Civ 3 Conquests COTM 98 (Byzantines, Monarch level)

Game started: 13 Jul 2013, finished: 24 Aug 2013

This game has finished. Click here to see the results.

You can no longer submit a competition entry, but you can download the starting save below (click on an icon) to play for fun.

Open:
(The standard save)

Starting save for

Game info

C3C COTM 98 starting position - Click for a wider view of the start position

Civilization: Byzantines
Unique Unit: Dromon - replaces Galley
Difficulty: Monarch
Map size: 100 x 100 Standard
Map topology: Continents
Rivals: 9 pre-selected AIs
Upgrade Swordsment/Longbows: ON
Victory conditions: All enabled
Additional Information: Iron location is fixed and will not disappear.
Submissions due by August 24, 2013
PLEASE NOTE THE DATE.

The Bosphorous is the narrow stretch of water that both separates Europe from Asia, and connects the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Straddling this strategic channel is the city of Istanbul, which as Constantinople formed the center of the Byzantine empire.

This empire was born from Greek beginnings and a crumbling Roman Empire, but grew despite almost continuous warring with the extremely aggressive neighbours and raging barbarians. There were spectacular victories and equally crushing losses, including in one instance to the Bulgarian leader Khan Krum, who is said to have fashioned a drinking cup from Emperor Nikopheros' skull. Wars were also fought against Persia, Arabia (the Saracens), France (the Normans), Russia and the Ottomans who finally breached the city walls and took Constantinople on 29th May 1453.

The Byzantine empire endured periods of Bubonic Plague which decimated their armies, and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, and they also built one of the most famous religious buildings on earth - the Haghia Sophia, which stands in Istanbul to this day.

This scenario takes a few liberties with Byzantine history, but hopefully many of the elements are there for you as you re-write that history. The Bulgars are played by the Mongol tribe, but the Keshik has been replaced by the fictional "Mounted Vandal" unique unit which replaces the horseman instead of the knight. I have not provided a civilopeadia text file for this unit as it is completely made up, and it will never be seen again.

This intro should be read carefully, as it does contain clues to the scenario and the player should not be too hasty in making assumptions - particularly in the early game.

As alway, we hope you enjoy the game and look forwards to reading about your exploits in the spoiler threads.

As always, have fun playing the GOTM and we hope you join us in the postgame discussions!

New Players

Welcome to GOTM! Please note our no-replaying rule. If you want to enter the competition, don't replay any turns. Feel free to discuss your game with other players, but ONLY in the spoiler threads that we'll open in this forum.

Choose your Game

Besides the normal open, we sometimes provide an easier save (the conquest save) and an extra-hard save (the predator).

Open Class Game Details for C3C COTM 98

Players who choose to play in the Open Class game receive no bonuses compared to a game that would be normally be played on this level.

For the purposes of global ranking and comparison to all other GOTM scores, Open class game scores will be unmodified.

Open Class Starting Bonuses:

None

Click on the image below to download the Open class start save file.

Other info

Software Versions

To play this game, you require version 1.22f of Civilization III Conquests.

Special notes for C3C

NoAIPatrol Setting: There has been a lot of discussion regarding the barb behavior in C3C and how the NoAIPatrol flag controls that behavior. For the COTM competition it is highly recommended that all players set the NoAIPatrol flag to 0 to permit fairly consistent barb behavior across all player's games. This is done by opening the "conquests.ini" file in your favorite editor, adding the line "NoAIPatrol=0" to it, and saving.