a very byzantine change of plans

[Hendrik the Great]

I'm Mathias not Stefan. He's the one who makes all those Scn about acient Persia, etc.

I faced the same problem you do. How to prevent certain civs to never go to war with each other. Disallowing negotiations. It also sloved the problem of other Civs gaining specific techs not meant for them to be ever reached. It made making the tech tree a bit easier because I didnt have to set everything to no, no prereqs.

Ofc this means if you declare war using events you cannot ever have the war stop. Sometimes one has to weigh whats more important, a playable Scn or accuracy.

Practically I have all cities being able to be conquered. Though some of very strong, non-moveable defensiv units in them to delay this as long as possible. I placed invisible, move 0 air-units with a high defense in eastern Turkey to block certain terrains to be crossed and to protect areas from direct attack/invasion. I think I left a small passage way open....not sure.

Another though. If you use multiple event files you can disallow civs from talking in one time period and allow it in another. I used that approach in my 3rd and last Scn about the Vikings to simulate the division of the Frankish Empire into a western and eastern part. First they are allied, attitude set to 0 and are disallowed from talking. Effectivly making them one nation made form 2 parts, having also the same starting tech tree and units, etc...

By a change events file later on they are allowed to talk and are given new base techs to allow for seperate development.

Just another idea.

When I made Daroe the disallow negotiations for all thing used to be bugged. It worked somehow though....

Did you take a look at the events file of Daroae? I also used short text messages to announce certain historical events of some overall importance to add something to the game atmosphere.

[Varwnos]

ty, Mathias!

btw i am facing a weird bug, i load the scen and the events dissappear! anyone know what might be cuasing this?

[Hendrik the Great]

I guess you made the events in a txt file and then tried loading them into ther events editor and tried changing them there again. is it that?

If you do that sometime it messes everything up. Most of the events i made without the editor to avoid it, only uised to ti check if the file is not getting too big which it normally did.

Otherwise, my memory is a bit rusty maybe someone else knows about it better.

[Arthedain]

you should draw the sav-file onto the delevent.exe file..
(just put the file into your scenario folder, draw the savfile over it, and let it go. now the events stored in the sav-file will be deleted, and when you reload the scenario, it will load the events again)

[Varwnos]

it didnt work.. i think that a reasonable guess would be that the fact that some of the names (units or nations) in the events are different than the ones in the game is what causes them not to function, but the very first event is about the ottoman empire and it used to work perfectly ok before. (the nation and city name is ok in that event). i dont know, i am having second thoughts about the map as well. but anyway the scenario still is far from finished etc

[Varwnos]

a lot of changes

-changed the map (yes, that means that the scenario is even further away from being finished)

-bulgarians are now a nation

-no turkey

-less latin kingdoms (i am trying to avoid there being only veneto and one latin kingdom for all though)

-possible new nation "morean greeks"

i dont yet know what this will be about. i am trying not to make another DAROE since that scenario is a classic.
i am thinking of focusing on the despotate of Epiros, and this map enables me to. this possibly means that there will be no nicaean greeks though (anatolia in that case will just be cutt off with impassable units)

in that case the nations will be:
-serbia
-bulgaria
-despotate of epiros- empire of thessalonike
-morea (well actually just most of south morea)
-venice
-(king Henry's) latin empire of Constantinople (everything latin in Macedonia and Thrace)
-dutchy of Athens & Kingdom of Korinthos & principality of Achaia (basically everything in the south of mainland Greece)

the thing is that Morea isnt very promissing as a computer player, i think that it pretty much joined the Nicaens historically. But having Nicaea in this map would be very boring (no turks) and also would ruin the epirotan greek conquest up to the outskirts of Constantinople.

I also thought of joining Morea with Smyrne, since there was an independent greek kingdom there for a while post 1204, but that would mean having asia minor in the game, and i think that this creates more problems than those it solves (stronger Morea).

i decided not to go with the other possibility, which was to depict everything from Basil II -1260. that would be very hard to depict!

Also the third plan, to depict just the byzantine-bulgarian war, also was dropped, since there would be just two sides.

so it looks like asia minor will be cut off from land and see by impassable (barbarian air) units. this enables me to make some nations invulnerable as well (have their units appear after all of the playable map territory they had has been devoured by other powers).

I will try to make at least two nations fun to play, that is epirotans and morea.

any comments?

ps: i know that Nicaea is a more reasonable player option than Morea, after all Morea can be depicted as a nicaean vassal etc. but then the scen would just be a DAROE antagonist... Besides in this map it is impossible to hold Nicaea from Constantinople, unless i just make ludicrous guarding units that are undead unless someone conquers Constantinople from the european side heh. Well even if i do that then the scen would have very mixed aspects, since Nicaea isnt supposed to conquer anything in europe before the empire of Thessalonike collapses. Mathias, any ideas?

[Hendrik the Great]

Uhmm...

What is the timeframe of the scn again? 14:53 until 1461? Longer? Maybe include Asia Minor and make it possible yet hard for the Moraens to turn around the events that happened together with Epiros. But as I already said I am not familiar with what happened after 14:53.

Nah, forget what I wrotr about. Don't have any good ideas atm.

If you want Morae to be a AI then support it via events like cost free, additional units ever so often turns or tech...

