Whats being planned?

heardie · February 24, 2001, 20:11

What mods/scenarios are currently being made. Heres what I know of:
1. Med-Mod
2. New Alelx scenario
3. Cradle of Civs mod
4. New Diplomod
5. My Robin Hood scenario

Any others?

Hannibal Ad Portas · February 24, 2001, 21:24

I have a fully playable ancient Scn/mod that starts in 250BC and allows
you to play as Dacia,Rome,Carthage,Rome,Seleucid, Pontic, Germanic and
Ptolemaic Egypt nations that all have 4+ starting provinces of their
core empire,the remainder of the map is populated by barbarian
provinces(ie Latium/Etruria/Campania/Samnium for Roman Italy) so that
its not a game of colinization but as much of a wargame as i have been
able to make it.Each nation has its own military units peculiar to it
as well as generic types available to most, by using personalitys and
tech tree combined with government type the ai will build those units
that were historically available to it, the map contains navigable
major river, highland and lowland hills each with their own values, the
nice villages from the samurai scn that are now called Allied Tribe
and provide better resources than any other terrain type,many changes
to buildings abilitys,tech tree stays prety intact but some are renamed
to stay in period but most give different bonuses,ie city wall +1
happy +100% defensive increase, this will be available as soon as i
find a site to post it on, its all complete except for great libary
some is put some isnt but i changed my mind about what info to put
in it and havent finished it yet but their are 2 readmes that have
most of the info you would want.This was inspired by harlans alex
scn which i used as a starting point for all my changes.Oh its 5.5
when zipped.If you want more info drop me a line...

Nick Spencer AKA Hannibal Ad Portas
spennick@aol.com

Savant · February 24, 2001, 22:39

Your ancient scenario sounds great! With customized units no less! These are the kinds of scenarios that kept interest in CIV 2 for so long. I look forward to playing it.

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'Blood will run'

Immortal Wombat · February 25, 2001, 16:18

WOW, that sounds great. Send it to OmniGod at the ctp2 files database, it sounds like its worth playing. I was considering doing a Punic wars scenario, with Hannibals elephants etc. Might not bother..

Bluevoss · February 25, 2001, 19:59

Immortal,

That would be tough - I don't think the AI is up to Hannibal's long 20 year campaign of burning, city taking, and roman thumping. Conversly, I can't imagine the computer coming up with Scipio's stratagy of attacking Hannibal where he wasn't (i.e. Spain and Carthage).

Besides which, the Elepants were a bit of a dud. After working so hard to get them over the Alps, 36 of the 37 died in the first battle with the Romans. About all Elephants are good for is scaring the Gauls (and horses).

Still, it would be great if someone could built the three Punic Wars into three scenearios. I'd be the first to download it.

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Bluevoss-

Hannibal Ad Portas · February 26, 2001, 08:28

Ok, ill fall for it,
what ideas do you have as regards a Punic wars scn,are you willing to
collaborate on a project,as you may guess its a soft sport with me! But
to do it right will require that we want the same thing from the scn or w
we be going of in differnt directions.Had a prob sending the mod,see
below,

Markos has been looking into the problem for a month and has yet to get back
to me yet. This will be fine, all I need is where to get your file. Since
you said it's 5.6 megs big I hope you can post it somewhere and I can ddl it
since my email is limited. If not I can look for another email site. Thanks

Rich
----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 4:51 AM

Immortal Wombat · February 26, 2001, 15:12

quote:

Originally posted by Hannibal Ad Portas on 02-26-2001 07:28 AM
Ok, ill fall for it,
what ideas do you have as regards a Punic wars scn,are you willing to
collaborate on a project,as you may guess its a soft sport with me! But
to do it right will require that we want the same thing from the scn or w
we be going of in differnt directions.

I only really just started to think about what to do with regards to Hannibal and co. I made a scenario along the same lines for Age of Kings, but I really just wanted to use Harlan's elephant sprite to good use, and make a Samurai-type scenario in which you get to kick Roman butt around Northern Italy

I am actually not too sure about the historical background, only that 37 elephants were taken over the Alps, and the Carthaginian force won at Cannae, a river somewhere

and a lake further south somewhere

. However, I would be willing to jointly make a scenario based on the Punic wars and make it maybe 1/4-decent

I'm not sure, but hexagonia uses www.mydocsonline.com and that allows 14 megs to registered users, perhaps you could put the mod there?
Also, could you send me the readme please? and one other thing that bugs me - how do you use the Villages from the Samurai scenario ???

