Succession Game X Settings

[demon59]

Unless the underlying formulas have changed since the original AoM release, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the 5% additions. Approaching this mod with the "Conquer the World" mentality of a regular CTP2 game, will usually result in getting your butt served to you on a platter.
Immediately wiping out the nearest AI civ will often make it extremely difficult to broker peace treaties with other AI neighbors. Constant warfare is the quickest way to lose this game, especially when your aggression numbers get high enough for every AI to start sending stacks your way...just as Attila knocks on your door.
Even the 5% production bonus seemed to give me an edge on being first to build some of the early Wonders that could really boost early civ growth or raise happiness levels. 5% science along with advances from goods and the occasional lucky "goody hut" also seemed to help offset the AI's built in advantages, even early in the game.
As you pointed out, when the cities become larger, 5% starts to add up. You might want to look at the civs with +5% production and +2 happiness, or the ones with +5% production and +1 HP.
Seems a safer bet than putting all our eggs in one basket, so to speak.

[Maquiladora]

Good points demon. Then if we go for a compromise like you say of +1HP and a +% bonus civ, we have the choice of:

ROMAN ; Effect Increase Hit Points 1, Effect Increase Production 5
BABYLONIAN; Effect Increase Science 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1

NATIVE_AMERICAN; Effect Increase Commerce 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1
YAMATO; Effect Increase Hit Points 1, Effect Increase Production 5
SUMERIAN; Effect Increase Commerce 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1

ARABIAN; Effect Increase Hit Points 1, Effect Increase Commerce 5
ZULU ; Effect Increase Hit Points 1, Effect Increase Production 5
ASSYRIAN; Effect Increase Hit Points 1, Effect Increase Production 5

TURKISH, Effect Increase Production 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1
BYZANTINE; Effect Increase Science 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1
INCAN; Effect Increase Production 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1
MAYAN; Effect Increase Production 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1

MACEDONIAN; Effect Increase Production 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1
ETRUSCAN; Effect Increase Production 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1

SCOTTISH; Effect Increase Production 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1

JAPANESE; Effect Increase Hit Points 1, Effect Increase Production 5
RUSSIAN; Effect Increase Production 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1

==========================

If we say that the +1HP represents a bonus on the conquest side of the game (obviously), then the most obvious choice for a diplomatic/peaceful side of play would be extra commerce, to pay for gifts, bribes, parties etc. Leaving us with 3 choices:

NATIVE_AMERICAN; Effect Increase Commerce 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1
SUMERIAN; Effect Increase Commerce 5, Effect Increase Hit Points 1
ARABIAN; Effect Increase Hit Points 1, Effect Increase Commerce 5

Middle Age Governments

NAs: Theocratic Monarchy; Happy, with cheap units eagle Archer and eagle Warrior.

Sumerians: Caliphate; strong in science, special units, Janissary and Mameluke, allows a later government of Sultanate with special unit, Saphia, larger empire but less science.

Arabians: same as Sumerians.

==========================

The NA's would give us more flexibility (more happiness) in the middle ages, which goes with our original choice of flexible starting traits nicely IMO.

Caliphate has an advantage in science, but I would say we already cover this with our commerce bonus, unless we specifically aimed for a scientific victory after the middle ages.

At least thats one take on things, all the planning could go out of the window in the first 50 turns anyway

[demon59]

The NA's sound like they might be the right choice. What does everyone else think about it?
One thing I do remember about AoM was that starting position was critical. Not enough of the right strategic goods (e.g. iron/copper ore, horses/camels, other "advances" goods, or food/medicinal goods to counteract famines/plagues, or luxury goods to give happiness bonus) could doom you from the start. I actually spent an entire evening launching 25 or 30 games, saving them before moving, then opening cheat mode to view the map and make sure I had enough of the proper goods near my starting position to make the game playable. Out of all the games I started I ended up with 5 or 6 I didn't delete. Then I waited a few days so I couldn't remember any specific details of any of the maps.
That way I didn't waste 150 or 200 turns, just to find I was half a world away from goods that were crucial for survival of my civ.
We might actually want to ask someone familiar with the mod (but not wanting to play in this game) to find us a decent "start-up", in this way.
Man, I really don't mean to make this mod sound like an exercise in frustration! It is difficult, but once you start learning the strategies that work, it becomes very satisfying to play...even if you don't win, but only manage to survive a few centuries longer than your last game!

