scen limits, human rules, and number of protagonists, some thoughts

[lord of the mark]

this may be old hat to some of you old scenario hands, so please bear with me. I had some thoughts while playing "colonies" by John Ellis.

First it is a well-designed challenging, realistic and fun scenario. After playing Hellas and Colonies, I am very impressed with this designer. The scen is North Atlantic world, 1492-1792. Civs are Enlgish, French, Spanish, Incas, Aztecs, Plains Indians and Coastal Indians (these latter in North America) Barbs are used for Scots, Irish, Portugese, Burgundy, North and West African cities, Carib indians.

The notes say the scen is optimized for deity, so what the hell, i'll go play deity. To make it a little easier I play english, who should have best shot of winning. (also since I am an anglophone American, after all)

I make the big mistake of starting a colony early, in New England. And on the mainland (the dual whale site was tempting) And I dont make (expensive) peace with the Coastal Indians. I throw a lot of resources into the colony, gradually pushing the indians back and clearing forest. Meanwhile I conquer scotland, develop britain, and struggle to reseach peaceful techs. When the Indians discover indian cavalry they wipe out my colony. Im left in 1600 with no colonies, well developed but technologically mediocre Britain. SO i think about alternate strats.

The caribbean has been left alone by the Spanish, and is clearly where i should have gone. But this is ahistorical, why did it happen in this scen?

Well the Spanish have been busy absorbing sub-saharan west african coast. Which actually makes sense when you think about. they took "barb" Lisbon almost right at the beginning, so they are naturally the heirs of the Portugese enterprise in Africa.

BUT - Portugal already had most of its african empire in 1492, when scen begins. Spain should INHERIT those African cities, and use their own resources in the Caribbean.

But of course the Civ2 engine doesnt let a scen designer do that. Cant make cities switch loyalty as result of trigger, not even in TOT. A scen designer COULD put a diplo unit (in this scen an "ambassador") next to select cities. Thus - if citytaken=lisbon, tirggerattacker =spanish, create unit = ambassador, location - yada,yada, civ=spanish. (pardon my syntax)

The problem is what if the spanish player uses the diplos for something else instead? (in this scen stealing techs from the English and French would be very useful) Which got me thinking about board games I used to play. There such things were handled by simply giving someone a text rule to not do such a thing. In that sense, board games have the most powerful scen building engines of all, text rules !!!! Why not do something like that here. (after all the designer has already done something like this here with a "donotresearch tech"!!!!!) And then of course, silly me I remembered - that would only work for the human player in an SP game (as most scens are played, i believe) If Im playing English, cant control what the Spanish AI will do by a text rule.

Which led me to think - does it really make sense to design a scenario so that all, or even several civs are playable by the human player in SP? Granted that adds to replayability, but wouldnt it be easier to make a REALISTIC yet playable scenario if only one civ were designated for human play, since this would make possible the interaction of clever events with human focused text rules, as described above. I realize there are some scenarios designed with different events files(another possible solution) for different human played civs - the only such scen ive played was Kull' 1200BC scen - but Kull didnt do what I described, IIRC.


Any thoughts?

LOTM

[techumseh]

You're right, there are two design perspectives for scenario making, the multi-playable and the single playable civ. The more focused the designer is on recreating historical patterns, the more events s/he needs. And the less likely that the 'dumb' AI will be able to do what is desired without lots of events to help it.

In fact, the superiority of the human player over the AI is the main reason for designing from only one civs' point of view. You need to make the scenario totally stacked against the human civ in order to provide a reasonable challenge.
Kull provided an excellent balance between multi-playability and civ specific events in 1200 BC. But there have been many scenarios designed from the point of view of one Civ. Harlan Thompson's WWII (in fact most WWII scenarios), Alex's Spartacus and Nemo's Red Front are just a few examples.

[hardjoy]

IMO, there are several scens that do a good job of multiplayability. The good thing is, that these scenarios are also fun to play as multiplayer games. But its a pretty difficult task, I must admit myself.

I think events are too often used as an 'artificial' way of limiting player actions, be it human or AI controlled. Map layout/geography, sea access, roads, important cities/objectives, and of course, key techs, are much more interesting ways to focus a scenario. They can involve pretty different player strategies for different civs, provide much more flavour, and allow some tribes to be easier to play than others.

BTW, why would Spain 'automatically' inherit Portugals african possessions? -It could be reasonable enough that local resistance still had to be made subject to spanish authority, and spanish expeditions had to be sent to Africa in order to secure this...

But the point in question, focus and motivation, need not be so complicated, imo. At least in theory. In civ2 its usually a matter of desirable geography, economy and techs. But of course, its much harder to bring it to life, I know.

[Henrik]

LoTM, if you want more scens by John, this is his site http://pages.zoom.co.uk/netdesign/ (there has been two major updates to collonies since the version you're using).