A Soaring Spirit

[McMonkey]

I have begun work on a new multiplayer project and I wanted to share some of my ideas to help develop the concept. This scenario is set in the Mediterranean (see map), begins in the year 800 B.C. and focuses mainly on the expansion of the Greeks and Phoenicians. It is inspired by John Ellis' Hellas and Eivind's Colonialism which both work well in the multiplayer format.

The playable nations will be the Corinthians, Athenians, Spartans, Chalcideans, Ionians, Etruscans and Phoenicians with the event generated Persians appearing late on under Phoenician control.

I usually use fortresses for stackable terrain. The first thing I need to know is if there there any issues associated with using airbases for stackable terrain in a pre flight scenario?

[techumseh]

Yes, fortresses affect AI movement. Any 2 mf barb units will automatically fort up. Other AI movement is affected in my experience. There is less movement, things are slower and less offensive. This is my impression: I've not tested it.

If you use airbases instead (ToT only) the results are much better. Offensive movement is unimpared. There seems to be more movement in stacks, which actually improves the AI as an oponent.

[McMonkey]

Sounds good to me. As well as the improved AI I will still be able to place fortresses in key locations with their defensive bonus.

[fairline]

Looks promising Beingofone made something similar a few years ago. You might want to look at it for inspiration.

McM, shouldn't you include Lebanon in your map if Phoenicia us one of your civs?

[curtsibling]

Nothing gets me more delighted in a CIV2 scenario than a giant map!

Looks cool - Will be interested to see how this pans out -

[McMonkey]

Thank for the encouragement guys. I will point out again that this is being designed for multiplayer (and therefore MGE) where the large map won't hinder human players. I am not sure how the AI would cope as it will be a game of colonization and trade, something that it does not excel at! I guess it would be possible to convert it to ToT and add some events giving the AI nations colonists to help them along, could be interesting.

I have been thinking about and working on this scenario for a long time now and one aspect that I gave a lot of thought to was the map scale. I used the full 32,000 squares and looked at how I could fit in the majority of the Hellenic and Phoenician world at a decent scale. 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. In the end I opted for roughly the same map that John Ellis used in Hellas, which this scenario is obviously heavily influenced by!

The Phoenicians capital is Carthage and the game will focus on their territories in North African, Sardinia and Sicily. I decided to drop the Persians as a nation and include the Etruscans in stead as they were the established culture in Italy while the Persians only appear late on in the scenario. When they do come (via events) the Persians will either be controlled by the Phoenicians or they will be barbarians. I'm afraid it is one of the many compromises that has to be made when working with CivII. Good to have some limits though, lets you know when to stop!

I will be using four special terrain types: Shield square, Trade square, Food square and Colony Site. The first three will allow me to designate certain cities as more valuable than others (IE Athens, Syracusae, Miletus etc...). The Colony sites will be set out in historically accurate locations and players will only be allowed to found new cities on these sites. This should cause some rivalry for the best spots!

One scenario I have enjoyed recently is Colonization by Eivind. I will be borrowing his idea about only size 8 or above cities being able to build colonists and ships. Each nation will start with about 10 cities and cities which existed by 800BC will be pre placed. Like in Colonization, shields will often be scarce so unit and improvement production will be completed mainly by rush building and the money for that will be gained via trade. Therefore players will need to plan ahead to avoid being blockaded into obscurity.

There are loads of other new or borrowed ideas that I intend to shoehorn into this scenario but I will save them for another post. At the moment I am working on a way to make nearly all of the governments usable but no single government is too far superior to the others. I would like a game where the players may swap around depending on the situation and I hope I can manipulate the cosmic values of the rules file to get such a system to work. I have found that I usually pick the most advantageous government for a particular scenario and stick with it throughout. I am sure over the course of five hundred years there would be a few political changes and I would like to reflect that.

Just putting the finishing touches to the map at the moment. Will post updates and ask for help as I go along

[McMonkey]

Hopefully the map will be completed this weekend and I will be able to start the actual scenario building in earnest. I think I have it well planned out both in my mind and on a million scraps of paper and I think the concept is solid. I even treated myself to two Osprey books this morning (Syracuse 415-413 BC and Thermopylae 480 BC) for inspiration. One of the best books I have found is called Greece and Rome at War by Peter Connolly. His illustrations are superb and I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Ancient warfare.

