14-11-2003 00:54									#1
	Is Conquest #3, Fall of Rome, a good design? Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Don't know if anyone has started conquest #3. But if you have, what do you think of this design.

According to designer on civ3.com, in developer link, the developer boasts of the challenge to barbarians as even though the game is supposed to last 150 turns, because of the way Rome is set up the game will end about turn 100.

I started game as random civ and got sassanids. Nice stacked deck. You have a bunch of techs, BUT strongest defensive player is spearman. Can't access any of the strong offensive/defensive units as they are in the "Barbarian Tree" and cost about 200 turns of the 150 turn game. Moreover Barb Tree Techs cannot be traded. To say winning is difficult is an understatement. You start with a bunch of techs, so only can research about 8 techs. That's about 800 points. You can kill a few units, but at 30points a pop, that will take too long.

OH, and forgot this is eliminatation also, so if lose 8 cities it's bye bye time.

Would be fun to play as a Barb tribe, or even as one of the Romes, but what is the odd man out tribe supposed to do. Defense of 2 vs legionaires and locked alliance. Those 20 legionaires would cut thru civ like knives thru butter.


My conclusion: this conquest is not designed well for Sassanid tribe.

Humm, just rechecked according to designer, Warlords are 8.2.1. But I thought they were more like 8.5.1. I need to double check tonight.

Anyway, what do you think of this conquest design?

-- PF

	14-11-2003 01:34									#2
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It's sadly disapointing.

therefor, I'm busy making a new version myself.

	14-11-2003 01:35									#3
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I played halfway through a game as the Celts and didn't care for it. I liked the ideas behind it but I thought the 8 city elim was not good-I took 5 great britain w.roman and 3 mainland cities and there were ruins all over the place. Its not difficult to snipe 8 smallish cities from anyone.
And then its a mad dash for the victory points.

It seems like it has a lot of potential, just needs to be flushed out a bit. I agree with you on the Sassanids point. I wish they had an elite unit or something to give them some balance. have to wait a long time for heavy cav's to do anything.

	14-11-2003 01:51									#4
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The major problem I see are:

1. elimination preference on, with victory conditions survival should be enough
2. no "garrison" unit with at least defense of 3.
3. design for Rome to end at turn 100 when game continues to 150 turns.

Better design would have been Rome to win by end of turn 140.

I'm only about 50 turns, i.e. 1/3, into the game. For 40 turns it was "yes sir" to all bully greetings. Then the Huns decided to attack. Think this was a big mistake, I remember their reputation. No cities exchanged, yet!!, but my military went from average to weak.

Still annoyed at design of game, if other scenarios are this bad, that is not good news for C3C.

-- PF

	14-11-2003 03:46									#5
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I like this one, it's probably my second favorite. It is hard to actually win it though (from nearly any team, though the Sass and Celts seem to have it hardest).

During the beta, every Conquest was beaten at high difficulties by every playable team.

	14-11-2003 03:53									#6
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Well, if it is winnable, I'll play it ou, to the bitter end.
Thanks for the info.

-- PF

	14-11-2003 07:34									#7
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I won.. but on Monarch level. It beat the crap outta me! Some tweaks as far as balancing tech and stealing/trading tech would be good. Played as Celts.

	14-11-2003 10:54									#8
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I've been playing the Anglo-Saxons and they're pretty difficult to play. This is not one of the conquests I played during the beta, so I was interested to try it out.

I agree, this conquest is very very hard.

	14-11-2003 11:46									#9
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The trick is, ironically enough, diplomacy. You can win with any civ simply by repeatedly forcing all the other Germanic tribes to attack Rome with treaties, and letting them snap up each other's cities and so on. After the Romans are eliminated, you get all the Germanics to gang up on the one with the highest score, rinse and repeat.

When there's only two tribes left, you take one city, two at most, from the bloodied and battered remaining foe, and you win. If you don't use super-diplo-cheese, this scenario is a vicious and bloody battle from beginning to end, with backstabbing to make a corporate board room look like a Barbie convention.

I won with every available civ during the beta using this method and warned of it but no solution was found - I even won with the Celts without so much as stepping foot off the isles until there was only one opponent left.

I also agree of the need for a higher-value defender, but you are supposed to be churning out insane numbers of attackers in this scenario, so I suppose the whole "best defense is a good offense" rule applies.

	14-11-2003 20:05									#10
	What's with plague?? Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Why is there plague in Fall of Rome. According to civopedia it is not in this scenario, but in game play plague exists.

While talking about plague, does plague ever go away? The civopedia says almost nothing about plague.

Rethinking this scenario, the worst part is Rome gets VP about 2/3rds thru game. I didn't have enough time to get thru more than a few turns yesterday but will be able to see how it shakes out this weekend.


