Prospering -- New Kingdom Period Scenario

[Jimaaten]

Prospering -- New Kingdom Period Scenario

This scenario is based mainly on the reign of Ramesses II, or as he is known today, Ramesses the Great. You will reign as one Pharaoh (the II). You'll need to build from one end of Egypt to the other in order to be considered great enough to declare yourself a god and take your place amongst the great deities of Ancient Egypt.

[thegrad]

Thank you for a new game to play. This is one of your best. I hope you are working on a new one

[Tinkerbell]

OMG!

Behind by two scenarios now, Jim! Yours & Grad's The War Games.

Help!

[Jimaaten]

Originally Posted by thegrad

Thank you for a new game to play. This is one of your best. I hope you are working on a new one

Thank you and you're welcome. I have a few ideas for a new scenario, even a campaign. I want to see how this one goes though. Some posted trade problems with some of my earlier scenarios had me questioning my abilities. As you know, it takes a lot of work to do scenarios (at least for me) and I hate to think I'm frustrating people rather than giving them fun.

[Sheshong]

Loved your game, had a few problems with traders but this is a great game!
When you said it was from one end of Egypt to the other you really meant it.
Good work, hope you make more.

[Jimaaten]

Thank you Sheshong for playing my scenario. I'm glad you liked it. Very impressive city.

I've got a few ideas kicking around for some scenarios. I just have to figure out how to make time for them.

[Nyarlahotep]

Great Scenario, nice long playing WL and a great nome level layout too. i built my city spread out from corner to corner of the larger bank, with my mastabas on the island across

[Tinkerbell]

Yup, one end of Egypt to the other (plus a bit extra)! Loved it, Jim. Thank you!

[Jimaaten]

Nyarlahotep & Tinkerbell, thank you both for the compliments. I had a lot of fun making this one.

[belthize]

I've played CoTN off and on for a few years ... I picked it up again recently and was surprised to see an active forum and posts from folks who were posting way back when. I'd never registered/posted but I read a lot of the posts when I originally played.

Anyway ... I just finished your scenario ... very well done ... I really enjoyed it. I found myself sweating it toward then end wondering if I was going to drop below 200 prestige .

The player made scenarios are quite a bit more enjoyable than the original ones, I'm looking forward to wading through them.

Belthize
ps: I'm a bit of a minimalist ... probably would have had an easier time with more than 1K population .... err scratch that .. .just saw Kiya's post, 768 ... my people would have starved to death with that few.

[Kiya]

I had wonderful time building a pretty little city and collecting stuff for all those monuments... what? one more tomb!

Thanks Jimaaten

[Jimaaten]

Belthize, beautiful city. I'm glad you enjoyed my scenario and that you've come back to CotN. There are so many wonderful user-created scenarios to choose from. The original ones in the game were just a taste of what was/is to come.

Kiya, you're welcome as always. Your little city looks very grand!

[Sandra Linkletter]

I've attached two screenshots. The first is of my city as far as I took it. I am guessing that the final city would not have changed much other than the necessary expansion of the military sector on the right, and possibly of the laborer sector on the left.

The second screenshot illustrates why I am giving up on this city. Every flood season I have to spend my time watching to insure that each trader gets through the transition both ways without sticking. I have to save the game after each one makes it through successfully, and reload when one sticks. Sometimes I have to reload more than once before a trader makes it through, especially during high floods. This is, bluntly, a PITA. Also, flood season is when I do much of my expansion so I am spending my prime building time baby-sitting what are probably pathfinding errors caused by running flood plain to the edge of the map. Your scenarios have such marvelous interlocking trade requirements that one cannot afford to lose traders to these errors, so I am regretfully giving up on this scenario.

I did enjoy the city up until the traders started getting stuck, and I am going to look for others by you.

If you decide to revise it, it would also be nice if we got the notices for birthdays and so on.

Just to stave off requests for an uploaded copy of my city, I have uploaded one. Not that I think anyone will really care to look at it, but if I don't upload one, someone will complain that I didn't.

[Tinkerbell]

Howdy, Sandra!

I got a stuck donkey/trader from the Cult Center to Set site that opens after your save loads. Delete that dedicated DOP & place a new one on the other side of your city. The donkey will remain stuck, but next year's donkey will use a different path & be fine. Your image is from a different trader, so that DOP might have to be moved also. Doing this is standard solution for pathing issues.

Trader pathing is determined by location of the DOP.

Also remember to use your reserves to deny imports to your city for WM upkeeps. You could also use a few more makers ~ papyrus, weapons, armor, etc.

Your two barge landings are too close together, but are not causing problems yet. Add more on the other side of your city.

Hope this helps!

