Justinian the Great PBEM

[McMonkey]

Hun - Cobra
Goth - Ingvar
Vandal - McMonkey
Frank - Cupcoffee
Persian - JPetroski
West Roman - AI
East Roman - Jerec

I am looking to start a ToT PBEM of Winterfritz's Justinian the Great.

[cupcoffee]

Are you sure you'd even be able to survive with human controlled Goths, Vandals and Franks? :s

If you do get this game started though, I'd like to take the Franks.

[Ingvar]

Never played this scenario.
Goths maybe?

[McMonkey]

Are you sure you'd even be able to survive with human controlled Goths, Vandals and Franks? :s

I guess it is set up for the Western Romans to take a good kicking, but I'm up for the challenge!

Never played this scenario.

Its a real classic. Not sure how it will play as a multiplayer game but I'm willing to find out. At least it should be quick to play!

[Jerec]

Ooh! I love this scenario! Great choice, McMonkey.

East Roman.

I guess it is set up for the Western Romans to take a good kicking, but I'm up for the challenge!

Should be fun.

If we have human players for the Goths, Franks and Vandals, maybe we should cut out the events that give them reinforcements every 8 turns? After all, the events were meant to compensate for an AI player.

[techumseh]

Justinian is one of my favorite scenarios, but is not an ideal choice for multi-player, since the Western Empire is a sitting duck for the barbarian tribes (Franks, Goths, Vandals), who are generated mostly by historical events. The Huns would be difficult to stop in the hands of a good human player. It works best as a single player scenario, using the Eastern Empire.

[McMonkey]

Ok, it might be a good idea to cut these events before we begin. Should we leave the Huns to the AI? I'm willing to give it a go even if it turns out to be a massacre. It would give me a small taste of what the Romans felt, from the comfort of my office of course

[cupcoffee]

What we could do is remove the alliances between the barbarians, that might slow them down since they might get in each others way and it might allow the Romans to use some of that old divide and conquer that they used to do so well back in the days.

And I guess if we left the Huns to the AI, should you get wiped out as the Western Romans, you could then take over the Huns for some payback.

[McMonkey]

Sounds ok!

[cupcoffee]

Another thing I thought of to try to help the WRE survive is if you can find a decent unit graphic for him, why not have an event that gives them Aetius as a general unit in 433AD?

The guy did after all manage to beat back Attila, so I'd say it would be justifiable to give him similar stats to either Attila or Belisarius.

[McMonkey]

Sounds good to me. Loads of Graphics around to use.

[Alcibaides]

I have not played the TOT version of this game, only the MGE version. But I can tell you that playing as the Western Romans in MGE version is incredibly hard even against the computer (Unless you allow yourself to bribe your opponents cities using diplomats, then it is fairly easy).

Against human controlled barbarians I think it would be impossible. maybe if you got rid of the events file, or took a look at it and modified it, that might help.

[Ingvar]

Give the West-Romans some extra units to even the situation out.

[McMonkey]

It sounds like the best thing for me to do is take over the Vandals. If we leave the West Romans, Huns and Persians to the AI then it is the Vandals, Goths and Franks versus the Eastern Romans and possibly each other.

[Ingvar]

Hm, but won't the Est Romans be even more of a push-over in this case?
Unless the "barbarian" nations are divided the East Romans won't have a chance I guess. The Vandals\Goths\Franks will pick the Romans apart, and might turn out to be far too much for the East Romans.
Or maybe not, the only way to see is to play I guess.