Fried-Psitalon: interesting. I assumed one civ could not do it alone. My problem is I don't have anything valuable to trade to the tribes for war. I am turning down research to 0 to get cash for bribing.

-- PF

	14-11-2003 22:14									#11
	Re: What's with plague?? Increase the size of your Attachments

quote: Originally posted by planetfall While talking about plague, does plague ever go away? The civopedia says almost nothing about plague.

it only lasts for a couple of turns, I think I've seen it go 3-4 turns then go away...

	15-11-2003 01:03									#12
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whew, I thought I had to blow away all connections to a city, starve them to death and wait 20 turns. Vultures are cool and annoying at the same time.

-- PF

	15-11-2003 02:36									#13
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I didn't like this scenario for a couple reasons. I played as the anglos, had the scourge of war and was cranking out warlords like crazy. Eventually I sacked Rome and Constantinople, but I still didn't win. When western rome went down, it gave me a bunch of victory points, but when the eastern empire went down, it didn't. Since I was expecting to win after the east went down, all my armies were far off to the south, when the huns blindsided me from the east. Since I had already lost like 5 cities in scuffles with other barbs, (hard to defend w/2 against 8) I was eliminated. Shitty! I think my problem was that I took too many non-victory points from them before the empires bit the dust. But still I think if you sack both Rome and Constantinople you should win. Also it seemed that after a victory point city was destroyed by the collapse, I couldn't get any points for controlling them.

	15-11-2003 23:30									#14
	Re: Is Conquest #3, Fall of Rome, a good design? Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Sassandids aren't a barabarian tribe.

They are playable as a challenge for any that find winning as the barbs to easy.

quote: Originally posted by planetfall Don't know if anyone has started conquest #3. But if you have, what do you think of this design. According to designer on civ3.com, in developer link, the developer boasts of the challenge to barbarians as even though the game is supposed to last 150 turns, because of the way Rome is set up the game will end about turn 100. I started game as random civ and got sassanids. Nice stacked deck. You have a bunch of techs, BUT strongest defensive player is spearman. Can't access any of the strong offensive/defensive units as they are in the "Barbarian Tree" and cost about 200 turns of the 150 turn game. Moreover Barb Tree Techs cannot be traded. To say winning is difficult is an understatement. You start with a bunch of techs, so only can research about 8 techs. That's about 800 points. You can kill a few units, but at 30points a pop, that will take too long. OH, and forgot this is eliminatation also, so if lose 8 cities it's bye bye time. Would be fun to play as a Barb tribe, or even as one of the Romes, but what is the odd man out tribe supposed to do. Defense of 2 vs legionaires and locked alliance. Those 20 legionaires would cut thru civ like knives thru butter. My conclusion: this conquest is not designed well for Sassanid tribe. Humm, just rechecked according to designer, Warlords are 8.2.1. But I thought they were more like 8.5.1. I need to double check tonight. Anyway, what do you think of this conquest design? -- PF

	15-11-2003 23:34									#15
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I think the 50 extra turns are for barbs to fight among themselves (and the Huns) assuming they beat both Romans.

	16-11-2003 00:30									#16
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Yes, just taking out the Romans often won't generate enough VPs to determine the winner.

	16-11-2003 03:28									#17
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I'll try this as the ultimate barbarbian : The HUNS!

Looking at starting tech situation, I'm thinking of the inital startegy of trying to bullying the Sassandists into give me their techs while my own reserach just beelines up the barb techs. I see several good sites for cities within one tile of my starting nomads.

	17-11-2003 19:35									#18
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Ok, after more play time, revised a few initial conclusions.

1. Elimination game is not all bad. It does change the flavor of the game a huge amount, but still is playable. The plus side to playing elimination is can quickly get rid of both Romes and assorted pesky civs.

2. Even if plague pops up, it is not bad as it goes away in 3-4 turns.

Sass's arenot a bad tribe to play. {Was my picked random selection}.
1. 2 sides are safe from attack and 3rd is only rarely used. South and West are safe. A few troops makes East safe, which means only have to worry about north.

2. Huns will probably attack but that is not hard to deal with.

3. Romans are stagnant, so there is time to build a mini empire.

4. Hard part is timing when to switch from building to conquest. If wait too long, Rome will steal away the game.


If I were changing the scenario, about all I would change is the VP generated by Rome. Rather than projecting a win about turn 110, I would move it out to about turn 130.

OH, would also change scoring. Dumb that higher difficulty level generates less points than lower difficulty level. Need some additional factor here to recognize higher levels.