Happy modding

Immortal Wombat
(benny_weaver@hotmail.com)

Hannibal Ad Portas · February 26, 2001, 16:16

All mods evolve and heres an area id like to explore, currently games
in my mod run like this.All civs start at a certain tech level in a
world already poulated by major civs,empty areas and areas controlled
by barbarians, ok i know its not eveyones cup of tea but follow the
thinking for a while.
Your units are dependant on your tech and are seperated into equiment
and fighting styles for their attack/defense stats varying in a range
dependant on your gov type, allocated a hp dependant on whether foot
or mounted and so on.
So whats missing?
I think their should be a further division between peoples who were
able to field permanent field armies often far from a friendly supply
source and those who gathered to fight a battle and then dispersed.So
what if you have this, generals at the moment are just a better stated
combat unit possibly acting as a slaver,diplomat,but what if they
acted as base of operationsupply for some other units to remain in the
field.All you now need is to replace said general with a more proficient
version of himself as he gains experience as a field commander.This
allows a general to start his carrer with low stats and progress to
a mighty figure from history.His resupply allows him to conduct
operations away from home citys and if you recall the map is set up so
you can calculate a good enough supply level that forces units to remain
within a certain distance of their own supply bases, so now to move
from settled areas to other settled is easy enough but to go of after
some of the barbs will require highly mobile troops or the presence of
a general(remember not all units need supply).Now invasions are led
by generals whos supply ability is more important than his combat use.I
like the feel of that.Those units that require supply would thus be
forced to ramain close to suppy bases, you get to follow the carrer of
some of your countrys greatest leaders if your still reading i hope
this had made sense.logistics is not the most interistng thing to
simulate but this is as close as i can get.I know how im going to do it
but has anyone tried anythig simular? Or any constructve thoughts.

Hannibal Ad Portas · February 26, 2001, 16:36

Imortal Wombat

To get the graphic your after the easy way is set up your map as you want
it then in the areas you want this graphic to appear you place first
the hill terraian over a reasonable area then select special one and keeping your finger down wave it over the hills you will then be given the
settlement graphic cut and past or repeat the above their is also a very
prety ballon graphic if you play around with special2 and desert.for navigable rivers you get the coast tile and place it along the course you want it to run,dont worry that itlooks ugly as you then select the river
option and run it over the course this will smoth it out to a nice navigable river complet with backs to the river combat screen, will post you the readme, contact hex etc

Hannibal Ad Portas · February 26, 2001, 18:06

Wombat,

very helpfull its loading in as i write login as spennick password is
sparta, in my/files are the readme and unitreadme and then the whole lot
in a zip look through the 2 readmes before you download as a may put
graphics in a seperate file to speed download if were all usins the same
sprites. anyone else help yourself its all free! even if theres only one
idea their you can use its a plus.

Bluevoss · February 27, 2001, 00:40

Lets see - one idea would be to have Hannibal's early campaigns. Basically, he started in Spain by kicking a Roman Garrison (so you have an original city battle). Also, Spain was the big Carthaginian supply dump, so thats where most of their production should come from (when Hannibal was 9, he left Carthage with his father to conqure Spain, mainly for its production).

France should be a big barbarian region. Dunno if you could hide a couple of barbarian towns there, but this should be a major anoyance for him. Also, the Rhone river crossing was a bit of a problem, as the barbarians on the other side attempted to deny him passage. He ended up sending his heavies around to pounce on their rear.

The Alps crossing would be tricky - you would almost need to do some slic code for this. His big rush was to get over the Alps before winter, and that almost didn't happen. I don't know much about the capabilities of scernarios, but if you could do monthly turns, that would be cool, especially if he had to rush to get over the alps, and he lost more and more troops the longer he delayed. You might even make a maze of routes for him to fuddle over, since he had to work at finding a path. Also, he lost about 1/3 of his army (20,000?) in the crossing.

In Italy, he should get the chance to try to recooporate before the Romans fall on him. I might suggest that you make ALL the roman units half-strenght, since they were run by pairs (how stupid) of consoles. One day, guy A got to run the army. The next day, it was guy B. This would allow him to win most open field battles.

Two things that would give it the correct flavor - Rome should be walled and heavily fortified. And it would be cool if you could have a stack that followed Hannibal around and attacked only citys (not units). This would simulate "The Delayer" (Fabious), who would not attack Hannibal but would nullify his gains.

Thats about all I can say in the short term. Hope it helps.

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Bluevoss-

Hannibal Ad Portas · February 27, 2001, 10:14

Bluevoss

Looks like yove been reading your Livy recently.

