New Age of Sail scenario in development

[Miroslav]

Greeting Apolyton Civ2 community!

As a relatively unknown member (to be honest mostly a lurker) I have finally decided to contribute to this community.
As I have mentioned in the other thread I'm starting to work on an Age of Sail/Colonialism type of scenario for Civ2 MGE.

So far these are the resources that I have:
1.World map, of my own desing (and thanks to Merc for explaining how to restore resources).
2.Graphics from the Net (mostly Fairline's and Arne's for units)
3.SL designer's tips and certain experience with other similar scenarios.

So without further ado, let me explain what this scenario is about:

Mainly an empire-building scenario with a lot of trade, with wars that will be fought mainly overseas for colonies. Capturing european cities will be hard, especially those of Barbs(powerfull unbribable and unbuildable fortresses).

Time period: from 1492 - 1780 (give or take a year) with one or two years per turn (still undecided).

The players(in no particular order):
French
Habsburghs(Spain+Austria)
Portugal
England
Ottoman Empire
Russians
Dutch
Everybody else (played by barbarians)

I will explain various aspects of the game in following posts.

Your suggestions and comments are welcome.

[Miroslav]

Naval warfare - this is one of the most important aspect of this period and I want to reflect this is gameplay:

1. All ships can sink in the open sea. This is both for historical and gameplay purposes. If a player sends a small fleet (3-5 ships) across the ocean (early in the game) to establish a colony, she/he can expect only about half of the ships to arive there, and maybe one to come back.

2. Ocean tiles defence bonus raised to match hills defence.
This is to accomplish two things:
a) more complex naval tactics, attacker has to have more warships (or more powerfull ones) to sink just one defending ship.
b) effective naval blockades (this will be especially important in this scenario, since life or death will depend on overseas trade [translation: VERY expensive city improvements, see more of this when I post about economy]).

3. Ships cannot bombard shore units with the exception of bomb ketches (apearing late in the scenario).

4. Only some ships will be able to carry units, and even those will have very low capacity. The idea behind this is to put a lot of trading ships at sea (after all this is about age of sail).

5. All ships will move slow, later gradualy improving, but still slow compared to other scenarios. Again this is because I want more slow ships rather than few fast. Also to present a choice to the player: use fast ships with small capacity or slow with large (for example brig vs. fluyte)

6. Piracy (see more on this when I post ideas about barbarians).

7. Only necessary ships (no redundancy or overlapping).

Ship list (and units graphics are in the attachment):

1. Galley - early attacking ship, move 3, powerfull attack, waek defense, carry 1(but only because of barb pirates), available from start, cheapish

2. Caravel - early transport ship, carry 1, move 5, but waek, available from start, very cheap

3. Carrack - robust trader and war ship, but not suitable for naval blockades, moves 4, carry 3, medium priced

4. Galleon - more hp and att/def than Carrack, moves 5, but carry 2, medium priced

5. Fluyte - like a galleon, weaker in att/def, carries 4(best cargo ship in scen), moves 5, medium priced

6. Brig - generic light sailing ship, replaces caravel, moves 6 or 7, carry 1, very cheap

7. Man-of-War - carry 0, moves 5, stronger than Galleon, expensive

8. Frigate - moves 8, carries 0, medium priced, powerfull, but weaker than Man-of-War

9. Indiaman - moves 8, carries 2, medium priced, lower hp than galleon/fluyte, but more att/def than Fluyte

10. Ship-of-the-Line - ultimate fighting ship, replaces Man of War, moves 6, extremely expensive, carry 0

11. Bomb Ketch - shore bombard, moves 3, carry 0, weak defense, expensive.

Some ships will be denied to some civilizations. For example no Indiamen for Ottomans and Russians (maybe even to Portugese and Habsburghs/Spaniards).

[MacGalleo]

Hello Miroslav.
Your project seems interesting.
Maybe, you could tell us more about your ideas for this scenario.

[MacGalleo]

Sorry you post more quicly than me....

[Miroslav]

Hello MacGalleo.