[Varwnos]

Well i am mostly trying to decpit the nightmareish collapse of the empire of Thessalonike. This part of byzantine history isnt that well known i think. The empire of Thessalonike at one time controlled all of the central balcans + albania + northern greece +almost all of thrace, so it almost made it to become a second byzantine empire. It ultimately was utterly destroyed in a bulgarian ambush though. I will probably have Nicaea i guess, and Morea will be part of Nicaea, with one or two events informing of this. Well the map is mostly a 150% version of the same part of the map used in "fading lights", with some minor corrections (Morea + the chalkidike peninsula -the peninsula to the south of Thessalonike).

i think that i was a bit too worried about trying not to make it Daroe-like, since there are a few key differences:

-bulgarians as a nation
-2 latin kingdoms
-no ottomans

however this starts at roughly the same time as Daroe (1211, when bulgaria became an empire again) and ends predictably in 1453 (since there are no ottomans it doesnt matter). The large map and mountanous terrain helps with depicting the empire of thessalonike- empire of bulgaria conflict. I noticed that in Daroe the serbs declared war on Epiros, is that historical? if so do you have any info to share about this? i gathered some details about the thessalonike-bulgaria war myself also there are some nice bits about the latin empire of Constantinople, one of its emperors for example tried to reach it by sea (succession) but was captured by Epiros, so never made it to his empire. i am thinking of using a similar event to the "sicilian vespers" one in fading lights

thank you for your support

[Varwnos]

Ok, i chose new cities (from a scenario about Granada!) which i think look very cool

also i decided to make "via egnatia" roads (railroad) which is the white road you see in the pic. i wanted to ask how i can set it so that in the railroad the units have 50% of the regular moving cost (ie a unit with mf of 1 can move 6 times in railroads)
the via egnatia was a road built by the romans, it connected Dyrrachion to Thessalonike, and Thessalonike to Hadrianople and Constantinople. it is still in use today (although not in its ancient form)

[Varwnos]

The finished map!

nicaea ultimately just had to be in the game...

the blue cities are the southern latin conquest, but i also gave them some northern cities.

[Arthedain]

Originally posted by varwnos
also i decided to make "via egnatia" roads (railroad) which is the white road you see in the pic. i wanted to ask how i can set it so that in the railroad the units have 50% of the regular moving cost (ie a unit with mf of 1 can move 6 times in railroads)

Sorry, I'm afraid you can't do that.. Too bad really.

[Hendrik the Great]

In all the turmoil in 1282 the Serbs begin the conquest of Byzantine Macedonia, taking Skoplje. 1296, Durazzo lost to the Serbs; Byzantine comes to aid of Genoa vs. Venice.

1334. Serbs under Stefan Duschan invade Macedonia.
46, he proclaims himself Emperor after taking Albania and Macedonia.
48, Serbs conquer northern Greece, Epiros and Thessaly.
1355, Serbia disintegrates without much outside interference after the death of Stefan Duschan.

I have it from the Man-at-Arms Series of OSPREY Military part 287 with color illustrations of common troops of the region from 1118 to 1461 AD. Mostly depicting forces under the command of various Byzantine Empires.

I also used the "Medieval European Armies" part 50, "Armies of the Ottoman Turks 1300 - 1774" part 140, "Hungary and the Fall of Eastern Europe 1000 - 1568" part 195 and "The Venetian Empire 1200 - 1670" part 210.

These all show not just color illustrations of the most common troops the time and region but also provide quite a detailed view on the history, diplomacy and military command structure at the time, citing important battles and turning point with some background knowledge without going into too deep detail. The timelines provides are great for events btw...they also show various maps of the region at different times. Only draw-back, no one seems to be able to agree on the correct spelling of names of cities, persons or countries, sometimes giving the same "Empire" 3 different names.

Especially the series about Byzantine, Ottomans and Venice show a great number of examples for fortifications, too.

[Varwnos]

To Arthedain: Too bad about the railroad thing... i guess that it wont look very cool if i just have a railroad road every two regular roads, although i might keep the same colour and just use the effect. well it would be a little understood detail this way however due to the lack of difference in colour :|

To Mathias: Heh, the part about serbia disintegrading "without much outside interference" was just hillarius! (i am not saying that it didnt happen, just that it sounds very funny!)

well i will have the dusan expansion to the south, just wanted to check that i dont have to make serbian aggression on epiros early on (by 1284 there was no despotate of epiros anyway)

here is a pic of the despotate and surrounding cities

a pro of this map is that certainly this will be the byz scenario with the most european cities ever

[Varwnos]

which one of the two st. Demetrios collections do you think looks cooler for the combat sprite? (well originally i thought of making his wings bleed, but i decided that this might be a bit too gruesome heh) the unit was edited from the unit found in fading lights btw

hm i could always use more saints and also a unit of jesus on the cross (i saw it somewhere in these forums) as a kind of flashback effect. but i think that it might be a bit too sad.

[Varwnos]

a new unit! No, it isnt a supernatural unit, just some zealot defence of Thessalonike. this isnt historical, apart from the fact that st. demetrios is the patron saint of the city. After you conquer the city as the epirotans you just get this unit in the nearby fortress. possibly it will be virtually impossible to destroy, thus preventing any unhistorical collapse of the empire before it even comes to face the bulgarians. The shield is the "christogram" (a greek R -"P"- infront of an X.
i am thinking of two approaches, either make just one unit, or a number of them which shall fill Thessalonike. there wont be a tech for them though since they are city-specific.