A Soaring Spirit

[Salaambo]

Yes that is correct.

Another way you could slow down tech is to make the production cost of caravans higher.

But don't make them too high as trade should be an important part of this scenario.

Is that my map from the "Greek World Divided"? I am very happy someone is putting it to good use, the only difference I see is that Corsica and Sardinia are added.

Though that map does not have the far western med on it which is where the Ionians and Phoenicians concentrated a lot of their colonization efforts.

[Salaambo]

I would have liked to include Iberia, the Black Sea and the Levant but it would have meant Greece, Sicily, Asia Minor and Magna Graecia would have been too small for what I had planned.

Yes I see the problem. You could scale it so that Iberia and Southern France are smaller and just have Eastern Iberia.

Though that will make the map altogether less attractive.

It seems the sea distances are already scaled down on the western end of the map (i.e. distance of Sardinia to Italy)

[curtsibling]

McMonkey - That is some excellent planning there - You do us proud!

[McMonkey]

@Salaambo
This is a brand new map made with my own fair hands I think it is about three times larger (32,000sq) than your map (10,000sq) though I have not checked this. I have not reduced the distance to Corsica or Sardinia from Italy. For a flat map this is as accurate as I could get it. One of my main reasons for excluding Iberia and the Black sea was that it would mean including vast expanses of sea and unoccupied land. Whatever I chose would be a compromise but that is part of the fun of making CivII scenarios!

@curtsibling
Thanks. Everytime I make a scenario I learn a whole new set of tricks and techniques and some concepts sink into my consciousness a bit more. In the past I have planned out the tree on paper but when I move things around it gets very messy and I have to keep drawing up new trees (I normally draw out the shape on computer and print off/photocopy a few spares) which takes a lot of time and is very frustrating.

What I decided to do this time was draw the shape of the tree on the white board. Add all the special techs, wonders, units, governments and improvements then add all the tech names I had chosen. I then transferred all of those tech boxes onto computer (paint) printed it off, cut out each tech box, laminated them and then cut them out again as 1cmx3cm cards so they wouldn't blow away if I sneezed

I then sorted the cards into categories depending on how far down the tree they should appear (early, middle, late). I then placed them on the whiteboard and tried to sort them into groups that followed logical progressions (IE Financial techs, military techs, religious techs etc...). By having the techs on cards it was pretty easy to swap them around until the tree flowed as I wanted it to. I then remover the cards one by one, rubbed out the old text in the box and added the new tech. I completed this last night and although it sounds a bit long winded it was actually a lot quicker and less stressful than most of the trees I have built in the past

I think the tech tree and the map are the two core elements of any successful scenario, get those right and the other elements should fall into place. It may have taken me a few years to get the hang of it but I finally feel like I am mastering the technology tree. My new challenge this time has been to use the Raging Hordes setting and keep goody huts on the map. I have read through William Keenan's excellent "Barbarian Paper" and hopefully all the relevant raiders and mercenaries will show up...hopefully

[curtsibling]

Getting the tech-tree right from the start makes life a million times easier!
Your are totally going about it in a wise and rewarding method...

I find that juggling multiple trees (like what I am doing right now for EW) to be a hardcore but ultimately fun experience...!

[McMonkey]

Multiple trees That is indeed hardcore but will definitely pay off when each individual nation has their own tree!

[McMonkey]

After explaining my low tech method of making tech trees I would like to take the time to thank Mercator for making the Civ2tech utility. It has saved me a lot of time, hassle and ripped out hair! Nothing more frustrating to spend half an hour seeing your game CTD and going other the rules file with a fine tooth comb to find a missing comma

Also Carl Fritz's CivCity tool is an indispensable piece of kit I could not do without

[McMonkey]

Just a quick update. This project has chugging along quite nicely for the past month or two and should be ready soon (touch wood!). I just thought I would post a screenie to show how things are progressing

[Salaambo]

[QUOTE=McMonkey;5513723] I want to start the game with all nations fairly well balanced but I also want the initial cities and colonies to be accurate for 800 BC. I am going to have some fun going through all 255 city sites using Wikipedia to find out when they were founded and by who. [QUOTE]

In that case you might find my brand new website useful:

https://www.explorethemed.com

Its an interactive historical atlas of the mediterranean, you can click on any of the cities and it will pull up the wikipedia article for that city in a pop-up box. There are specific maps dealing with Greek colonization.

Bear in mind its a brand new site and its still a work in progress.

[McMonkey]

I like the idea of an interactive map linked to the relevant Wikipedia articles, good thinking. Your site looks very well put together. The maps are very useful for this project, I tend to find that every historical map has slightly different bits of info and you need to look at several of them to build up the bigger picture. Thanks for the link

I have finished my map and city placement but I will check them against your maps to make sure I have not made any glaring errors. I had to bend time and history a little to get the overall effect I wanted (mainly placing some fledgling Hellenic colonies in Italy and Sicily slightly early) but I think these small inaccuracies will lead to a more realistic experience overall.

[McMonkey]

I have done almost no work on this project lately. I seem to have hit a wall that has sapped all of my creative energy Hopefully I will get back on track soon!

One thing that is causing me problems is changing the dates. I know I have done this many times in the past but for some reason I cannot get it to work for this scenario. Everything I try has no effect. I want the scenario to start in 750 BC and each turn to be a year. What do I need to do to get this to work? I know it is probably one tiny thing I am missing out but I think I have tried everything

[McMonkey]

I was rained in today so I decided to do some work on this project. I was happy to find that I was much further along than it seemed to me when I stalled. Most of the groundwork was already done and it was just a case of working out some technical stumbling blocks (move to events, dates etc...) that was required. I am now quite confident that I can get the multiplayer version finished soon. I have been doing some testing of the Persian Invasions events and I now think they will give the human controlled players a stern test, especially the Ionians who will take the initial hit.

If anyone would like to take a look at the game and give me some feedback it would be appreciated. Sometimes another's perspective can be invaluable!

[McMonkey]

Getting really close to finishing this now. Just looking for some playtesters to take a quick look for any obvious bugs and for some general feedback. I have dedicated most of the event space to the Persian Invasions but if I converted this to ToT I think it would be fairly easy to make up several sets of events to assist the AI's Colonization in single player mode.

One question. I remember using the @DEBUG line in the events of Fortress Europe and getting a text file called "Report" which highlighted any errors but also displayed the remaining events space left (in KB). I have tried using this with MGE and it does not seem to generate the Report.txt file. I have put the DEBUG.txt file in the scenario folder, the @DEBUG line in the events and began the scenario many times but no joy. Can this be used with MGE and if so what am I missing?

[McMonkey]

And a little screenie to inspire interest. Xerxes army begins its march into Thrace on its way to attack Greece. Once this event gets going things get a little crazy

[McMonkey]

I am at the stage of development there I have covered the map and revealed certain areas for each player. In the past I have used the CivDip tool to share maps (Ie the Greek nations) but I cannot get it to work now. When I try and find the .net or .sav file CivDip does not seem to see them. I can see some save files but not the ones I am trying to work with. Can anyone help?

I tried swapping maps in game by setting attitudes to be very friendly but the aggressive MGE AI refuses to swap maps, even if they can see almost nothing

I am now officially perplexed as I am so close to having this thing finished! I don't want to spend hours revealing the map for each of the Greek nations individually. Please help