I have been deliberating over the nations to use. I am convinced that the Phoenicians, Etruscans and Ionian Greeks are worthy additions to the four main Greek city states (I dropped Thebes), but I would also like to include Phrygia/Lydia who could later evolve into the Persian Empire. This would mean that one of the other nations has to be axed, but who?

Phoenicians
Etruscans
Ionian Greeks
Phrygia/Persia
Athenians
Corinthians
Chalcideans
Spartans

Or does anyone have a better way of dividing up the Greek city states, such as by dialect?

Also does anyone know if I can use the name Chalcideans for the people of Chalcis or have I just made that word up at some point?

[Timoleon]

Chalcidians or Chalkidians is the dictionary form but you can say Chalkideans.In Greek it is Chalkideis ΧΑΛΚΙΔΕΙΣ pronounced "(k)halki-this".They were Ionian Greeks as were the Athenians who conquered them by 506bc or something.I d'say merge the Chalkidians with the Ionians,cause Attica and Euboea is where the Ionian colonists came from in the first place.Of course Chalcis was so important in colonizing Chalkidiki (the 3 pronged peninsula in northern Greece) and Sicily,but so were the other Ionians,mostly because Dorian Greeks were kicking their butt and taking their land in the old country (Athens being the exception more or less).Taking out Thebes was good because it was a second rate power before the power vacuum after the Peloponesian war,its prominence not outlasting the rule of Epaminondas anyway.

[McMonkey]

Thanks for the suggestion Tanelorn. I need to do a bit more reading before I make a final decision but merging the Ionians and Chalcideans sounds like it could work. My only concern is that they may well start with too many established cities in Asia Minor, Euboea and the early western colonies compared with the Spartans and Athenians.

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. Of course in the game any nation could found any city so it will be interesting to see the pattern of colonization in a multiplayer CivII game!

I agree about Thebes. Other than the period under Epaminondas, where they rose to prominence, Thebes was not a major player and was nowhere near as involved in the Colonization of the Mediterranean and Aegean as Corinth, Sparta or Athens.

[Timoleon]

Considering the city state was the prevalent political unit & that by Classical times tribe affiliation didn't mean much,I d'say your current breakdown is very good,keep it.
However,you asked for it:
Part1
Crash course in Greek History. There are 4 major original Greek tribes and dialects.By order of southward movement they are the Acheans,the Aeolians,the Ionians and the Dorians.The most common view is that starting at about 2000 bC:
The Acheans spread from Thessaly to eastern mainland Greece and the Peloponese,founded the bronze age Mychenean palace culture,absorbed the Minoan civilisation in Crete,spread to the aegean islands and Cyprus, traded and raided all over,eclipsed Troy,suffered badly under the raids of the "sea peoples",were defeated and confined to the northwestern Peloponese (Achaea) by the iron wielding Dorians.Achaean refugees bolsteded their presence in the Aegean and Cyprus.

The Aeolians are closely related to the Acheans (the Acheans may have been a splinter group of them).Originating in western Macedonia,they conquered and relocated to Thessaly,then spread to the northern Aaegean islands and the opposite coast of Asia minor.Boeotians (the people around Thebes) were a later a mix of Aeolians and Dorians.Aeolians were most noted for their poetry.So were the Thessalians,a mix of Aeolians and western Greeks.Anyway,Acheans and Aeolians are the same or similar.Just that the Acheans had the Mycenean past.

The Ionians were spread between Euboea (the island where Chalkis is) Attica (the land of Athens) and maybe NE Peloponese.When the Dorians came around 1100 bC,they colonised the greatest part of the Aegean islands (apart from the north) and then the middle region of the opposite coast of Asia minor.

