New Age of Sail scenario in development

[Miroslav]

@Eivind IV:
7 civs: English, Habsburg, Dutch, French, Russians, Portugese, Ottomans.
Other euros played by barbs.

And a screenshot of Event-generator:


I probably forgot to mention that I am good at programming with windows api and c language, and that I did something like this couple years ago for an older version of 2194days, but never published.

[Eivind IV]

But by having the other Euros as barbs, the AI will go amok on the Europeans, no?

[Miroslav]

I think that the combination of AI cheating and ultra-powerfull barbarian fortresses will do the trick. By cheating I mean how AI always sees other's units, no matter whether those units are in cities, or have submarine flag. I'm assuming AI players won't attack units with big defence and hit points.
Or am I completely wrong about this?

[Miroslav]

More screenshots from work in progress:



I want to create the impression that the world is already populated, so I'm filling map with cities, mostly using 1.tribe to play (Russians). It looks now that the total number of cities will come close to 255. So players will have to destroy native settlements (unwalled), and occupy others.

[techumseh]

Sorry to be a poop, but I have a pet peeve about the map you are planning to use. I've had this peeve ever since the release of Two Thousand and Something Days of War, which used the same map, allowing medium bombers to hit Japan from Hawaii.

This map has oceans that are a fraction of their true size. The Pacific, which in reality covers a third of the globe, is more like a canal, and is almost as narrow than the Atlantic, which is about one quarter of it's actual width.

Given that the scenario is about the age of sail, I hardly think such a map will do justice to the long, dangerous voyages of exploration and conquest of the time. Sorry to raise this after you've obviously already done a lot of work, but there are more accurate world maps available.

[Eivind IV]

Although I agree with you, Tech, this doesn't have to be a problem as long as he doesn't give the ships too much movement. That you could hit Japan from Hawaii could easily have been avoided by given the bombers less movement (and obviously not place Hawaii redicilously 6 squares from Japan).

Besides, this isn't the same map (although about the same scale). I believe he made this himself. His continents look more stretched. But I have to agree I'm a bit concerned with the narrow Atlantic/Pacific ocean.

[Miroslav]

Originally posted by Eivind IV
Besides, this isn't the same map (although about the same scale). I believe he made this himself.

That is correct. I made it this spring and published recently. Here is short story about it. Basically it is optimized for dense city placement but with reasonable distance between cities.

For comparison, here is a view of 2194 days map (which is just same old original world map), and my map:

Originally posted by techumseh
The Pacific, which in reality covers a third of the globe, is more like a canal, and is almost as narrow than the Atlantic

As you can see in the original world map north Pacific is actually narrower than north Atlantic. At least that is not the case here.

Originally posted by techumseh
This map has oceans that are a fraction of their true size.

Originally posted by Eivind IV
I'm a bit concerned with the narrow Atlantic/Pacific ocean myself.

It's true, but as long as ships move slowly (3-8), it shouldn't be a problem.
The only exception to this is Brazil - Africa distance which is just too small.
I'm not goint to start from scratch all over again, so at this point all I can do is make parts of north African west coast smaller, by manually replacing them with ocean.
So my question to you both is should I do that or just leave it as it is.

@Eivind IV:
About barb euros mentioned previously, do you think that fortress trick will work?

[curtsibling]

I have to agree with Tech, that the oceans should be a formidable size, to represent the hazards of sea travel.

I can understand the trepidation of having to place all those cities again, but for the playability factor the map should be considered.

Also, moving ships with only 3 movement points gets tedious, very quick.

Just my tuppence.

[Miroslav]

Allright, I see your point. So, since my map lacks huge sea surfaces, I'll make a new one based on it.
It will be 2000-4000 tiles larger than this (which is 10920).
*Sigh*, there goes FW compatibility out of the window (how relevant is FW these days anyway?).

But, I'm not completely abandoning current project, because I'm almost done placing cities (that screenie was obsolete when I re-posted it). So I'll use it for testing purposes until new map is done.

[Eivind IV]

Originally posted by Miroslav
@Eivind IV:
About barb euros mentioned previously, do you think that fortress trick will work?

From experience, having barbarians in such close proximity will only make them batter units mindlessly against their cities, regardless of defending units. This may be bipassed if you make the human civ's (hexedited) allied to the barbarians. This will however make assaults on the cities impossible. This is the reason I chose to have a seperate European civ in my scenario, as I couldn't use that option when barb cities were spread all around the globe, ready to be subjugated.

Originally posted by Miroslav
Allright, I see your point. So, since my map lacks huge sea surfaces, I'll make a new one based on it.
It will be 2000-4000 tiles larger than this (which is 10920).
*Sigh*, there goes FW compatibility out of the window (how relevant is FW these days anyway?).

Yes, some of the people in here (aka eggheads! ) are arguing MGE is obsolete, so I think it's rpetty safe to declare FW obsolete. Your current map seems just fine, but with larger oceans it will work better. An easy task with mapeditor. Placing cities will have to be redone, but now that you have the co-ordinates, this shouldn't take mroe than an hour to replace on the new map.

[Miroslav]

Originally posted by Eivind IV
having barbarians in such close proximity will only make them batter units mindlessly against their cities, regardless of defending units

I just had to test this. So, in the attachment is a savegame on random large map with 7 civs on deity. I'm playing as romans, and I placed several cities near some other civs (spanish, english, chinese) and allowed barbs to capture them.
Then I modified rules and created superunit from first Extra Land slot (with nil prerequisite later changed to no).
Here are the stats:
Extra Land, nil, 0, 0.,0, 1a,16d, 8h,1f, 5,0, 0, no, 000000000000000
Next, I created one of these units in every barbarian city and fortified it.
Then I played a couple of turns. AI civs don't attack them at all.
Even, AI Chinese, whose capital is surrounded with barbarian cities won't attack.
I don't have the time to continue playing, but so far it seems ok. Maybe later ai will attack?

As an interesting sideeffect one barb city(Antium) is producing phalanxes like crazy, but just fortifies them.

So maybe it will work (for a while, at least)?

[Miroslav]

UPDATE:
I gave some advanced units to Sioux. And here is the result:
It won't attack barbs with Crusaders, Knights or Dragoons.
But it will with Cavalry, even if it has only one of such units.
So the decision whether it will attack or not depends either on unit stats or position (more likely stats)
Yeay !!!

[McMonkey]

Yo can make MGE maps of up to 32,000sq. If you did this you could either use the same map and extend the oceans or enlarge the landmass too. There are several good 32,000sq world maps already out (Imperialism 1870, La Belle Epoque) that you could modify. This would save you a lot of time!

I am a sucker for large maps!