Year Of the Four Emperors map.
I'm fairly new to the whole thing, and have been battling with the world-builder, but I've got something that I think does the trick... I'd be interested to see what you think, and I'd be glad if somebody could make this tick over much better...
I teach intro to Roman civilization at a university in Canada. I want to use this scenario to get my students into the whole dynamics of running an empire, and the political/military side of things (I've got a lesson plan to go with it). I've chosen to model AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors - after the assassination of Nero in AD 68, four aristocrats (Otho, Galba, Vitellius, and Vespasian) in different parts of the empire were acclaimed by their troops, or bought others' support, to claim the throne. The resulting civil war was pretty nasty. So in the scenario, I've got the empire - based on the Ancient Mediterranean Mod map - divided up more or less realistically according to areas of support for the four contenders. Parthia is a threat, off to the east, and various 'barbarian' tribes loiter around the edges.
I needed a 'senate' to pass judgement on the various contenders, etc, much like how the UN wonder works in the later stages of the game - which is why you'll find the UN sitting there in Rome. Could this be morphed into a Senatus Populusque Romanus (senate and people of rome?) I don't know how to do that... I've got to fix the civics to more accurately model the Roman state in AD 68, and get everyone to have the same thing (should be slavery, bureaucracy, perhaps a police state, paganism...)
Anyway, the winner is whoever can destroy the other contenders, or form some sort of stable alliance/cultural win.
Thanks everyone!
Postscript:
I've done the slight mod that Oskar recommended, and now we've got the Senate (or rather, the United Nations masquerading as the Senate!).
Lesson plan added too. nb - this is for playing the scenario as part of a class. An even better class project - if the Dean would let me - is to create a mod from scratch, documenting the decisions made as to what to include/exclude in the civopedia, all sources, etc... I might start that as a new thread, come to think of it. Archaic Rome and the Conquest of Italy.... hmmm...
My academic research: Agent based modeling in Roman archaeology
Things fixed:
-multiplayer - should work
-UN resolutions - now more or less things that the SPQR would've been interested in...
-the map of nearer / further spain as per suggestions of Carloquillo (see below)
Things still wonky:
Can't figure out why the scoring doesn't seem to work...
Desiderata:
-religions: Imperial Cult in all major cities, Mithraism which spreads following the movements of troops, christianity in rome, carthage, ephesus, other early christian centres
-make it so that the AI doesn't change religions - can't have Vespasian converting to Judaism...
-fix the UN graphic so it looks a bit more roman like
-allow galleys to cross the mediterranean, instead of hugging the shore - at least for major routes like Rome - Alexandria (change the graphic too so these things look roman - ramming prows rather than those viking things)
-add appropriate auxiliary units (archers, slingers, cavalry, etc) in appropriate places. There are maps existing indicating which legions (and their auxiliaries) were stationed where when, but I didn't have access to the library when I started pounding this out.
-ramp up the tendency of cities to switch allegiances (a frequent occurance during many roman civil wars, as the local worthies tried to get the best deal for their own city by backing -they hoped- the winner).