[Tellius]

Hi,

After having played AOM for a pretty long time now (I usually play an hour or two a day, this game is both relaxing after a busy day due to the TBS aspect, and exciting) I think I can say that commerce is important, but not as important as either PW (and thus production) and happiness.

I would therefore opt either for a combination of
* extra production and +2 happiness (more happiness also means that your cities are more effective in exploiting the surrounding tiles, and thus this is also a gain in production, food and commerce, and we will all be very very happy having happy citizens in the dark ages, because believe me they will be dark, utterly so)
* extra production and +1 HP

I think of the two, the first one is the most powerfull one, because, as I already stated, happiness has an effect on tile exploitation on top of the regular happiness issues we are going to be faced with. The extra HP on the other hand, is also a safe bet and very usefull early in the game, but I stand by my statement that in the long run, the first option is the one to go for.

Now, even when we decide on a specific combination of traits, we still have to choose a civ based on the religion/government type in the middle ages, but I wouldn't bother too much with this. It's my experience that whatever goals you set yourself in the beginning of the game, by turn 350 or so your situation can direct you towards something else completely. Luckily we won't play with barbarians set to marauders, would we be playing with this setting, I would definitely suggest the Theocracy due to their strong units, but with the settings as they are now, any gov will do, there's no way to predict what situation we are going to be in by the middle ages. So I think it's best to focus on the traits alone.

T.

[Tellius]

Tileset

Hi,

Forgot to mention, it's best that everyone uses the same tileset. Say, for instance, player 1 starts the game with E's tileset and then passes on the game to player 2 with Stan's set, chances are he'll see a lot of black tiles. That's because E's set has more variations on several terrain types, if the game picks a certain variation that is not available in another tileset, player 2 will get black tiles on those spots.

I'm not sure if it's to anyone's liking, but Walter and I made a set based heavily on E's. The screenshot shows just some of the tile improvements I made, and by now I added the most beautifull looking grass imaginable (not visible on this particular screenshot), it even smells like grass. Walter added nice looking hills to replace the bumpy look of the old ones. I also replaced the sand dunes with the ones from an older set of Stan, so they don't have such square edges and corners (as you can see now on the screenshot - this is of course an older screenshot). I also made some nice looking towns and settlements, and better looking medieval suburbs

Another option is to just use Stan's latest tileset, available from his AOM website. Works just fine.

Greetz

T.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by demon59
I actually spent an entire evening launching 25 or 30 games, saving them before moving, then opening cheat mode to view the map and make sure I had enough of the proper goods near my starting position to make the game playable. Out of all the games I started I ended up with 5 or 6 I didn't delete. Then I waited a few days so I couldn't remember any specific details of any of the maps.
That way I didn't waste 150 or 200 turns, just to find I was half a world away from goods that were crucial for survival of my civ.
We might actually want to ask someone familiar with the mod (but not wanting to play in this game) to find us a decent "start-up", in this way.

You can get unlucky with goods, but you can get extremely lucky with ruins around your start, we can't ask someone to check all the ruins beforehand to make sure they're not full of settlers and advances, so I say let's just throw ourselves into it. Luck has a way of balancing out anyway.

I would therefore opt either for a combination of
* extra production and +2 happiness (more happiness also means that your cities are more effective in exploiting the surrounding tiles, and thus this is also a gain in production, food and commerce, and we will all be very very happy having happy citizens in the dark ages, because believe me they will be dark, utterly so)
* extra production and +1 HP

I think of the two, the first one is the most powerfull one, because, as I already stated, happiness has an effect on tile exploitation on top of the regular happiness issues we are going to be faced with. The extra HP on the other hand, is also a safe bet and very usefull early in the game, but I stand by my statement that in the long run, the first option is the one to go for.

