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Elok
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Emperor
Having tea with the Third Man...
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Mar 2003
time: 20:33
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My scenario projects rarely pan out due to my tendency to sort of lose steam when I realize how much work is involved, so just as an initial disclaimer, don't get excited or anything. I've actually made exactly two and released them: Broken Crown, which was so corny and nonsensical that I feel bad about claiming authorship, and Escape from Dinosaur Island, which was good-corny IMO but never generated much interest.
So, I've had Underdark on my PC for a loooong time but I always let the graphics put me off. Just learned my mistake, and found myself thinking, "I'd like to do more with this." Specifically, I'm thinking of a game (FW--I never got MGE, and can't get the converter now due to a confluence of annoying little factors) with five players and a Midgard-type tech tree, wherein each civ has twelve completely unique units:
The GOBLINS, a barbarian civ with a "front-heavy" mix of units--a lot of relatively good units early on, the later ones decent but not spectacular--but crappy government. Ideal for rush players.
The SAURIANS (based on Kuo-Tua, don't wanna call them that because I don't know the fantasy work they're derived from), who have heavy naval power but weak land units. Excellent for exploring and rapid expansion, but have problems away from the coastlines due to their relatively poor land unit mix.
The DARK ELVES so far have no weakness except the lack of a specific strength. I'm still thinking about them, but I believe I'll make them a quality-over-quantity race like the Protoss from StarCraft. Strong, expensive units with low free-support numbers. They also start in the middle of the map, vulnerable to attack from all sides.
The UNDEAD are like a variant on the Goblins, only in some ways more so. A fundamentalism with no research penalties but NO settler unit--they have to conquer others' cities or contaminate their settlers, since it's not like they have little baby zombies. They also support only fanatic-type units for free (I'm assuming that the cosmic value can be reset to zero), and are divided between weaker fanatics and powerful units needing support. The Undead alone get partisans (resurrected, vengeful ghouls).
The GNOMES are a bunch of diminutive mud-man pacifists, and probably the most challenging but also most rewarding Civ to play as. A Republic, naturally, with terrible starting units as far as military potential goes. But they start with diplomats, engineers and freight, and if they can bribe or talk their way out of trouble till the late game they get some godly powerful troops (magic golems go smashy smashy, whee!).
Naturally, this project depends on considerable balancing, and is probably the most ambitious of all of the ones I've tried. I'm also a lot more excited about the possibilities than I recall being for any previous project. My question is: Is this something people would be interested in playing (has everyone moved on to TOT, or is this considered Defiling A Classic)? It'd use almost entirely borrowed graphics since I'm bad at making those, but there's tons of good fantasy art out there for FW/MGE.
Oh, and can any people with more experience than me point out some obvious dangers with the lineup I've described? E.G. would the Gnomes need more than I'm talking about giving them to be playable, or would they be overpowered and actually wind up being the easiest?
Or (worst case scenario) has this already been done and redone to death?
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Elok
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Emperor
Having tea with the Third Man...
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Mar 2003
time: 20:33
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You learn something new about Civ2 with every scenario-making attempt, it seems. Terrain, unit and city graphics are all more or less done (except for roads and railroads), almost all borrowed and slightly modified. Rules.txt is basically finished, the map is made and all the barbarian cities are placed. Of course it's all subject to change when I actually play the scenario and discover that I've made it totally off-balance.
Anyway, y'know that annoying "obsolescence" algorithm the AI uses to determine what it will build? The thing that tells it a unit with 8/4/2 1/1 stats is superior to one with 8/3/5 4/4, and that it should never build the latter (provided they have the same role)? Well, I hadn't realized that the computer will not check to see if the "superior" unit is buildable itself.
For Midgard-type setups like this one this gets quite obnoxious; I noticed that, once the Dark Elves got the tech for Tarasques, they stopped building Arachnids, even though they have the tech that makes Tarasques obsolete. I also hadn't known that units with a "nil" prereq are apparently excluded from these calculations. I wonder if a Republic AI that knows the Fundamentalism tech will refuse to build Musketeers, on the grounds that the Fanatics it can't build have superior stats?
Anyway, I solved all the problems (I think); I just felt like griping.
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.Took only minutes to make.Dont know if you like them...
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