Maybe, you could tell us more about your ideas for this scenario.

Yes, that is what I was planning to do in a series of posts.

Here are suggested city placements (this is not a screenshot from scenario since there is none yet)

[MacGalleo]

I look forwards your posts...

[Miroslav]

Barbarians:

They will represent pirates, german states, italian cities, poland-lithuania, kongo, scandinavians, scotts, irish, rebel provinces, tatars (but not crimean), hungary-croatia, berbers, arabs, persians, mali, ethiopia, mughals, hindu states, chinese (both ming and qing-manchus), japanese, koreans, aztecs, inacs, central asians, and all other states/tribes.

Barbarians will be created using following methods:

1. Placed on the map in the beggining (these will wander off or die pretty quickly).

2. Created by events. Unfortunately there is limited room for those, and there is no way to reliably simulate random-appearing and gradually improved barbs at the same time.

3. Produced by cities. This is something scenario-makers typically ignore or do wrong from the start, but this has a lot of potential, and here's why:
In normal civ-games when barbs capture a city, the city produces units that captured it.
These get UPGRADED over time (for example archer to legions, legions to musketeers, or even archers to musketeers), but it seems that it is hardcoded to unit position which unit gets upgrade.
So for example, if barbarian crossbowman early in the game captures one of players cities, i want it to upgrade to flintlock musketeer eventualy, to keep up with players.
There is a problem with barb cities: it seems that only 5-6 cities in total produce units when captured by barbs.
It also seems that only the cities which were captured fist produce units, and once those are conquered or destroyed, others start to produce units. These other cities are those which were conquered by barbs next in chronological order.
So for example if 5 barb cities are producing units, and they have captured 6 cities in total, once first is destroyed, sixth takes its place.
At least I think this is how it workes.
Other problem is that if you use tool like Carl Fritz's CivCity(otherwise indispensable)
to assign cities to barbs, you'll get unpredictable behaviour (you will not be able to precissely tell which barb city will produce units and which won't).
To circumvent this problem I will try to use the old-fashioned way to assign cities to barbs combined with building cities gradually during first couple of turns until I get for example something like this:
One city/tribe in North America protuces one brave, once city/tribe in africa produces one warrior, one city in China, and so...
But when that fist tribe in America is destroyed/captured, another in the same continent takes it's place, and likewise in other continets.

4. Units created randomly (Barbarian settings will be Raging Hordes)
First I won't use Mobile Warfare in any shape, or form. Which means no end for piracy.
By manipulating techs one can narrow which units will appear randomly and most important how will they EVOLVE throughout scenario.
I plan to use all ships slots which are hardcoded, in following order:
1. Galley in position of Trireme, early game.
2. Galleon in position of Caravel, mid game.
3. Indiaman in position of Frigate, late game.
Also note that AI cheats when plays with barbs, and puts armies in small capacity ships, which is fine for this scen.
For land units I'm not so sure yet which will be used.

This mostly sums it up what I had to say about barbs.

[Miroslav]

Small update. Here are suggested barb units (these in addition to some "regular" - units shared with players)

1. Aborigine/south seas native/south america native/indonesian native.
2. Indian brave/maybe also for native of Agrentina
3. Tatar (notice the pointy hat, this is the best unit I could find)
4. Generic African warrior
5. Bedouin (maybe replace spear with arquebus or sabre)
5. Aztec/Inca
6. Generic east asian (this I want to replace with more modern one with musket. Any suggestions?)
7. Generic native with firearms (not sure about this one)
8. Post-mediaeval indian/generic south asian

Authors of unit graphics will be given credits when scenario is released.

@MacGalleo
Thank you.
I look forward to your suggestions and advices.