The second is too military focused and gives us little else to work with.

The first I'm happy to try though, the extra happiness will give us some flexibility on the empire sliders, the production I don't care for so much as I think gold (commerce) is more important as it can be used on more things (festivities, diplomacy, upgrades, rush buying), but production can still be useful too, for slightly quicker build times and extra PW.

RE: the tileset, where can I download the one you're showing Tellius? I'm happy to use it if everyone else is.

[demon59]

Tellius,

I've only just started playing AoMIV. In the earlier versions, as the cities grew, you would get random "urban sprawl" around the central city tile. This would wipe out any tile improvements and pretty much make the tile null (no food, commerce, or production). I always hated that, and would turn it off in my games. Did Stan ever modify the way the sprawl worked in the later versions? If not, what are everyone's feelings on whether to keep the "urban sprawl" or turn it off?

As for tilesets, I'm happy with whatever the group decides to go with.
Just tell me where to download it from.

[Maquiladora]

This is all I could find in the readme and strategy guide for CityX:

City expansion tiles no longer become dead. As part of tidying up this function, Players will notice turns execute a little more quickly, especially at the start of a game.

* City expansion tiles should not appear on visible wonders.
* Changed to max of 4 suburbs per city.

[Ekmek]

I want to see Tellius' and Walter's tileset in action. Please post and lets go with that.

[Tellius]

Hi,

Regarding the suburbs, they do NOT nullify a tile's values, but they do alter it. I'll have a look in my current game, but in any case, commerce increases (which is logical, since you get more people trading stuff in inhabited areas), but food goes down. I'm not sure about production, I'll have a look in my game later.

The game is carefull about where to place a suburb, you can always have a look in the slic file. Should a suburb be placed on a good (and this only happens rarely), then the good is never lost completely. You can always raze the suburb, and then raze the ruins. This happens only occasionally, when the game can't find any other place around the city to place the suburb. I'm less sure about tile imps, but it seems to be that the game also tries to avoid placing on top of those

Regarding the 'value' of commerce vs production, I agree you can use gold for a broad variety of things, all important, and in CtP2 plain vanilla or even some mods, I would agree that commerce beats production, just not in AOM. Wait until you are being attacked by all sides, you'll be begging for PW, you can have lots of 12 stacks, but if they are damaged, they're no use to you at all, and since this is a regular occurance in the game, I found PW to be the most important commodity in the game.

I'll tinker a bit with the tileset to make sure it's 100% to my whishes, and upload the package to Apolyton. Included will be some alternative pcitures you can import in the file using TileEdit, such as an alternative latifundia should you not like the one provided (the difference is not that big, but you never know). an alternative outpost etc.
Also, Walter and I used Civ3 mountains, but they are brown and might not be to everyone's liking. I'll try to bring back E's mountains, and maybe I can upload two versions of the tileset, one with brown mountains, one with greyish ones.
You guys are gonna LOVE the grass, I stole it from CtP1 (where it originally was supposed to be a swamp), really, if a cow could look into my window, she would want to play CtP2.

Is Saturday evening okay? That is Saturday evening Belgian time, it'll be Saturday afternoon in the States, so maybe we can then start at the agreed upon date and time. This is my first upload at Apolyton, so I'm hoping things will be pretty staightforward.
Also I have to alter a few files back to their default. I changed the effects of Pyramids (pretty uninteresting originally with their 30 gold bonus, so I made this wonder give a free shrine in every city) and Theme Organisation (which originally gave a happiness boost I think, but since it was historically an arme reform, Walter and I gave it an extra HP). Should be done in a few minutes or so.

So basicly, I hope we can start Saturday, or this weekend at least.

Greetz

T.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Tellius

Is Saturday evening okay? That is Saturday evening Belgian time, it'll be Saturday afternoon in the States, so maybe we can then start at the agreed upon date and time. This is my first upload at Apolyton, so I'm hoping things will be pretty staightforward.

