[Abandoned] - De Bello Gallico

[Evil DIMwit]

Latest version

Click image to enlarge.

Earlier versions:
http://rassyndrome.webs.com/CC/Gallia_GP05.png
http://rassyndrome.webs.com/CC/Gallia_GP04.5.png
http://rassyndrome.webs.com/CC/Gallia_GP04.png
http://i1011.photobucket.com/albums/af239/RASSyndrome/De%20Bello%20Gallico/Gallia_GP03.png

Original post

On a whim, I drew up a map of Gaul just about right prior to Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. The gameplay right now is almost completely standard, with territory configuration taking slight priority (but only slight) over historical accuracy.

Click image to enlarge.

The final art will, hopefully, look nothing like this -- in fact, hopefully one of you will take up the artist's role for this map because I don't really feel like doing the graphics.

[Industrial Helix]

Funny you mention this. By no means do I want to hijack your thread or anything but I did a map of Gaul about a year ago an I might as well share it.

Click image to enlarge.

I don't really plan on doing anything with it. I was thinking about pursuing it, but I thought Caesar's conquests would be a much more interesting map to do. Hopefully, after the Commie map pack is done I will pursue the Rise and Fall of Rome map pack. But we'll see.

If anyone wants this map to work on, be my guest. I can send you the psd file. Pork, you might be a good candidate as you tend do do nice work once the essentials are established. Reconquista is beautiful and your suggestions for Japan were pretty good as well.

Or if anyone wants any ideas or anything from this map, go for it.

[natty dread]

This map seems very interesting. I hope you go through with it.

As for the gameplay, I'd like to see some gameplay elements that reflect the subject of the map. I don't know much about the time period, except what I've read in Asterix comics, so I'll let someone else comment on that...

As for graphics... I might be interested, but I'm not yet sure if I have the time to commit to another project... perhaps after the Nordic map is done.

[Evil DIMwit]

I considered having some gathering objective similar to Peloponnesian War, or some intricate combinatorial system based on Roman provinces, tribal alignment, and/or ethnolinguistic divisions, but I don't really think either is preferable to plain gameplay. Any ideas?

Postscript: Asterix rocks the house.

[natty dread]

Well, like I said, I don't know much about the subject besides what I've read from Asterix, but I was thinking maybe something like tribal chiefs, druids and such...

[Evil DIMwit]

I thought of having an Asterix-inspired goal but I don't know how that'd possibly translate into gameplay.

[natty dread]

Well... you could do something simple, like having tribal chiefs as autodeploy territories or collectable bonuses. Or perhaps holding a druid increases all the other bonuses (as they can brew magic elixirs for your troops so your troops are unbeatable in combat )

[Evil DIMwit]

How about this for gameplay:

Click image to enlarge.

Alps territory starts neutral.

[natty dread]

...so those won't give bonus, but work as victory condition?

Hmm. Need to think about this...

[MarshalNey]

ahhhh... now I see something that I really like

The victory conditions are very good, great way to simulate the relative 2-sided battle between the Gauls (and Celts) vs. the Romans and the tribes paying them tribute/ransom with troops/hostages.

I'm a little sad that there's only one tribe that counts for both sides (as a client tribe and a coalition tribe). Surely there were a few others? I seem to recall in Caesar's memoirs and other sources about quite a few tribal leaders that switches sides during the course of the Roman conquest of the area.

Only two Gallic coalitions come to mind, one under Vercingortix (bad spelling there?) and... gah, can't remember but I'll look him up. Anyway, if you look up the tribes that these coalitions developed from, you might make a further bit of gameplay out of that, to stress their importance (maybe a bonus).

Also, did the Gallic coalitions include tribes from the isle of Britain? I know Caesar made some brief forays there, none incredibly successful. The really strong Roman presence came during the time of Claudius and was entrenched after a spectacularly unsuccesful Celtic rebellion during the reign of Nero. Just wondering if a coalition tribe should exist there or not.

[Evil DIMwit]

ahhhh... now I see something that I really like

Why, thank you.

I'm a little sad that there's only one tribe that counts for both sides (as a client tribe and a coalition tribe). Surely there were a few others? I seem to recall in Caesar's memoirs and other sources about quite a few tribal leaders that switches sides during the course of the Roman conquest of the area.

I suppose the Aedui did as well, and the Sequani to a lesser extent. I'm not sure about any other tribes. Right now I have sixteen stars and eight pentagons, which would make for even start positions, but I don't know if that's a necessity.

Only two Gallic coalitions come to mind, one under Vercingortix (bad spelling there?) and... gah, can't remember but I'll look him up. Anyway, if you look up the tribes that these coalitions developed from, you might make a further bit of gameplay out of that, to stress their importance (maybe a bonus).

Also, did the Gallic coalitions include tribes from the isle of Britain? I know Caesar made some brief forays there, none incredibly successful. The really strong Roman presence came during the time of Claudius and was entrenched after a spectacularly unsuccesful Celtic rebellion during the reign of Nero. Just wondering if a coalition tribe should exist there or not.

I just generally marked tribes that opposed Caesar at some point between 61 and 52, mostly those who fought with Orgetorix, Ambiorix, and Vercingetorix. I included the Catuvellauni as a coalition tribe because I wanted a star on Britain and they were Caesar's biggest opposition. They're not in any continental coalition historically, but I think it's proper that the British resistance to Caesar be signified in some way.

[MarshalNey]

...I suppose the Aedui did as well, and the Sequani to a lesser extent. I'm not sure about any other tribes. Right now I have sixteen stars and eight pentagons, which would make for even start positions, but I don't know if that's a necessity...