Oh #2, warlords need adjusting a bit. They either need more offense, like 9.3.1 or lower cost. They are no match for heavy cavs. Barb warlords are helpless against Sass heavy cavs.

Oh, #3. I would probably extend the number of turns from 150 to 200. I was left with Celts & Sass. Without RR, these two don't come into contact. The only way the Sass can touch Celts is to plant a city on the Med. Sea and then have time to build galleys. Granted the Celts do have cities in N.Europe
but it will take about 20 turns for one unit from Sass to move to their area. Even with all other civs except Celts gone.

-- PF

	17-11-2003 20:55									#19
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Another note-- Intro should have highlighted the change in govt Imperialism values in Scenario #3 vs #2 {rise of Rome}. In #2 no WW, in #3 much WW. This is highlighted in civopedia, but not everyone thinks of reading all civopedia entries before starting scenario.

Nasty suprise for first play of game. Second time I did not switch govt, what a change.

-- PF

	17-11-2003 22:10									#20
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I think it *does* say in the civilopedia entry that Imperialism is very much discouraged in the FoR scenario....

	17-11-2003 22:16									#21
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Fried,

Yes it does with bold highlight. Wording is good, it implies you would be a huge dummy to play with Imperialism.

But if don't check civopedia, you would not know that from either the Conquest into or the Conquest summary.
I have learned now, but could be annoying dissatisfier for new FoR players.

Now before jumping in to any of these scenarios I check for changes in Units/govts/tech trees/scoring changes.

-- PF

	18-11-2003 17:30									#22
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ack!

Is this scenario hard. I'm not losing, well actually I am losing because I'm not winning.

East Rome is in the lead with 16,000 VP's, and I only have around 2000 .

I'm playing as the Vandals. It seemed like a good setup. No one to the right of me. But the annoying french are to the left of me.

How can I defeat Rome when the annoying barb tribes keep attacking me?

And I don't get the option to form alliances against rome. What tech. is necessary to form alliances? writing?

I guess playing as Rome would be the easiest. But I get the impression the scenario was intended to be played by a barb civ.

	18-11-2003 19:27									#23
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Watch out for the French.

I couldn't get alliances but others started attacking once I knocked off about 4-6 Rome/Byzantine cities.

Key is to eliminate Rome/Byzantine at least by when they have about 32,000 VP. I don't understand what a VP location is. It may be those spires.

My plan was simple: build til turn 70, turn to military production and start hammering. Remember even though it looks hopeless Rome/Byzantine has WW to deal with and that will help you.

-- PF

	19-11-2003 01:46									#24
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hmm, maybe I'll continue. My first city with a VP (It's those obelisk looking things- playing the Intro scenario #1 will illustrate that).

I'm also curious what those stone-looking structures are in the forest near the northern roman cities. They aren't VP locations from what I can tell, but I don't know what they are.

Most of the VP locations are located in the same square as cities not surprisingly. All the major cities have them. Constaninople, Rome, several northern Italy cities.

	19-11-2003 02:01									#25
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stone laying all over the structure == quarry. A new resource.

Yeah, I ignored VP's and still won with second play.

-- PF

	20-11-2003 07:50									#26
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Yes; Writing is needed by one party. (Or is it an Embassy which requires writing?)

No point reseraching that yourself though; just concentrate on the barb techs and trade those first. (Look around first before any deal.) Also, several techs can be grabed from the Romans in early game in exchange for your WM because at least one party needs Map Making to trade maps.

As the Huns, my plan is to start the invasion of Romans around turn 50. (Right when I finish researching the last of the barb unique techs.) I'll bribe them with techs if that's what it takes. I've built lots of Raiders that can be upgraded.

The Sas will be the next target after that. Folowed by any barbs with higher scores.

	20-11-2003 21:31									#27
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Joncnunn,

Trade barb techs? In my copy of the scenario barb tech trading is not allowed. This was a big surprise on the first play of this scenario. If you read the developers log in civ3.com you will see that only the first barb tech has a high cost. It is possible to get the barb techs the old fashioned way, but it will be almost the end of the game.

Initial barb tech research at start of game is 200-400 turns.

-- PF

	21-11-2003 12:57									#28
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you can trade barb techs to the other barb civs.

I was able to get some of the "regular" techs off other barbs- like alphabet and sailing.

I managed to research fairly fast, but it still takes a while to get all 3 barb techs.

	21-11-2003 20:26									#29
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Sorry, my bad. Sass can't trade barb techs.

-- PF

	22-11-2003 13:13									#30
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I did a start with them to see if they would be interesting.

But they don't start with much . I didn't see them being able to do much.

But upon further reflection- they could be fairly successful depending on what the barb civs do. You need their hope with western rome for sure.

But they seemed to be lacking good units at the beginning.