I'm hoping to start the game thread with my first turn included Saturday sometime yeah, or as soon as I have your new tile file.

[demon59]

Gah! I'm sorry folks, but RL has thrown a monkey wrench into the works, as far as me playing in this game. I will try to follow the game thread, though and if y'all enjoy it enough to try another, hopefully I will be able to join you next time.

[Tellius]

Fileset Ready for download

Hi,

You can download the tileset here (if you want to alter the set, you also need the second zip file, where the 555.til file is located)

http://apolyton.net/upload/view/63108_tiles.zip

http://apolyton.net/upload/view/63108_gtset555.zip

The first file contains the 565.til file (this is the one used ingame, so if you only want to be able to play with this file, this is the link to follow). There are also some alternative pictures included for several tile imps should you be interested.

The second link is for the 555.til file - this you will need if you want to alter the tilefile, possibly with the alternative pics in the first zip file.

The upload service couldn't process a zip file with all stuff in one file (of some 4 Mb's), that's why I cut them in two.

This is what is included

* E's tileset is the basis
* new grass from CtP1
* new sanddunes
* new hills (thanks to Walter)
* a whole range of new tileimps
* a selection of the best looking visible wonders.

Things aren't perfect yet, the green of certain forest and beach tiles for instance, doesn't match up nicely yet with the new grass, but that'll be fixed (and only then will I try to upload the tileset to the Apolyton File Directory).

The AOM_tileimp.txt of my AOMIV game has no 'in progress' pictures (when a certain tileimp is being made, the game normally displays the different steps involved, I also included new pictures for these in progress eyecandy, but, as I said, in my case I had to alter the numbers of 'CunstructionTiles' in AOM_tileimps.txt). I'm not sure this is the case for everyone, but in any case, it doesn't affect gameplay, you're just deprived of some nice-looking work-in-progress pics. You can always alter by typing in the correct tile ID numbers under ConstructionTiles.

Have Fun!

Greetz

T.

By the way, this tileset goes by the name of The Krypteia Set , named after the squadrons of young Spartan adults, who would patrol their home country (and the territory of the annexed city state of Messina) to hunt for nonsuspecting Helotes (slaves, inhabitants of the former city state of Messina). Well, the thing had to have a name.

[Tellius]

Hi,

Maquiladora, have you started the game yet? What civ did you decide upon? I'm very curious the hear, this is my first succession game experience, looking forward to it (although also dreading it, I hope I won't destroy carefully constructed tactics by a stupid move). If you haven't started yet, what do you think (withing the decided upon treats of happiness and production bonus) of the Celts (monarchy), the Irish (Theocracy) or the Nubians (Theocratic Monarchy)?

As for the tileset (sorry, Walter and I put a lot of work in it, so I'm pretty excited that it is being used), this is what I'd like in the 'final' set (not to be used in this game though)

* I'd like to change the current jungle with the ones from CtP1 (since those are more immediately recognisable as such)
* I'd like to go back to the swamps from the original game (this has always been the way I envisioned how a swamp would look when you view it from a plane high above the earth)
* beaches with more sand (now, you often see grass right till the edge of the water)
* visible wonders for the religious wonders (I already have a typical moslim building, a big golden cross - although I might still use the Brazilian Jesus of Rio - and a Golden Buddha, I'm still ooking for a decent hindu temple or statue and something to represent the orthodox church - maybe a typical koptic or greec church.

But I'm wondering WAY off topic here, let the gaming begin!

By the way, regarding suburbs. They destroy any food values of a tile, but both commerce and production go up by 10, so it's a nice trade off (if you have enough remaining food supplying tiles in the surrounding terrain of course).

Greetz

T.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Tellius

Maquiladora, have you started the game yet?

Sorry guys, my ISP's DNS servers were down since Friday night only just come back on now in fact.

I'll make a more detailed reply in a little while, and start the game today.