This is the story of my game of Civilization IV Adventure Fifty-six from Realms Beyond Civilization.
Scoring: Your mission is to share gifts with the world, in the form of technology. Your score is the total number of tech gifts or trades to any AI civilizations. Scoring will be reckoned either when you win or in the year 1600 AD, whichever comes first.
This is tracked using the AIs' existing internal counter for tech trades, used for the diplomatic modifier "You have shared your technological discoveries with us". Any gift or trade of any technology to any AI will count.
Additional scoring: 10 points for a diplomatic victory (everybody loves Santa!), 5 points for any other victory.
Mod Required: This adventure uses a small mod with the following effects:
- Displays your scenario score
- Removes the chance that an AI will forget a previous tech trade
- Adds a bit of extra fun that you'll find out quickly
The idea came to me when thinking through past games. We've started with all sorts of wonders and terrain and great people and corporations... what's something we haven't? Units... combat units make a really onedimensional game, how about noncombat units? Workers. Obviously they are Santa's elves and so the scenario is Santa's Workshop. So how can we set up a game around Santa giving gifts... units don't work so well for that but technology is perfect.
Learning from the lesson of the Vikings pillaging game, this demanded a mod to automatically keep track of the score. I think it will work out better this time, having the mod coded and ready ahead of time, rather than that fiasco in the pillaging game about stripping down BUG to a logger.
The extra bit of fun is that the city names are modded so that the capital is North Pole and then the rest of the cities are from Canada. I've wanted to do that forever but it was never worth a mod, but this is the perfect time to sneak it in. :)
De Gaulle is the leader both for the traits and starting techs and traits. Santa himself is most certainly Charismatic and Industrious. :) And Industrious will be needed to compete on wonders when you're giving the techs away. Wheel and Agriculture give the extra workers things to do plus quick access to Pottery.
As for the map, obviously the starting position is thematic, at the North Pole with Santa's reindeer. (Try not to think about eating them for food. Maybe they're helping you gather wild food or plant fig trees or something. I dunno.) But it's also an interesting twist strategically: What in the world do you do with this capital? Move offshore with Moai Statues? Take what commerce you can get with cottages on the tundra river? Save the forests for National Park? Don't try to grow, just whip stuff using the deer?
I picked AIs that should make a diplo victory easy, with good natural attitudes and favorite civics that the player will probably be running in the modern era.