I need your thoughts on a scenario that I'm working on. This is not intended to match history, rather to provide a long-term, challenging, and fun scenario.
Caesar, having grown jealous of your past success and the Senate's adoration for you, has attempted to sabotage your new assignment. Angry that the Senate gave you the extremely fertile Valentia, he paid some robbers to ambush you and your advisers on the road to your new home. (Take all your starting money).
Starting the city with 0 Denarii, the first thing you build puts you in debt to Rome. Caesar "says" he'll send you 5k Denarii, but it mysteriously never arrives.
It turns out that Caesar will now use your debt against you to make you look bad to the Senate. As you finally get on your feet and trade your way out of debt, he makes a secret treaty with the Iberians. He agrees to fund their armies if they attack you. The attacks steadily grow worse as Caesar pours more money into this effort to remove you from his competition for power.
Half-way through this war, he imposes an ancient version of sanctions on your city. He orders neighboring cities to only give you 10 Denarii for each luxury item they buy from you. (prices suddenly all drop in the game). This forces you to rely on taxes due to the lack of profit in trading. (Don't worry, this happens after there's plenty of time to get palaces up and running).
After you vanquish the the last waves of the Iberian armies thus securing peace in your province, Caesar furiously starts requesting high quantities of weapons in hopes that you cannot fulfill them so that he can come arrest you. Each request amount increases (the idea is for the human player to say, "heck no!"). Caesar, now feeling justified in an attack, sends his legions to arrest you. This happens a number of times until there is a new emperor. With the new emperor, the "sanctions" are lifted (prices go back up) and a few years later you win if you have enough population, prosperity, and peace. (no favor required to win).
A few notes:
-If you don't like the military scenarios, you won't like this one... but the map is defensible and all the attacks come from the same direction (even Caesar's).
-All the events are spread out, giving you enough time to prepare.
-The curve of the river is geographically accurate, but I placed small streams and rocks in order to make the map better for city building and to make aesthetically pleasing.
-You win by surviving a certain amount of time which happens to be a few years after there's a new emperor.
The reason I haven't submitted this as a download yet is because I started playing it as a test and the beginning is a bit too difficult (but fun). You get in debt (designed that way), but Caesar only gives you 2 years to fix it. I was able to get out of debt, but he had already sent legions. The first time they come, it's only 2 cohorts so I was able to fight them off. The problem is that he's not supposed to be sending armies till later. I replayed the first few years a bunch of times, and there's no way to prevent his attack. There are a few ways to fix this in the scenario: I could let the governor start with more money (I don't want to do this... I like unique challenge of starting debt). Or I could make a request from the emperor for 1 wheat and set the "+Favor" to 100 (I don't want to do this either because a random request for 1 wheat won't really flow or feel realistic. But I'd rather do this.)Is there a way to just set the "starting favor" to a higher value? This would prevent such an early attack.
Other than that, the map is basically ready for me to post. I just need to make Caesar less aggressive in the beginning so the rest of the story and timing flow better.
Starting the city with 0 Denarii, the first thing you build puts you in debt to Rome. Caesar "
It turns out that Caesar will now use your debt against you to make you look bad to the Senate. As you finally get on your feet and trade your way out of debt, he makes a secret treaty with the Iberians. He agrees to fund their armies if they attack you. The attacks steadily grow worse as Caesar pours more money into this effort to remove you from his competition for power.
Half-way through this war, he imposes an ancient version of sanctions on your city. He orders neighboring cities to only give you 10 Denarii for each luxury item they buy from you. (prices suddenly all drop in the game). This forces you to rely on taxes due to the lack of profit in trading. (Don't worry, this happens after there's plenty of time to get palaces up and running).
After you vanquish the the last waves of the Iberian armies thus securing peace in your province, Caesar furiously starts requesting high quantities of weapons in hopes that you cannot fulfill them so that he can come arrest you. Each request amount increases (the idea is for the human player to say, "heck no!"). Caesar, now feeling justified in an attack, sends his legions to arrest you. This happens a number of times until there is a new emperor. With the new emperor, the "sanctions" are lifted (prices go back up) and a few years later you win if you have enough population, prosperity, and peace. (no favor required to win).
A few notes:
-If you don't like the military scenarios, you won't like this one... but the map is defensible and all the attacks come from the same direction (even Caesar's).
-All the events are spread out, giving you enough time to prepare.
-The curve of the river is geographically accurate, but I placed small streams and rocks in order to make the map better for city building and to make aesthetically pleasing.
-You win by surviving a certain amount of time which happens to be a few years after there's a new emperor.
The reason I haven't submitted this as a download yet is because I started playing it as a test and the beginning is a bit too difficult (but fun). You get in debt (designed that way), but Caesar only gives you 2 years to fix it. I was able to get out of debt, but he had already sent legions. The first time they come, it's only 2 cohorts so I was able to fight them off. The problem is that he's not supposed to be sending armies till later. I replayed the first few years a bunch of times, and there's no way to prevent his attack. There are a few ways to fix this in the scenario: I could let the governor start with more money (I don't want to do this... I like unique challenge of starting debt). Or I could make a request from the emperor for 1 wheat and set the "+Favor" to 100 (I don't want to do this either because a random request for 1 wheat won't really flow or feel realistic. But I'd rather do this.)Is there a way to just set the "starting favor" to a higher value? This would prevent such an early attack.
Other than that, the map is basically ready for me to post. I just need to make Caesar less aggressive in the beginning so the rest of the story and timing flow better.