EDIT: I had to go back to your save to explain your 2nd image. Tentyris is not opened yet. I would guess that you placed a dedicated DOP next to the one for the Cult Center, next to your barge landings. While it looks like your water DOPs for the two basalts work there, donkey sites cause pathing issues. Move that one also & don't place any new DOPs there.

[Sandra Linkletter]

I had placed a dedicated DOP for Tentyris next to the copper and tin, where the leather belongs.

The Cult Temple for Set DOP should not have been with the basalt. I did move that to the food area, beyond my granaries. As I mentioned in my post, history was rather disjointed by repeated reversions to previous conditions. I don't even remember opening the Cult Temple for Set but obviously I did so just before I gave up last night.

If you really wish to see them, I also have screendumps of Maghara and Punt sticking when they try to leave the map. These traders are not stuck trying to find a route to the DOP. They become stuck when their reed boat dumps them out into head high water, at a spot that was probably walkable when they chose the landing location. I believe that is why the problem only occurred during floods, and especially with high floods.

In one of the official campaign scenarios, I had a noble's wife and son stranded just off-shore under the same circumstance. They had exited their yacht just as the flood rose. The poor things treaded water for ever so long. The noble next door to their house went to the Court of Law to accuse his wife of adultery, so we know how the bereft noble was dealing with his loss. Eventually some servants got stuck in a loop of entering the townhouse, and bouncing back to their own home, over and over, and she and the child were popped loose by this in some fashion. They had run low on goods, because the man was apparently too lazy to shop much, so I suppose the woman was calling for servants to shop, only she wasn't really home until the program fixed that situation.

To repair the overall situation in this scenario, I edited my save file to remove the flood plain next to the river at the edge of the map. I was able then to complete the scenario without my craftsmen having to walk the length of the city for their raw materials, as you suggested they needed to do. I also did it with the same 4 papyrus mills as you saw, and with the two barge landings which by my observation did not seem to cramp the barges in the slightest.

Below are the win screen, a scenic view of the final city, and the edited river entrance. It was a quick and dirty edit, so the bank is not as steep as I would have liked it, but it did seem to provide solid ground for the donkeys at the edge of the map.

It was a fun scenario, once the river edge problem was remedied. I am glad that I went back and tried the fix. Now I will return to Feast and Famine, or the Fourteen Cows, which I started this morning.

[Jimaaten]

Sandra, I'm sorry you had trouble with this scenario, but I'm glad you managed to find a way to finish it. I try to test these scenarios by playing them several times before release and working out any glitches before the "public" gets their hands on them. The pathing issue with traders is hard to do anything about since it is part of the game mechanics; if I do future scenarios, I will try your suggestion of not running flood plain elevations to the edge of the map. I know how frustrating it can be when the traders misbehave. Pathing issues are hard to ferret out since they seem so heavily to depend on a player's layout, which can vary substantially.

Originally Posted by Sandra Linkletter

Eventually some servants got stuck in a loop of entering the townhouse, and bouncing back to their own home, over and over, and she and the child were popped loose by this in some fashion.

This actually seems to be the way servants hired by nobles work. They leave their hovels heading toward the estate where they are employed. The little icon above their heads shows them headed home. Once they reach the estate, they teleport home and start over again. I've never noticed how they actually join the nobles for shopping. For example, do they teleport to join shopping noble, meet them after they arrive at the estate or do the nobles wait until the servants arrive in order to start shopping? I do know that even when an estate has been abandoned, the servants will still make the trek to the estate for a while. When I first observed it, I thought someone was looting the abandoned estate.

[wendyology]

A great one! That Ramses sure was a busy dude.

It took 44 game years mostly because I waited a bit to long to start my chariot industry. For some reason I can't take pics of my win screen but here are some other shots.

1 - The noble district.

2 - Farms, farms, farms.

3 - Cruisin' on a sunny afternoon.

4 - Got limestone?

5 - Pharaoh outlived a lot of people!

[Jimaaten]

wendyology, loved seeing your city. I especially liked all the wide boulevards. And of course pharaoh outlived a lot of people; it was Ramesses after all.

[silverkitty]

I know sometimes roads in our modern cities start as boulevards and retain the name once they are changed to wide roads, but technically, "boulevard" has a definition, and it isn't "wide road". just sayin'.

I agree that wendyology's city is incredibly pretty.

[Jimaaten]

boul•e•vard


Pronunciation: (bool'u-värd", bOO'lu-), [key]
—n.
1. a broad avenue in a city, usually having areas at the sides or center for trees, grass, or flowers.
2. Upper Midwest.a strip of lawn between a sidewalk and the curb.

Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.

silverkitty, you better contact the Random House people.