Next BTS Succession Game Scenario: Charlemagne!

[sunrise089]

There was some talk in the Civfanatics thread towards looking at the Russian civil war scenario. Nothing conclusive emerged though, partially because we were waiting for your input.

[Zeviz]

Sulla, sorry that you didn't get a chance to play for most of the game.

Would you like to start another one?

As for scenario, I am having a lot of fun with Final Frontier. Or some other balanced scenario could be good.

Broken Star wouldn't work because it's too imbalanced. The AIs don't understand the concept of bying units for cash, which is essential to this scenario. So it's too easy to just direct your entire economy towards cash, buy most advanced units right away, and slaughter all opposition while AIs are busy training overpriced settlers.

Next war also doesn't sound very appealing, because it will invovle too much slogging through modern era combat on a huge map.

Anything else should be fun.

[Sullla]

Zeviz (and others), I agree that Broken Star is a no-go; the AI simply doesn't understand the basic gameplay. It's also amazingly tedious mopping through large Modern-era armies on the higher difficulties. (Ugh!) I was thinking of trying one of the following three scenarios:

Crossroads of the World: The map for this one is pretty interesting, because the land is almost absurdly infertile. Playing around with corporations (now that they're somewhat balanced in 3.13) also looks like fun. The biggest downside is that (again) the AI doesn't really understand the victory conditions. But we could always go for a spin on Deity again to make things harder.

Gods of Old: It's like standard Civ4, but with the normal religions replaced with new ones, some of which have some pretty interesting features. The plus is that we'd have a well-balanced game with the AIs; the downside is that this is not especially different from a normal game of Civ.

Rhye's and Fall of Civ: We've never experimented as a community with Rhye's world map scenario, which actually has some pretty cool features. The biggest downside is that the map is definitely on the large side, and can get rather tedious as the game progresses. I'm not sure I have the kind of time for that commitment right now, to be honest... but I wanted to throw it out there.

Do any of these scenarios look especially promising for a succession game?

[Bede]

.....little snip.....

Crossroads of the World: The map for this one is pretty interesting, because the land is almost absurdly infertile. Playing around with corporations (now that they're somewhat balanced in 3.13) also looks like fun. The biggest downside is that (again) the AI doesn't really understand the victory conditions. But we could always go for a spin on Deity again to make things harder.

.......big snip......


Rhye's and Fall of Civ: We've never experimented as a community with Rhye's world map scenario, which actually has some pretty cool features. The biggest downside is that the map is definitely on the large side, and can get rather tedious as the game progresses. I'm not sure I have the kind of time for that commitment right now, to be honest... but I wanted to throw it out there.

Do any of these scenarios look especially promising for a succession game?

I have played with Crossroads some just to get a feel for it (Monarch level) and I have found that the AI has no real problem with spreading their Trade Guilds and accumulating lots of cash. And the map conditions do make for a major challenge.

I have also started a couple of Rhye's games they would be a real time commitment (and not only for the map size). There are lots of new concepts to assimilate that go beyond the kind of changes you see in Final Frontier for example. Unique Historical Victory Conditions being one and Stability being another. Final Frontier reminds me of the scenarios that came with Conquests - lots of changes to the tech tree but the basic game ideas are not all that different from standard BtS games.

Of the two I would prefer Crossroads of the World and for some reason Gods of Old just doesn't attract my interest

[sunrise089]

I've not played any of the ones we're discussing, but my vote would go towards Crossroads of the World as well, just judging from the discussion.

[Zeviz]

Rhye's isn't as time-consuming as it looks, because the stability system prevents empires from growing much larger than their historic counterparts. So you are unlikely to have more than a dozen cities unless you play an empire like England or Mongolia. And even if you play an empire like that, reaching its maximum historic size is likely to lead to a repeat of its historic fate. So the only issue with the size of Rhye's map is whether people's computers will be able to handle it.

I haven't looked at either Crossroads of the World or Gods of Old yet, but it sounds like Crossroads of the World would be more fun out of these two.

Overall, I think Rhye's would be more fun to play, but it would involve learning more new mechanics, so Crossroads of the World sounds like a good compromise.

[Swiss Pauli]

I had a quick look at Crossroads and Gods of Old last night. The latter was suprisingly interesting on a very short spin on Monarch: the AI certainly understood how to build the religion-founding Shrines ASAP (though I did have at least 2 IND civs in the game), so capitals will need to be captured to win the game. Only played the opening turns, so I can't advise whether the AI understands the victory condition. Seems to me that it would make a decent SG, with the right difficulty and map.

Crossroads seems rather similar to Charlemagne, but slightly tougher to score (exploits excluded) as spreading Guilds, for example, costs a lump sum of cash but gives a per turn benefit. Probably warrants some testing before deciding on Civ and difficulty level for an SG.

My PC can't handle Rhye's.

[Sullla]

Sorry for not responding to this thread sooner... Today was the first chance I had to look more closely at the Crossroads scenario. I tried experimenting with the whole corporation system, and didn't really like what I found. In order to gain money via the corporations, you have to spread not one but TWO corporations, because the resources that make money (like furs) don't actually appear anywhere on the map! Maybe I'm just confused somehow, but the whole thing seemed enormously overcomplicated. Why are there TEN corporations instead of just five? Why not just make it so that each of the five civs has a starting corporation, and more resources = more gold?

That put a major damper on my enthusiasm for a succession game on this subject. With Epic Fourteen eating up my Civ time at the moment, I think I'd rather go in a different direction and start a Master of Orion succession game instead. (Every couple of months I get the urge to play some MOO again. ) I'm sorry if that disappoints some of you, but you're always welcome to start a new SG on your own.