Fall or Rome Scenario?

[General Ludd]

I think that would make a much better multiplayer scenario then single player.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Jeff_ATARI
But the basic idea is that Rome has a western half and an eastern half, in a locked alliance, and if either side loses 5 cities (that's right, it's a multiple city version of Elimination), then Rome loses.

Hmmm.... multi-city Elimination mode. So what happens if I lose a city and then recapture it? Does it still count as a loss since it fell once?

And what if I then lose it again?

Sounds interesting, regardless.

[Saint Marcus]

total number of cities lost, I presume.

seems silly though. Rome didn't fell when 5 "cities" fell. Or 5 whole provinces for that matter. I mean, in the 420s, Spain, Britain, Portugal, parts of France were lost. Yet still the Empire remained, and the Romans did manage to defeat the Huns (at Chalons), among others.

Also, after Rome fell, the Byzantines re-captured large parts of the empire.

[Virdrago]

True, Marcus.

Yet the Roman Empire is considered to have finally fallen when Odoacer, a Visigoth? Ostrogoth? - well some Gothic king, beheaded the Western Roman emperor in around 465. Then, the Eastern Roman Empire basically was known from then on as the Byzantine Empire, and the Western Empire disappeared, basically.

I might have got some names and the date wrong, but I'm pretty certain the general historic record is correct.

[joncnunn]

Well, to historians, Eastern Roman Empire was known as Byzantine from 465 on, true.

But the locals living at the time continued to call themselves Romans.

The Goths also moved their capital north into a city some Mountains, probably because that area was easier to defend than Rome itself. Sometime in the 500s, the Roman Empire took control of at least the Northern portion of Italy.

[Saint Marcus]

Odoacer was a Goth, but he became the chieftain of a coalition of various Germanic tribes, and took Rome in 476. Later he was deposed by the Ostrogoths. (oh the irony).

Also, in the 5th century AD, the romans had their capital in Ravenna, not Rome. The Ostrogoths too, had their capital in Ravenna.

The Byzantines indeed called themselves Romans. But over time, they became less and less Roman, and more and more Greek.

[Glycerius]

Romulus Augustus became emperor in 475 after his father Orestes, former secretary of Attila the Hun and thereafter Magister Militium in praesenti (commander in chief on the emperor's military staff), chased the emperor he served, Julius Nepos, the warlord ruler of Dalmatia into exile.

Romulus ruled for some ten months but after troops demanded that the custom whereby landowners acted as hospites maintaining troops on their land be extended to Italy. Orestes refused and fled to Ticinium. Flavius Odoacer, leader of the coup and son of an envoy of Attila, besieged, captured and executed Orestes. The son was pitied and instead of sharing his father’s fate was send to Campania where he lived for some years afterwards (possibly thirty or more), though whether as a pensioner of Odoacer, now king of Italy, or prisoner is not certain.

The Roman Senate informed Zeno, emperor in the east that two emperors were not needed and sent him the regalia of office. Odoacer was in all but name ruler of Italy only making the concession of restoring the last recognised emperor, Julius Nepos to the solidus used in the west, minted for many years afterwards in the name of Roman emperor, barbarian rulers not daring to usurp this privilege of minting gold.

Sources:
Michael Grant, The Roman Emperors, (London 1985)

http://www.roman-emperors.org/auggiero.htm

This scenario is certainly is of interest to me but how will the economic problems and plagues that ravaged Italy be represented? I hope either part of the empire will be playable.

[Glycerius]

Rome was still in a sense the capital culturally, the Caput Mundi and politically as it was the place where the senate met. The Senate was certainly nominal in a political sense but did contain the richest men of the era. It also revived in the fifth century when the capital shifted from Milan to Ravenna. When Alaric menaced Rome in 410 some 10,000 lbs of gold was the price of avoiding an event that signalled in a real sense the inevitability of Rome's fall. But the senators rejected the demand as servile. Rome was taken and looted. Valentinian III (425-55) resided much of the time in the capital and 444 placed provincial churches under the formal legal authority of the Pope, then Leo I. So it was a capital in a major sense if not the place where the emperor and his staff governed from.

I suggest that there should be two palaces, one in Rome and another in Ravenna. I believe that it is possible to have two palaces - if it is it would be the best way of represent of what was very much a sort of halfway situation - neither Ravenna nor Rome were fully capital yet both were in a certain sense.

[Saint Marcus]

This scenario is certainly is of interest to me but how will the economic problems and plagues that ravaged Italy be represented?

none of that in Civ3. Vulcano's perhaps?

I suggest that there should be two palaces, one in Rome and another in Ravenna. I believe that it is possible to have two palaces

Palace & Forbidden Palace.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Saint Marcus
none of that in Civ3. Vulcano's perhaps?

You know, they mention that they have added "disasters" to the game in the Conquests FAQ at civ3.com. I wonder if this only indicates vulcanoes, or are we getting some other disaster modeling as well? I know the original intent was not to add anything that was out of the player's control, but it would be cool to have some earthquakes and plagues (beyond just the current flood plain/jungle plagues) and such occuring now and then.

[Glycerius]

Stuie,

I do hope that historical scenarios can be embellished by plague and similar events like you say. Obviously anything drastic and uncontrollable might be unfair for the normal game play but I hope some sort of event script or similar will be considered, because the powerful scenario creation tools that Civ2 had, and that Civ3 is only now getting in a comparable form, really made the game for me.

I have two suggestions for Fall of Rome events:

(1) One of the problem that afficted Italy of the fifth and later centuries was malaria. Lands south of Rome became increasingly deserted - hence the malaria - and eventually became the malarial Pontine marshes. The famous Via Appia that ran approximately though this area was abandoned and track ways traced through hilltop villages that populations now gravitated towards replaced it.

A sort of event could do all of this. Grassland could change to swamp and hence cause disease as happens already. Maybe an addition to this terraforming event of some sort some increase the population loss. Although roads are easily build in the game an event that removes several squares of grassland from Rome or one or two - depending on map size - with the road and other improvements could evoke a little of the time. An event changing a tile from grassland to swamp and removing its roads is all that is required.

(2) Totila's emptying of Rome during the Gothic wars would require essentially a reduction of Rome's population from the 400,000 or so that late Roman city had to roughly 50-100,000 that the later Byzantine and papal city had. Obviously the people just moved out of the city to villages and other towns so perhaps the loss could be ameliorated with one or so population points over a number of cities - but that latter part might be too complicated.

I hope events roughly comparable to the above will be in the scenario or can be added through the scenario creation tools.

[Stuie]

Unfortunately, Glycerius, they (the developers) have definitively said that there will be no scripting available for scenarios. The only way that I know of to trigger events is to somehow build them into the tech tree.

As for your two events, the new "Marsh" terrain will cause disease in the same manner as jungle and flood plains, but again there's no way to trigger the change from grassland to marsh. You would have to just create the Pontine marshes right from the start using Marsh terrain tiles.

Your second event does not seem possible within the limitations of the editor as we know it.

[JesseSmith]

This is definitely one of my favorites. Multiplayer games quickly become very interesting when multiple players control the barbarians!!

I am looking forward to seeing the evolution of the Conquests once everyone can modify and change them to fit their designs.

With Fall of Rome, I typically find myself trying various strategies with the Celts. Driving the Roman forces from Britannia keeps me coming back for more.

[Saint Marcus]

I do hope that historical scenarios can be embellished by plague and similar events like you say.

Apparantly, Plagues are in. (read the developer's update from the Medieval scenario).

[SirOsis]

Here's the link to the Medieval conquest.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/454/454297p1.html

It will be interesting to see how the plague is implemented.