Outliving the barbarians

[snoopy369]

(The point of the above, which I apparently forgot to make, is that I suggest you strongly consider writing this as a scenario rather than as a normal game. Stick us in the iron age *for good*, since you can't upgrade your barbs enough. Give us all UUs that are appropriate to the iron age equivalents of our normal UUs, and cut the tech tree off at 1. Maybe add in a few techs from the middle ages to make some progress, but make those as part of the iron age.

Heck, make it a VP game, or a King game. Have it be "Your king must survive the Barbarian Hordes", or even "Lose one city to the Barbarian Hordes and you're toast!" (Elim, i think barbs can take cities in elim, not sure tho). If you want it to be so heavily focussed on barb warfare in the early ages, then fix it so.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Rommel2D
Snoopy, have you ever noticed there's an 'edit' option at the top of your posts?

(yeah, I know you're in enough games you'll beat me to emperor anyway ;-)

lol yes Actually I tend to write too long of posts if I try to make everything into one post, so I try to break it up a little bit. I do use edit often though

I was quite amazed though that Gpa Troll mentioned he was in nearly as many games as me, ones that he posts every turn and sometimes plays 3-5 turns a day for many of them - and still only has a k or 2 more posts than me, in 3 more years ...

edit: Well, ok, 4k more posts. But still. 5800 vs 1900 in 3 years versus 8 months.

[Paddy]

ahh Mr S. Cat

that old Troll has many strange things about himself

[Modo44]

Snoopy, the general idea is to make barbs strong early on. An they will be, with this setup, believe me. But it's still supposed to become a normal game later on.

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by snoopy369
True, I have to build an extra spearman compared to the hoplites; but spearmen are cheaper anyways ... and 3 or 4 keshiks will kill a hoplite just as dead as a spearman.

Only if it is a stack of Keshiks attacking all at once. If they come in waves, or if the Hoplites are stacked, Hoplites have a significant advantage...

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Rommel2D

Originally posted by snoopy369
True, I have to build an extra spearman compared to the hoplites; but spearmen are cheaper anyways ... and 3 or 4 keshiks will kill a hoplite just as dead as a spearman.

Only if it is a stack of Keshiks attacking all at once. If they come in waves, or if the Hoplites are stacked, Hoplites have a significant advantage...

My point exactly. Rommel, thanks for stating it so clearly. Snoopy, I've been there, I have seen how it works against those strong barbs.

[Modo44]

Ok, the setup is chosen, the players here. I'm sending the info to Sir Ralph, so he can set us up.

What I still need are Aqualung's playing times to work out a schedule.

I'm leaving today, so the game will remain semi-open until Wednesday morning. Hopefully the scenario file will be ready by then and we can start playing.

[Harovan]

A few remarks:

1) What about additionally forbidding settling on tundra and jungle, and to forbid to clean jungle? I will make sure nobody has jungle in his immediate neighborhood, so tile improvement will be a non-issue. And as soon as you spot jungle, you know, here your world ends, there be dragons. Barbarians are an extra pain to fight in jungle due to the higher defense bonus. And it would add some diversity to the map and add some difficulties with moving wheeled units.

2) I would like to know exactly if there are 7 or 8 players. To leave one spot unsettled would give its neighbors an unfair advantage.

3) I will keep the admin password and send a savegame to the first player (if it's Paddy, I have his email). This way everyone can set his own password.

[Modo44]

I think it's ok to forbid settling in jungle and tundra. But don't forbid clearing jungle, just make it more expensive (times 3 or 4). This way it would still be very difficult to settle there until your empire has grown to support enough workers.

We'll close the game now, to make it 7 players. The playing order still needs to be figured out, though. I'll update the first post and then I'm gone until Wednesday.

[punkbass2000]

If it's not too late, as an addition or alternative we could simply move clearing wetlands back in the tech tree as well.

[Modo44]

Sounds good to me. Around Invention would probably be ok.

Now I really should get going.

Bye 'til Wednesday.

[punkbass2000]

If it's going to be around invention it may as well be engineering.

Oh, and Sir Ralph, put Modo last in the rotation .

[Aqualung71]

My best times for playing are between GMT10 - GMT16.....if Paddy and I are the only players in the Land of Oz (or similar longitudes), it's probably best to put me immediately after Paddy, since he's 3 hours ahead of me.

[Harovan]

I made a map with 8 spots. If until Wednesday no other player shows up, I'd have to replace one of them with a huge desert, water or jungle.

I replaced most of the hills in the deserts with either desert or mountains, not to undermine the no settle rule. The map is huge, but the OCN and tech rate is like in a standard map. Everything you build more, will be hopelessly corrupt. Don't count on as many cities as a huge map usually gives. I moved clearing wetlands to Invention, but didn't change the number of turns needed. Changes in units have been made.

I made sure you have some basic resources within reasonable distance. I didn't care about industrial or later resources, I have seen some of them, but didn't count the deposits. After all you must be punished for playing Conquests. Nobody has a stellar start. Nobody has a very poor start either. But of course not all starts are equal.

I will watch this thread to see the starting gun.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
After all you must be punished for playing Conquests.