Fall of Rome

[joncnunn]

I'm curious if anyone has tried moding this to make West Rome playable by a Human and then trying to prevent Rome from falling on the Sid difficulty level long enough to score a VP win?

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Ed Beach (Gobi Bear), the designer of that conquest, has made a Rome version of this himself. We played it during the RBCiv SG series. Be aware, it is brutal - some of the best Civ players around like Charis and Arathorn had a difficult time already at Demigod!

Layout:
Imperialism changed to low WW, 1 MP.
All Barbarian tribes except France and Visigoths are in locked Alliances against the Romes - this also leads to max WW in both Romes.
Colonies in desert allowed.

During playing, it turned out that 3 changes are required:
*East Rome should get a couple more Harbors in Asia minor
*West Rome should have one Legion less in Britain
*The Ostrogoths should be in a locked alliance with the Huns.

The revised version was never released, so you have to apply the changes yourself.

Eastern Rome SG
Western Rome SG

[Dr. A. Cula]

Here's an exploit of sorts: in this scenario, it doesn't matter if you lose 8 cities or lose the same city 8 times, you still lose. There is this one city in Central Europe (I forget it's name) that both Romes will absolutely insist on having (don't know why, it doesn't even have a VP location). I (playing as the Vandals) took it and lost it back to Western Rome about 3 times. That, plus 3 other Western Roman cities that I took, plus one that the Franks managed to grab before losing 8 cities themselves, counted as 8 Western Roman cities lost. Then, Eastern Rome showed up and grabbed the same city from me once more, and then I took, lost and took back another Eastern Roman city and I after I took the rest of the Balcans, it was game over for Eastern Rome as well. At the end of the game, the score page said I had lost 6 cities (the Huns had finished off the Persians and turned against me).
Some might this is an exploit, as it is relatively easy for a human player to simulate a defenceless city.

I agree that taking out both Roman empires can be the key to winning this. In the above game, when Western Rome fel, they were about 4000 VPs away from victory. From what I had seen on the status screen, they would have done that in about 4 turns. Eastern Rome fell much later, when they were only a few hundred VPs away from victory. I had about half of that at that point.

[joncnunn]

I don't consider this changing the same city back and forth to be an exploit simply because it's counting against all sides losing it. (If you lost two more cities, you'd be eliminated, be it that two different cities or that same one two more times.)

I'd strongly sugest razing cities to the ground instead of capturing in this conquest. After all, we ARE playing the BARBARIANS!

[Dis]

agreed. I always raze in this scenario

[Proserpine]

Somehow I have so far found this easy as Sassania, very hard as any other Civ. It's probably my playstyle. In my last run (monarch), I kept peace with Byz, until I have a shedload of Hy Cav. then just went to it. Ended up at Turn 130 with just 2 Civs standing, Sass & Celts. Took out Byz., Huns, Visigoths, Vandals & Franks myself. Missed out on the 35,000 limit by about 800 points, but would have passed it easily if I'd realised the Ostro were 7 cities down (Vandals popped it before I could get the units in place).

[chuckdelicious]

When I played through the conquests, I went random (on demi). Of course, I got the Celts. Razing cities wasn't an option until I had conquered a portion of Europe, as the spawn location of the Celts is really really bad. Shuttling troops from Ireland to England to Europe was a chore. Then I almost lost the scenario to the Sassys from points. I had about 15 turns to send all of my troops across the entire map to wipe out their civ. Luckily, the AI is stupid and I had about 100 heavy cavalry. Victory by conquest!