Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 13:48:58 -0500 From: "Robert F. Heeter"Subject: W2WT: Round B - The Duel of the Ancient Gods (B) Warlords - Nearly-final versions of the Round B "Duel of the Gods" scenario and starting gamefile are now available for final playtesting and debugging at Elam's Tournament Downloads page: http://www.pixgen.com/elam/warlords/tournament.html If you have any problems with the download, email elam@pixgen.com. If you have problems with the installation, email Barry Brook (PC), bbrook@rna.bio.mq.edu.au or Ivan Baird (Mac), ijb@nbnet.nb.ca If you have problems or comments on the scenario itself, just reply to me at Enjoy! Remember, Round B is scheduled to start February 19! More detailed info on Round B will follow later... -- Bob / Headquarters ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Duel of the Gods - Version 3.0 PLAYTESTING - 31-Jan-97 - Bob Heeter ** Readme: Scenario Information and Historical Background ** -- Information -- [ 4 players - 50 cities - 36 ruins and 4 temples - tournament armies ] This scenario was designed for four-player human PBEM games, particularly the World Championship Tournament. The Tournament army set is very fast and the map is almost completely symmetric, so balance should be good, making for a very interesting and relatively quick game, even with the full-size 50-city map. The AI does not cope very well with the army set or scenario setup, so I do *not* recommend this scenario for play against the computer. I specifically configured the scenario for games with 2 heroes per side (with the second hero arriving only on Turn 2) and with any razing or quest option. I recommend using the special gamefiles in which the ruin contents have been edited for balance and to match the ruin descriptions. Enjoy! -- Background: The Duel of the Ancient Gods -- It is the late 22nd century, and humanity has mastered the Earth. Energy and biotechnology, harnessed worldwide, converted the oceans and lands into a docile, terraformed womb. Order, pattern, structure, and harmony now permeate the very atmosphere. Civilization's retreat from the militant technologies of the 20th century into pastoral bliss and tranquility is now complete. Temples to the ancient gods became hedonistic vacation spas, while humanity neglects even advanced technology, growing soft with general contentment - though the usual political scandals and petty jealousies simmer as always beneath the calm surface of society. Indeed, the ancient laws of morality have nearly been forgotten, along with the ancient religions and their gods, and humanity is content merely to exist in peaceful bliss, having conquered curiosity, closed Pandora's box, and recreated the Garden of Eden on its own. But the ancient gods are not dead, they have merely been sleeping, and if Man was created in God's image, then of course the Gods are all too human in their nature. The ancient gods awaken from several millenia of slumber - for even the gods must rest sometime - and they see that Man has matched them and forgotten them! What is this? Where are the temples, the churches, the sacrifices and monuments and pyramids? Man may have matched their talents, but humanity has never seen their jealous wrath so violently inflamed! If humanity no longer needs the mercy of the Gods, then it must be taught to fear their wrath! Yahweh, ancient god of the Hebrews, and once also revered as "God" by the Christians and "Allah" by the Moslems, awakens in the northwest, incarnate and in a terrible rage, his angry breath blowing forth in a plague of locusts and monsoon floods. Zeus, king of the Greek and Roman pantheon, emerges in a flash of lightning and thunder upon Mount Olympus in the northeast. And Ra, the mighty Sun God of the Egyptians, billows forth from the Great Pyramid in the southeast! Concealed in their mountain retreats from the blissfully ignorant eyes of the humans, the Gods consider the situation. Humanity must be punished, Armageddon must come, but how? The ancient gods are indeed a vain lot, and even after thousands of years they still cannot agree which of them is the strongest and who deserves to be glorified most! Yahweh declares that he is the mightiest and sets forth to prove it, but Zeus scatters lightning at his feet and Ra merely chuckles as Yahweh hot-foots it back to his castle. Ra then suggests that since the humans must be punished, but the gods cannot agree how or by whom, then there should be a contest, an epic struggle, indeed a mythic duel of nightmare and terror: in the end, only one god will rule, and humanity will kneel before that god in submissive terror forevermore! The Duel of the Ancient Gods is thus decided upon. The battleground is all the new Earth, and the gods recall their favorite and most terrifying mythic powers as they plot their duel. From ghosts of military geniuses to vicious, hideous creatures of nightmare, the gods summon forth their mighty armies and lead them into battle. The gods even begin to enslave those gibbering souls who once were immoral and impertinently atheistic humans, but happened to live too close to the deities' strongholds, and who now submit to the will of the gods in abject terror for their very souls. Thus the gods harness their human subjects with the yoke of war, that they may power the engines of war and produce even more of the great creatures of myth and legend with which the Gods will do battle... And yet, the gods