Er, I guess I missed something (not hard, my senses are dulled). So, the stars and pentagons are all starting positions as well? I suppose that's good, since it would make it impossible for anyone to hold all of them from the drop alone.

...I just generally marked tribes that opposed Caesar at some point between 61 and 52, mostly those who fought with Orgetorix, Ambiorix, and Vercingetorix. I included the Catuvellauni as a coalition tribe because I wanted a star on Britain and they were Caesar's biggest opposition. They're not in any continental coalition historically, but I think it's proper that the British resistance to Caesar be signified in some way...

Fair enough, I can't argue with your reasoning when you put it that way.

I do get a feeling that maybe the sheer number of tribes/cities that need to be held for victory might need to be adjusted, but's that is a just a matter of taste and math.

Conceptually, I'm happy with the simplicity; I'm not really sure if you need to add much more.

[Evil DIMwit]

...I suppose the Aedui did as well, and the Sequani to a lesser extent. I'm not sure about any other tribes. Right now I have sixteen stars and eight pentagons, which would make for even start positions, but I don't know if that's a necessity...

Er, I guess I missed something (not hard, my senses are dulled). So, the stars and pentagons are all starting positions as well? I suppose that's good, since it would make it impossible for anyone to hold all of them from the drop alone.

That's the thinking, though I'm not actually sure how many ought to be in the start positions set so that nobody drops too many on any mode -- especially 1v1. I'll run some numbers once I get around to it.

[Evil DIMwit]

Click image to enlarge.

I wonder if these victory conditions are too easy to drop. I might make it 12 or 13 tribes for the coalition and 6 client tribes for the Roman victory.

[MarshalNey]

well, I think it's still highly unlikely to drop 11 territories out of 17 or so specific ones, especially with 3 (or 7) very specific territories to hold out of 50+ to choose from. The most anyone will start with is around 17 terts for a 2-player game...

Consider that one will have roughly a 1-in-3 shot at getting a territory with a victory symbol of one of the two factions. One will have only 17 chances to get 11 (or 12) of those symbols. Discounting the fact that of those symbols, one must hold all 3 (or 7) of another, more specific type- which lowers the odds further- I still get the feeling that the odds of pulling this off are very, very low. I could do the math, but it's late and I'm lazy.

Anyway, if you want to eliminate the possibility entirely, just make one territory from each side neutral, maybe even make it special. One Roman city and one chieftain.

Btw, I just thought of a quote from a classical historian that might go well with the map, not sure...

"The Romans make a desert, and call it peace."
-- Tacitus, Agricola, XXX

[Evil DIMwit]

My fear is not that someone will drop a whole victory condition -- that, apparently, gets recalculated, and is very quite unlikely. My fear is that someone will drop all but one of the territories necessary for a victory condition, then take over the last one on their first turn and the other players will be screwed over. As it is, even if I set up starting positions optimally, there's a maybe 1-3% chance, in 2/3-player games, of someone dropping 10 of the coalition tribes including 2 chieftains. I suppose making the chieftains neutral might solve this, but if there's a way without doing so then I'd prefer it.

[Industrial Helix]

You could avoid such problems and make the chieftains and Roman cities and client tribes starting positions.

[Kabanellas]

now, this is a part of history that I like

...one of my favourite books - The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar

[Evil DIMwit]

You could avoid such problems and make the chieftains and Roman cities and client tribes starting positions.

The most protective configuration I could think of involved starting positions of 1 chieftain and 2 client tribes each; they'd have to be bundled up so that a player can't get a majority of either. In this case -- I ran this through Benn's drop calculator -- the probability of any player in a 3-player game dropping one short of a victory is about 24%. I can increase the coalition requirement to 13 tribes which brings that percentage down to 0.75%, but I wonder if that's too large a victory condition.

[MarshalNey]

You could avoid such problems and make the chieftains and Roman cities and client tribes starting positions.

The most protective configuration I could think of involved starting positions of 1 chieftain and 2 client tribes each; they'd have to be bundled up so that a player can't get a majority of either. In this case -- I ran this through Benn's drop calculator -- the probability of any player in a 3-player game dropping one short of a victory is about 24%. I can increase the coalition requirement to 13 tribes which brings that percentage down to 0.75%, but I wonder if that's too large a victory condition.

This makes no sense to me. I must be misunderstanding what you're proposing with the starting positions...

First, aren't the starting positions fixed? And there are only 4 chieftains, so does that mean that for 8 players, 4 go without?

And most importantly, if the chieftains are distributed evenly, then being "one short of victory" on the drop should be impossible, because no player can have more than one chieftain. The same arugment applies to the client tribes.

[Evil DIMwit]

It doesn't quite work that way. If there are more players than there are starting positions, then the starting positions are ignored. If there are fewer players than there are starting positions, the starting positions are distributed evenly, with the remainder getting distributed with the non-starting territories -- that is, if there are 8 starting positions then in 4p games each player gets two; in 3p games each player gets 2 and the remaining 2 go back in the pot with the other territories; and since the 'neutral player' doesn't count for starting positions, in 2p games each player gets 4.

[Evil DIMwit]

Well, the Ideas CAs insisted the draft should have a bit more graphical merit, so...

Click image to enlarge.

[natty dread]

Are you still looking for a graphics maker for this?

[Evil DIMwit]

Well, if you've got some ideas graphically, feel free to describe them.

[natty dread]

Well, I just found out a real cool way to make mountains and terrain texture and I'm itching to use it somewhere...

Let me upload it to show you, just a sec...