my own cities to the barbs. Would it be possible to raise the barb city sizes? For every city I captured it was razed, not just occupied. Irritating for me.

[McMonkey]

The Gauls/Celts/Britons are lumped together into one Civ. You may well be right about the British being the only ones to use them but I have decided to compromise on historical accuracy where I think it will make for a fun game

When we are ready to restart the PBEM game at Civ Webring I will check if all the current players are willing to carry on. If anyone drops out I will let you know. I think one player is very busy and will probably not resume and as far as I remember he plays the Celts!

Ideally you should post your turn in a PBEM within 24 hours if not sooner, they are an impatient group! If people start to take longer than 24 hours the games tend to die off which is a waste of time for everyone involved. If you are unable to play then a quick message saying how long you will be is appreciated by the others.

Just fixed warehouses. Thanks for the other suggestions, gives me something to think over. All of the issues you have raised have been fixed for Version 2 which I will release as a Beta test for those interested very soon.

Have had no time to work on AC today but it is all coming together in my head, just need to make some relatively minor changes now!

[Jerec]

One other idea.

Could you allow the Celts to build something besides 2 types of war units and settlers? Say, a caravan? A caravan unit would be wonderful, a great way to balance the Celtic economy, which is upside down at the start of the game. To tell the truth, I was despairing over that matter, thinking I would have to constantly be at war to sustain a balanced bank account.

[Jerec]

*sigh* I forgot something again. I always remember stuff in bits and pieces and have to post a dozen times to get all my thoughts out.

Anyway, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE PUT ALL THE UNITS IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA! Agricola said this for my first scen, "It is a real and irritating pain in the neck to be forced to look up a unit's stats in the rules.txt ." My thoughts exactly. For instance, the Latin soldier unit, the general, the siege weapons...

Pleasepleaseplease fix this!

In my scen, for all the units that went into the cyclopedia but were unbuildable I did this: found some corresponding tech and put the x unit buildable on that tech and also obsolete on that tech. Just make sure that it is an unavailable tech, as the AI will disband/not use any unit designated "obsolete", even if that unit is better than the buildable units. Hope you understood all that...

[McMonkey]

Will do! Thats not something I thought of before.

I will look at adding another Celtic unit down the tech tree, perhaps a berserker or something fun like that, any suggestions? You can build Caravans and Cavalry later on. I will also look at each nations economy. I sort of wanted the Germanics and Celts to be warlike but I don't want to make it too tough. Developing trade and monarch (I think it is renamed Empire) will help the economy but I will do a bit of testing to get the balance right.

I would have tested the initial version more but the guys at Civ Webring were keen to get going and use the PBEM as a test. This made sense but in the end there were too many flaws and I decided to go back and fix them before starting another multiplayer game.

Hopefully version 2 will be a vast improvement with better graphics, economy, tech tree, events and new ideas as well as removing bugs!

[Jerec]

Berserkers were used only by the Vikings. Put it in as a Gaul/Celt/Briton unit and some history buff will you out.

You don't have to overhaul the economy too much, just change the riot factor and get rid of all the ampitheatres in most of the cities. W a maint. of 4 g per ampitheatre, you see what I mean!

A suggestion...you already have all the troop units...basic levies (warband), better euipped troops (Gaulish Warrior), cavalry, chariot. Because of this, probably the only unit besides a hero/chieftain unit would be a Druid. Druids had immense political power, mainly because of their education and status as priests. They were also characteristic of Gauls, Celts, and Britons! No historical fudging! You could easily slip this unit in as a diplomat or the equivalent of a Roman general unit. Seeing that Druids could easily inspire the Gauls to fanatical fervor in battle, this wouldnt be too far-fetched.

If you do seriously think about making a Druid unit, you could use this graybeard unit I pulled from the Midgard scen.

[Jerec]

Or this fellow minus the wand and gold shoulder pads.

[McMonkey]

I'll have a think about the Druid or some other special unit for the Celts. The Germanics already have Dacian units, Thracians and Illyrians, Sarmatians and Skythians so the Celts are a bit lacking!

In the new version I have raised the riot factor to 22 and I will see if this works a bit better. I will lower the maintenance cost of the Amphitheatres too.

I have overhauled the barbarian unit creation and all nations will be able to build envoys sooner. Special units such as Dacians and Sarmatians will only appear in the relevant regions and the local nation will then be able to bribe them for a small fee. Although any nation can bribe any barbarian unit I expect that most Dacians will be bribed by the Germanics, Levantine Archers will go to the Seleucids, Numidians to the Carthaginians and so on...

Right then, best get on with some work

[McMonkey]

Jerec

Would you be interested in trying out the version 2 Alpha. It is not finished yet but it is a vast improvement on the original. Most of the bugs you and other players have mentioned have already been fixed and I am really just adding the final touches and checking for bugs.

If you are up for it then send me a PM with your e-mail address. If you don't have the time I wouldn't be offended. Just seems pointless testing the obsolete version!

[Jerec]

I'd love to McMonkey. Already sent my e-mail by PM; I guess you expected me to respond on this thread. Two questions-you want a report on anything in particular? And do you want me to play any specific civs?

[McMonkey]

Thanks Jarec, thought you would be interested as you said you would like to join in the PBEM, will also give you a chance to work out some strategy

It makes sense to post comments here, your comments so far have been helpful so I was really looking for more of the same. By all means point out any flaws!

As I intend for all the nations to be playable you can play as anyone you like. Will e-mail the files in a bit.

Thanks.

[McMonkey]

Jerec

I just e-mailed you the game files, hope they get through OK. You can use the sounds from the original Aeterna for now. I will need to make a new tech-tree printout jpeg as I have made quite a few changes.
Hope you enjoy testing it and I look forward to your comments.

I am working on the events right now and have made quite a few changes there too. I think a single player version is possible. Just need to increase the size of the rival nations a bit and maybe create several events files using the batch file system. I will have a go at this when the multiplayer version is perfected.