[Miroslav]

Governments:

Government switching will be allowed, but government choices will be limited.
Democracy will not be available.
Barbarians start in Fundametalism (using cfritz's CivTweak), which is not available for players.
Players start with Feudalism which is Despotism renamed.
They will be able to research (not right away at the start) Absolutism (Monarchy renamed) and Parliamentarism (Republic renamed).
Absolutism and Parliamentarism will be spaced as far as possible on tech tree to make players to plan and choose early on which government type they want (diplomacy kind of defeats this idea, but I like it this way anyway).
Eventually, of course players will research both.
Ottoman player will be able to research fake Sultanate, which will trigger the event, which gives Sultanate (renamed Communism, with altered corruption) to them. They will not be able to trade this tech.
Also techs for Court House and City Watch (ren. Police Station) will take a while to research (with several "buffer" techs preceding required techs to build those improvements).

[MacGalleo]

Without wanting to reopen the debate, why not use test of time. The events file would give more opportunities and space.

About barb cities production, some events with randomize location could be a good solution. For example, an African warrior could be spawned between the different African barb cities with just one or two events.

Have you already thought to trade?
You can also create some units for trade (gold, precious stones, spices, etc.)

[Miroslav]

, why not use test of time

Well, the only reason is that I don't own TOT.

some events with randomize location could be a good solution

Yes, that's what I think too, but in addition to that I want units produced by cities, and random. Sorry, this was an oversight of mine, I stated only negative aspects of event-generated Barbarians.

You can also create some units for trade (gold, precious stones, spices, etc.)

I'm not sure I understand this correctly. Do you mean caravan type units renamed and then used like regular trade units or some sort of immobile gold units that need to be "killed" in order to add certain ammount of gold to player's treasury?
My own idea for trade in this scen was more conventional:
2 types of traders, one in place of Caravan, other in place of Freight, first available more or less from the start, other later through research. Of course, their names, and graphics would be different.
What would be different about economy from regular game is immediate and constant need for trade, especially overseas, because of huge deficits and slooooow science progress.
Anyway, soon I will make full post about economy, and fully explain my ideas there.

[MacGalleo]

you should look at Kobayashi's scenario "the rape of nations" you can find here:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2/downloads/scenarios/renaissance/

[Miroslav]

A few corrections about barbs:

Well I ran a test with me playing as romans, and I allowed barbaran warriors to capture my cities, just to see how many units will the cities produce, and which cities.
When I said in previous post about barbs that barbarian units upgrade, what I really ment is that if barb archers capture a city, after a while barb city will produce legions. Original barb archer will stay as it is, it won't be upgraded. But this won't work for some units, like warriors. If warriors capture a city, the city will only produce warriors for eternity.
Another thing is this:
Barbarians will stop producing units in cities after a while. What is the cause of this? Is it a total number of their cities? In my test game they produced 8 warriors with 3 cities and then stopped after capturing 4th city. Or is it a total number of units? Later they had 10 cities and 5 warriors roaming around. But they wouldn't produce any more units UNTIL their last warrior outside of cities was destroyed. And even then barbs produced only one warrior (from the first city captured) and no more. And when that warrior was destroed, again the barbs produced only one.
Barb citied will keep producing new warriors until there are 3 warriors in every city and then stop. If at least one of such is killed it's replacement will be produced, and no more.
Also randomly created barbarian play a role: is seams that if there are any hordes on the map, barb cities stop producing new units unil those hordes are wiped out.

This is all probably common knowledge, to you civ veterans, and I am just correcting my stupid mistakes.

BTW, is anyone out there who would be so kind to post a link to some page or forum which describes barbarian unit mechanism?

[Miroslav]

@MacGalleo
Yes, I was familiar with TRON. It's really unique, but the trade mechanism is so complex, and I don't think I'll implement something like that. It is a nice idea, but those resource "units" waste spaces for real units.
However, maybe I can implement something similar to slavery such as in Colonies4 by John Ellis.

[Case]

This sounds great. I had a go at making an age of sail naval scenario years ago and can't remember why I gave up as the mechanics work rather well, though the AI's grasp of naval strategy obviously sucks.

As a question, why is the scenario stopping at 1780? This will exclude the French revolutionary wars, the Napoleonic Wars and the US-British War of 1812, which were some of the most important naval campaigns of the age of sail. I'd suggest that you extend the scenario into the early years of the 1800s.