My prefrence at the moment is a scn that that runs through a time period
of 264BC (opening rounds in scicily +the largest navel battle in history
at Econmus)through to the gallic invasion of italy,roman expansion
along the adriatic,the conquest of southern spain by the barcids(Hamilcar
farther of hannibal and his 2 brothers)the epic years of the hannibal
ending with the destruction of carthage in 149BC.Also in 149 rome had
effectivly removed greece as a power in in the medd.So historicaly
speaking there was a lot going on,which would provide lots of both
specific and random events to encorporate into the game,exaample
event specific to greece would be the adoption of the shield to cavaly
who up to c270bc didnt use them.this would give a better defense
stated cavalry unt.The list is endless and all you have to do is to read
a few books as its all happend already.Id like to keep slc as alast resort
to workaround any problems that cant be solved in any other way,no offense
to slcers intended,as its in the back of my mind that the scn will
possibly be playable from not only the main powers of the day but all
the smaller wannabes so speed isues allowing it could have 18 or so
players.Now as to if its going to be one big thing or a series of
modules each with their own set of vitory conditions that will allow
you start next mod from either a strong or weaker position depending on
how you deed in previose module,their are advantages to each method and
i need to think about it some yet.I take you point of losses due to
terrain/weather and see my thread for where im going with that issue.
A note on Rome /Roman expansion to super power is best described as
opurtunist meddlying rather than a result of grand staegy of lets
take over the world, its consuls used the states forces to pursue the
political objectives of the faction they belong to, so this was why they
had difficalty co operating and thus if both were present would comand
on alternate days,their commanders were required to competent and
thats all usually they need to be as its their tactical methods that
won their strategic objectives.

However when faced by hannibal competece was not nearly good enough.

so how do i best simulate a generals effect at tactical level/operational
level (grand stategy is what we do). Currently im thinking that you will
follow the carrer of a general through his start as competant rising
to legendary figure of history, its not just a matter of giving him
better stats, he should allow you the player to acomplish things with
his prescence that you cannot achieve otherwise.My minds going
in 6 differnt directions at once at the moment as this modeing thing
really got me going. All ideas, thoughts,gratfully accepted.
Nick Spencer AKA Hannibal Ad Portas
spennick@aol.com

Hannibal Ad Portas · February 27, 2001, 10:20

If you interisted my mods at this site

http://www.mydocsonline.com/

Pass word sparta
Login as spennick

Nick Spencer AKA Hannibal Ad Portas
spennick@aol.com

Bluevoss · February 27, 2001, 12:03

Han,

You may want to consider changing the scale of the map to force attention to specific details. Sicily is dinky on a world map (does it even show up?) but it was critical to the med in the First Punic War. Further, there was a lot of manovering going on. Ideally, Hamilcar needs to be able to use all sorts of gile and trickyness to run a partisan war against the growing Roman forces.

You might scale the map so that Rome is on the North side, and Carthage on the south side, with just enough of them so that each side has a huge base city (for production). Sicily should dark territory. Randomness would even make it better. This way, the two forces would have room to manover across the rocky island.

Good luck on this. Now I might consider doing it (oh boy, another hobby).

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Bluevoss-

Immortal Wombat · February 27, 2001, 16:24

WOW guys, too much history for me to take. I'll read up on it however, and these ideas seem really good.
I did a scenario for Age of Kings with this, and I found that a Mediterrainean map worked well (even if the scenario was rubbish).
I think that any history would be best left to you guys, but I will pitch in with help on any text-file editing/graphics editing/BASIC BASIC BASIC slic etc.
I think a lot of those general-type codes could be lifted straight from the Alex-the-great scenario, but that would depend on your needs.
Crossing the Alps shouldn't be a problem I think.

I'm just checking out Hannibal's scenario, so I'm off to play ctp2 now...

Ben

Bluevoss · February 27, 2001, 21:11

Actually, if there was one ancient battle I'd like to model, it would be Alexander's siege of Tyre. Someday I'm going to have to figure out how to do that.

Pick up any book on Alex and take a gander at it. Man, it will send chills down your spine.

Oh, and if you like good movies and don't mind subtitles, check out "The Emperor and the Assassin" (at blockbuster). Its a look at the first Emperor to unify China. The battle scenes are amazing - they even show Chinese chariots. And the sieges - wow. Better yet, get ready for a story that has some neat twists!

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Bluevoss-

Hannibal Ad Portas · February 28, 2001, 05:45

Bleu, ops gone all german,Blue,

Been toying with your idea that the romans were reluctant to bring
hannibal to battle, the best solution i have so far is to change
the ai force matching to a higher number than before, this would make it
a war of manuver rather than the present aggressive combat orientated ai
than im currently using,sicily on the other hand is going to be from east
to west north to south from coast to coast 6 terrain tiles at their
maximums.This gives sufficient room for manuver between Syracruse in the
eastern province and lilybeum in the west controlled by carthage.Ive
already implemented the new trade goods Gold/silver/Tin/Wheat/Grain
and so on, so sicily will be important as a grain producer as well as
its position that acts as a giant choke point between n africa
and southern italy.

