SCENARIO: Lonely World Scenario

[FrostyBoy]

The reason I made this one harder to build settlers is because I wanted to slow down the process of settling cities straight away - I am the kind of guy who likes to add realism because that's what I like in gameplay. The way it is set normaly is too unrealistic. By the year 2000BC there is already a fairly large civilization with either a strong army or economy and well on its way to knowing most of the world.


Anyway, I played the game to 50ad, and I discovered that it worked really well. You will notice that not everyone will take off straight away. If there were 16 Civs, only 6 of them would take off early in the game. The others would struggle a bit (trying to find wood and stone by using colonies - this is really the only way to do it.) Once you've got those two resources you can start producing settlers.

By the time it reached about 0AD, every civ except two had managed to pull its self out of that struggle stage and become a civilization that can defend itself. The other 2 were struggling in the desert. But I kept a close eye on them to see how they were coping, and the AI does seem to try and build colonies in far off places with very long roads back to the capital (funny really, its as if I tortured them).

Rather than everyone having a fair go STRAIGHT AWAY! you end up with a really good diverse set of Civs, ones that are strong, ones that are weak, ones that are in between; and you just don't know what's going to happen next. This really made the game very interesting, things constantly changed, rather than "Oh, they're gonna be one of the big guys at the end of the game."

And rightly so, because the romans were the big ones, and are they today? no, and that's how this game will play too.

[FrostyBoy]

btw this one has desert mountains

(sorry about the grass at the bottom of it, the base terrain of the mountains is grass so I had to merge it in (sigh))

[asleepathewheel]

sn00py:

Interesting game. I've played 1 through about 500ad. Wow. Pretty cool. It certainly makes the beginning more difficult. I was taking a bit of a whooping on Warlord, , but now am pulling even due to some warfare.

Good job! A nice and interesting change of pace.

[FrostyBoy]

yeah! cool! glad you like.

[asleepathewheel]

Comments, LW1

Was a little confused about what each building did at first. Are you going to put something in the pedia about it?

What does rice do? Luxury?

Does wheat count as a luxury? it shows up as spice on the city menu?

The cultural levels make expansion speed up-I know you did this for the 1 pt. butcher shop, but when I start getting temples, they start expanding rapidly.

Other than that, great game I do see the civs moving at different paces in this one, moreso than the usual game. I am also behind! On Warlord! ouch.

[FrostyBoy]

now you know why I made it warlord

I think rice is a luxury, can't remember, but it does give you 1 food and I think 1 commerce, also, you need it in order to build a hawker.

I wondered why I had two spices in the city screen, lol. well, I dunno why, oh well.

I wanted expansion to speed up more coz the land is so big.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Sn00py
now you know why I made it warlord

I think rice is a luxury, can't remember, but it does give you 1 food and I think 1 commerce, also, you need it in order to build a hawker.
.

Hawker, eh? Will have to see what that does.

Yes, this is pretty challenging on Warlord, would hate to see on monarch and up!.

[FrantzX]

It's there a way to crop the map or something? It's just too damn big for my computer to handle.

[FrostyBoy]

Lonely World 2 is massive, but the first Lonely World is standard map, you should play that one if your computer is crying.

[Harovan]

Very nice and realistic map, Snoopy. I played it a couple of turns (about half of the ancient age) and have a few notes about the scenario:

1. The map is ways too big. A huge map has 160x160/2 = 12800 tiles. Divided by 21 (the full area of a city), we get space for 610 cities. In fact even more, because the AIs build more dense. That is more than the game can handle (512) and will slow down the game even on good computers in the end game. Btw, it concerns also the tech rate, see the problems with it on Marla's. The lakes practically don't count, as the city radii will overlap over the water. The huge map size (good for 16 civs) was calculated to have about 2/3 water, so the land area available for the civs is only about 4000 tiles. A standard map (100x100/2 = 5000 tiles) suffices for 16 civs on a 100% land map.
2. The stone and hardwood resources are nice to have, even very, but pointless if everybody has plenty of them. I counted about 10 of both within about a 10 tile radius around my start point. The other civs had a similar excess, at least as far as I saw them in this stage of game.
3. The map is ways too rich of strategic and luxury resources. The fight for resources, one of the main aspects of the original game, is completely lost.
4. Since building a settler requires The Wheel now, the Japanese have an unfair advantage, because they are the only civ able to build settlers from the start (mind you that stone and wood aren't scarce). You should drop that prerequisite matter for settlers (as they are crucial units), because whatever you choose will favor a certain amount of civs. Better make them cost even more, like 5 or 6.

I'd like to see a few of these points addressed and am sure I would enjoy the scenario even more.

PS (edit): What about letting all land units cost 1 pop point, as additional slow-down? It would also prevent the civs from conquering the map with huge armies, because such a mobilization would cost a hell of pop points.

[FrostyBoy]

I'm over half way through the game, and everyone is slowly expanding, except for two civs, which are just going slightly faster.

Needing Wood and Stone does make it harder, because when you build a new city and it's not connected to a road, you end up having to do all this work just to get this new city ready to build its own settlers.

Because there are so many civs in the game, the land will be covered fairly. (if it even manages to reach that stage).

There are lots of resources, but because there are so many civs, it hasn't been that easy to get all the resources. Infact, so far I have only managed to secure half the luxury and half the strategic resources. I have to trade to get everyone elses. Which means you have to build huge roads to link up to other civs.

Also, near the end, oil is only found in two places. If you start where there is plenty of good land then you will probably miss out on oil, forcing you to go to war, send settlers miles and miles away from your civ, or trading for it.

btw, I've played a map this large before and it doesn't slow down much on me. (Prolly have to wait about 10-15 seconds each turn). But things are constantly happening during that turn so it's not really noticable.

I learned that it's not the amount of civs you have in the game that makes it slow, it's the amount of units the computer has to move each turn that makes it slow! When PtW is released, I'm going to make one more lonely world map, and it will have all the other civs in it aswell.

These last two lonely worlds aren't perfect, I know.. It takes a long time just to play-test it once. So I just play a bit of it and then flag the rest. It's a game that works, and that's all that mattered to me; I wasn't trying to make it perfect. But I will try a lot harder the 3rd time round. These two maps are my first ever maps and my first ever rules editing (in civ3), so I'm still in a learning curve stage