The Dorians came last,or were already part of the background in the Bronze age.According to Herodotus,they originated in Pthiotis (think Delphic oracle),moved to mt.Olympus under king Dorus,were displaced by the Cadmeans (Bronze age Thebes) to mt.Pindus.There,those of them that remained in the north were named Makednoi=tall(but also denotes mountain men),Macedonians.They spread northwards.The rest moved to the southern reaches of Pindos mountainrange, in Doris that bears their name and its 4 city federation that were considered their metropolis (mother city).
At the end of the bronze age,the end of the 12th c. bC.they invaded central Greece,conquered almost all of the Peloponese,the southern Aegean islands (Crete,Rhodes,Thera,Kos) and the southern coast of Asia minor.Their mythological (i.e. religious belief) was that they were the descendants of Theban Hercules,whose son ruled Argos and conquered the Peloponese,briefly.He was defeated and his people fled to the north.So when they conquered southern Greece,they believed it was a "homecoming".Recent oppinion is that they were already present in the Mychenean world as mountain pastoralists who moved to the plains,but what to make of their advantageous possession of iron technology?

[Arthedain]

(sorry if this has already been mentioned or explained somewhere but I'm too lazy to read all of the posts right now)
Airbases for stackable terrain? Airbases have the railroad flag, so yeah, there will be issues.. BUT.. I just realised that the problem's been fixed in ToT, so I guess that makes my post obsolete

[Timoleon]

Part 2
Also Dorians colonised the Bosporus.
Other western Greeks:Epirotan tribes and Aetolians/Acarnanians,living a much simpler (comparatively "uncivilised") life but united to the rest of Greece by common language,customs and religion.
The Arcadians in the mountainous center of the Peloponese retained their Aeolian identity,also moved to Cyprus and are part of founding myths of several cities in the west(...)
Proto-Greek,pre-Greek or I don't want to guess:
Pelasgians,spread all over, asimilated.
Carians,presumably original inhabitants of the Aegean (Herodotus says I think) pushed to south Asia Minor.
Eteocretans,leftover Minoans.etc.Complicated.

Incomplete and crude account,feel free to disagree.

Bottomline:
Achaeans/Aeolians= Farmers or mountain men with proud tradition and love of music and poetry.Epics.
Ionians= Merchants,craftsmen,sailors.Innovators.Prone to decadence but clever.Talk a lot,do less.Weaker military.Philosophy.Theatre.Democracy eventually.Fops.
Dorians= Conservative warrior culture.Religious.Austere.Strong communal spirit.Choruses.Sparta!"Dictatorships" or monarchies.
exept for Corinth,lots of money, eat,drink and f... Materialists.Good navy.

[McMonkey]

@Tanelorn
Thanks for the concise breakdown of the Hellenic tribes. I suppose I could use just Achaeans, Ionians and Dorians which would free up space for the Phrygians. I suppose most people will be more familiar with Athenians, Corinthians, Spartans and Ionians but I will see if I can get this system to fit my plan. So long as the Sparta and Athens are on opposing sides I guess I could work with the new system. I will do some research on Wikipedia before making my mind up!

@Arthedain
Thanks for the response. As this scenario is for MGE multiplayer the airbases having RR capability will definitely cause me a problem. Thanks for pointing that out before I added the stackable terrain. Your timing couldn't be better actually as I finished off the map at "work" today, so I will be doing the stackable terrain tonight!

[McMonkey]

I may still go with the tribe breakdown suggested by Tanelorn as it seems like the only way I can divide up the nations roughly equally. I cannot see how it would work if I begin in 800 BC with Sparta having one city while the Etruscans and Lydians both have 12 plus.

Here is proof, if ever it was needed, of how little actual work I get done of a day in relation to my CivII "work" (don't tell the boss!). The beginnings of my tech tree on whiteboard (not yet in order!):



I just wanted to see if I could e-mail images from my camera phone and thought you guys may be interested in my method. Basically I plan out the tech names, codes, units and buildings and then swap them into a logical order. Then all I have to do is add the codes to the rules file and bobs your uncle, a new tech tree Well that's the theory anyway I did try cards before but the danger of sneezing was too great. Now all I have to worry about is smudging

[McMonkey]

Question for five points: Will setting the tech paradigm higher slow down the rate of tech research achieved via trade?

I guess caravans arriving at a destination yield the same amount of beakers but the number of beakers required to acquire each tech with a higher paradigm setting will be more. Is that correct?

I hope that makes sense. It does to me anyway

What I want to do is make science progress mainly reliant on trading and set the paradigm accordingly. This way I can allow players to make lots of gold from trade to pay for units but not be in a situation where two traders arriving at a good destination can get a tech per turn!