in their wounded pride remain blindly arrogant! Though most of the humans cower in their cities when the gods first burst from their mountain retreats, a small number resist. Even in the age of blissful contentment there are those who remember the lore of the ancient technologies and consider spiritual and personal freedom worth the price of their lives, and one by one they sneak to the ancient research labs of the southwest, where they harness nearly-forgotten human powers that the Gods in their slumber never noticed, and convert the technologies which redefined their world into weapons to defend it. The humans, too, can create creatures of myth and legend. The humans, too, can Duel with the Ancient Gods. The earth is now a stadium for the most intense contest of all eternity! Will Yahweh, Zeus, or Ra be the one to punish their impudent children, or will the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve prove that the creators are no longer the masters of the world? The world is indeed a stadium, but with one minor difference - all the spectators are trapped on the field of battle, and the price of defeat is death and everlasting damnation! This is not a war about bravery or chivalry, it is about treacherous survival and the everlasting glory which only the survivors will ever remember! Yes indeed, a mighty battle is brewing... -- Strategic Design Notes -- We have done everything we could to keep the map symmetric, so that no side will have any advantage (other than turn order and, in non-tournament games, the random occurrence of items in the ruins). Within the official starting game file we symmetrically arranged even the items and allies. The ruin descriptions specify what is supposed to be found in each ruin, and if someone would like to edit the ruin information to create a different incarnation of the game I'll be happy to explain how (but it's complicated and requires use of a hex editor.) The map was designed to have about 10 cities per side, with high-income cities in the "rear area" and lower income cities on the vulnerable front lines. 10 cities are "up for grabs", including the six very wealthy cities in the center. The spider-building cities in the center area are there to keep the ghosts and elementals of the White and Yellow players from overrunning the middle before the later players have a chance. (The intent is to play with the spider cities as "enemy" cities so that even a blessed elemental cannot take them without help. The spider production *must* be pillaged when the city is taken; we have not spent time making sure all the spiders that are produced there have the standard abilities.) You'll find that the map is easier to navigate north-south than east-west; thus the map is effectively more square (less elongated) than it looks. But it's still a bit faster to cross horizontally than to cross vertically - except for navies. The center of the map is of immense strategic importance, with its concentration of 6 cities (2 of which have very high income) and easy access to control all four temples. But, especially with razing off, the center is also very difficult to control, since it borders all three of the other players... The rest of the map is either "allocated" to a given side with internal road links, or else "no man's land" - a battlezone between sides. The temples were deliberately placed in "no mans land" near the strategic central "core", so that they will be frequently fought over! To balance the value of the core a bit, additional ruins were scattered around the edges, containing the most valuable items, allies, and additional gold needed for long-term survival. The ruins placed near each capital city should provide a good supply of items and allies for your initial expansion, while ruins further away will help replenish your gold and augment your forces when you need it most - right before rushing into battle with the enemy! In order to prevent players from gaining a decisive advantage by rushing to the border lands, though, the ruins that lie right on the borders contain only gold, which has its value but does not confer immediate tactical advantages in the way that items or allies would. The scenario was designed for tournament play with a 2-hero limit, and as this should be a duel of "gods", there are several flight and command items to make those heroes mighty indeed. Heroes should be able to visit multiple temples and gain many levels from all the ruins, so we chose not to include any battle items - heroes will have plenty of strength on their own. Speed items proved too unbalancing in playtesting, and gold items seemed unnecessary. -- Credits -- I used WarCorrespondent and WarCartographer by Matt Hills, plus a bit of RedEdit and a program called War2Editor, to create this scenario for the Mac-Classic version of Warlords. I then used ResEdit to create the Mac-Deluxe version of the scenario. Then I used ResEdit to make a .SCZ library file for use with the PC-Deluxe version. Barry Brook fixed some bugs and made some improvements in the .SCZ Deluxe version, and then Patrick Domning and Ivan Baird ported the Deluxe files back to the Mac and PC-Classic versions that are now available. Whew! -- Caveats -- Warlords' behavior may be slightly weird when you first start a game. Save the game and then open the saved-game and life should get better. I don't think there are any outright bugs left in the scenario. Send feedback to Bob Heeter, , and enjoy!