For trickines/traps/strategems see my post about city defense you will
see their how im getting on with my generals special abilitys,and it ties
in nicley with what you want to see happen, remember that this guy the
ai will not use to the extent of its abilitys that you as a player will
so in effect you are already building in a diference of leadership
style and abilty to the game.As his initial combat stats are low he
wont show up as barbarian unless your playing at a really low level.And
you can also make him specific to one country/player personaly i like
the idea of keeping them for the main country to be be played as, you
can then have a new set of abilitys for the 2nd choice country.

Siege of tyre.the only thing ive done so far is to give bombard to a
wider range of units,this means you see a lot of units going up to a city
to conduct range fire,not really a siege but at least their adjacent
and you can either attack out with part of garrison to chop their hit
points down real low before going back inside leaving them looking sad
and bewilderd or use your own missile troops back at them.

Below is part of what Immortal and i are contemplating (taken from an email)

In respect of a punic wars scn at this stage we should
kick a few ideas around, as to scale Spain to greece for east west,north to south
france to top of North afica coastal strip.using my mod as a strarting point the aim
would be to recreate the 3 seperate wars that Carthage and Rome fought. At this
time in history Rome also took out ilyria modern Albania,fought the greeks in s italy
got invaded by celts and a greek guy call phyrus with yes you guessed it some
elephants came over and created hell for a while before going to sicily to spread even
more elephant dropings! So as a side show their would be alot going on around the
main issue between rome/carthage.i prefer to do it a one big event rather than severall
stand alone scns, that said if we do it as a module we can use a larger scale map
as each module would be focused on a smaller actual playing area so a mod of the war
in sicly would end win one side got all the citys, you go to next module with set
a of units to fightwith if you win, set b if you lose get it so far?

So whats your top pick modules or big picture?

Now i hope you will join immortal and myself in this endeavor.
If you are then i will e mail all relevant info as and when and hopefully spread
some of the work your way to.

Any one else reading this is also welcome, doesent matter what skills you have,
its going to get done but if your interisted in the period and youd like to see
something represented get in now.

Nick Spencer AKA Hannibal Ad Portas
spennick@aol.com

IM SPARTICUS, NO IM SPARTICUS,we will cricify him over there,
HES SPARTICUS,HES SPARTICUS

Immortal Wombat · February 28, 2001, 14:29

If its done in modular scenarios, I don't see how how the outcome of one could affect the next.
If it was done as one big scenario, it could get very complicated.
I think to keep the chronology, one scenario could be sectioned, so that after each battle, eg. Sicily, you get a whole new set of units created elsewhere on the map, to continue with other parts of the war. The 'enemy' will also have their units created then, so that they don't have a major advantage, but also (to continue with Sicily) the Romans are given some units in southern Italy to counter-attack Sicily (Assuming Carthage won/kept it).
This would require some SLIC, but not too difficult I hope.

Ben

Radical_Manuvr · March 2, 2001, 12:19

I guess I should check in more often. I'm working on a Hannibal scenario starting around 223 BC. It will in some ways be similar to the Alex scenario. Hannibal or his armies will have to conquer the parts of Spain they don't already control then move on to Rome. Barbarians will be a huge problem. They will attack your cities relentlessly and cause them to lose population. There will be places where I will have to depart from history to make it playable but I think it should end up being a fun scenario. I also have barbarian lepers that infect your cities causing unhappiness. If anyone wants to make a unit for that I'd love to use it. I don't have the software or know-how to make units. I'm nowhere near finished and it will probably be a month or two working on it part time, plus trying to help on the new Alex with that taking priority, before I have a version ready for testing. It won't hurt to have two versions of Hannibal. It will be interesting to see how they turn out.

OmniGod · March 3, 2001, 16:29

In this modular concept is it fair to assume that you'd have many scenarios one leading from the last... say you have to conquer Italy before you can attempt to take out the Franks or Germans... if this is the idea, it's exactly what I was thinking about last night before sleep. I thought what about making high resolution maps of areas and having them lead one to the next... each subsequent scenario would start as if you completed the previous one.... hmmmm... I'm willing to contribute map making if this is the idea...

OmniGod · March 4, 2001, 18:23

What do you need?

Hannibal Ad Portas · March 4, 2001, 19:14

At this stage were not sure how best to implement due to this
if there are only 4 scn each leading to a win lose result it calls for
30 maps with set ups to suite each, this means a large file is going to
be the result which if we put in with the new tgs for advances and units.
for the moment a map comprising spain to greece and from n europen coast
to n african coast, and also a map of sicily that gives a land area of approx 20x15 tiles.
thanks for efforts on our behalf,we will of course be after further areas
in due course.
Hannibal

Immortal Wombat · March 5, 2001, 01:55

That is pretty much what I was thinking of Omni, kinda like the campaigns in AoE. If you would make some maps, both Nick (Hannibal) and I would be very grateful. Thanks very much.
Ben