Alternate History Scenarios

[Barfus]

I remember reading a few posts here and there about people wanting to make alternate history scenarios. I myself am working on a scenario based on a fractured Roman empire struggling to maintain its existence in circa 1000 AD Europe. The story is the empire is split into 3 major camps, and they are fighting smaller Germanic states, as well as a "German Empire" (what most would think of as the Holy Roman Empire in our timeline). Anyway, its part of a book Ive been meaning to write. Well, in any case, what are some other AH scenarios brewing? This was my favorite thing to do when scenario making in civ2.

[Jon Shafer]

Unfortunately, without diplomacy options, all scenarios will be Alternate History ones.

[Random Passerby]

And that's a bad thing, uh, why? (Not that I would've minded having diplomacy options).

[Jon Shafer]

The definition of 'scenario': "An outline or model of an expected or supposed sequence of events."

Not much of an outline or expected sequence if Germany happens to ally with the USSR and Britain against France and Italy, neh?

[Random Passerby]

But without the element of unexpectedness, there is no point in such an exercise. These sorts of scenarios inherently must allow some degree of variability, and I for one say the more, the better; if you disagree then I think what you're looking for is a history book, not a computer game. Yes, I find the lack of diplomatic settings an irritating limitation, but not a crippling one--and one that may yet do some good. Whereas with proper diplomatic setups (and, heavens forbid, possibly even script events) we'd mostly get 800 scenarios each painstakingly trying to render the Napoleanic wars, WWI & II, etc. with strict historical accuracy and maybe a few fan mods, perhaps with this limitation we might see some more original scenarios and at least some more unique interpretations of the more popular wars.

No offense intended towards anyone who has been wanting to create a scenario modelling a famous historical (or completely fictional) campaign, naturally, but the problem is that there just aren't enough people interested in doing many of the vast number of other worthy and interesting scenarios; if such things are harder to accomplish well, then some authors will create them the best they can anyways, and hopefully some other ones will move on to other more unique scenarios that don't have to worry about this particular limitation.

[Jon Shafer]

I know that people want some degree of variation, but without any form of diplomacy, it's not really at all a scenario. All you can do now is mix a batch of countries up, and hope they fuction correctly. For example, what if I was to make a late 1941 Germany scenario. Germany would be at peace (and cautious) towards everyone, even though France would be gone, Germany would be at Moscow's door... and yet everyone is at peace.

If only for historical set-ups, I want diplomacy options. The scenario may follow a different course of events, but if you don't start with correct historical situations, then you're just livening up a map of that time.

[Barfus]

ok, so now that weve gotten that cleared up, is anyone planning on making any alternate history scenarios using what capabilities we DO have?