Yes, I still have the FC_Readme.txt. It was included in the zip when I sent it for the E:BE archive downloads, but I guess the staffer who built the E:BE downloads used the zip file from the contest instead (which obviously would not have the readme in it).

Send me an email and I'll reply back and send it to you. You can find my email address at the bottom of the readme file from any of my campaigns.

Hi Gweilo,
would you mind to post it here in this thread?

Just a bit cut & paste ...

[
I played pharaoh for years and started emperor some weeks ago.
I had a look on 'First Command', loved the map, toyed around some ideas about what would, could happen ... was puzzled by the mission goals, pahh easy ... and then realized: it is a campaign ... it will continue after the initial year ... or what??? Hey, no readme!!!
]

This first post contains the assessment instructions. Remember, this campaign was designed as a contest, so these were the instructions I used to judge each entry (which were submitted as save games).

To assess a contest entry for 'First Command', follow these steps, in order:

1. Load the Mission 1 save.

A. PAUSE the game.
a. check for vassal status (look in mission goals)
b. check message log
* make sure messages are present (deleted messages is disqualification)
* check for any Defeat! messages in log (if true, entry is disqualified)
* look for more than 1 request to same city in same month (if true, entry is disqualified)
* look for a request for a good that city does not produce (if true, entry is disqualifed)

B. UNPAUSE the game
a. run game 'hands-free' until victory screen appears (if it doesn't appear, entry is disqualifed)
b. Check mission victory screen
* make sure cheats were not used (if true, entry is disqualified)
* check for proper difficulty level. Score bonus is x1.0 for normal, x1.5 for very hard.
If entry was played at wrong difficulty, it is disqualified.
c. record mission 1 score on tally sheet.

2. Load mission 2 Feb. 1215 save.

A. PAUSE the game.
a. check mission goals to insure the save was made in mission 2. The mission name should be
'A Rain of Arrows and Steel'. If save is wrong mission, entry is disqualified.
b. check layout of structures to insure the save is a valid continuation from the mission 1 save.
What to check: no new city walls and gatehouses should be present in this save from mission 1.
If city is not a continuation, entry is disqualifed.


3. Load mission 2 Jan. 1215 save

A. PAUSE the game.
a. check for vassal status (look in mission goals)
b. check message log
* make sure messages are present (deleted messages is disqualification)
* check for any Defeat! messages in log (if true, entry is disqualified)
* look for more than 1 request to same city in same month (if true, entry is disqualified)
* look for a request for a good that city does not produce (if true, entry is disqualifed)
c. Check Mongol's history log (access via empire map) to insure no duplicate messages appear.
If duplicate messages appear, it indicates the 'replay mission' exploit was used, and the
entry is disqualified.
d. Check layout of structures to insure the save is a valid continuation from the Feb. 1215 save.
What to check: no new city walls and gatehouses should be present compared to prior saves.
e. Look for excessive cash increase over Feb. 1215 saved game. Anything over $1500 should be
investigated closely, for possible 'replay mission' exploit.
f. Record number of chevrons on military unit on the tally sheet (WC2).

B. UNPAUSE the game
a. run game 'hands-free' until victory screen appears (if it doesn't appear, entry is disqualifed)
b. Check mission victory screen
* make sure cheats were not used (if true, entry is disqualified)
* check for proper difficulty level. Score bonus is x1.0 for normal, x1.5 for very hard.
If entry was played at wrong difficulty, it is disqualified.
c. Record mission 2 score on tally sheet.
d. Record city population on tally sheet (WC3)


4. Add mission 1 score to mission 2 score. Record the final total score on tally sheet.

[This message has been edited by Gweilo2 (edited 04-07-2009 @ 06:57 AM).]

'First Command' Campaign Design Notes - July 1, 2004

BACKGROUND

The background storyline of this campaign is historical. After the mongol's first invasion southward, the Jin
Emperor Xuanzong had negotiated a peace with Genghis Khan, which went into effect in 1213 CE. However, that
peace was destined to be brief. Within a few months, Genghis was once again angered with the Jins, and ordered
an even larger invasion of Jin territory.

This invasion began in the summer of 1214 CE. The Jins could do little to stop the mongol advances. The city of
Zhongdu was quickly surrounded and cut off, and the entire north was overrun. All efforts to break the mongol
siege of Zhongdu failed, and the winter of 1214-15 saw the city gripped in the agony of starvation. Zhongdu
fell in the spring of 1215. It was plundered and burned by its conquerors.

The Jin capital city of Kaifeng fared better than Zhongdu. Kaifeng was able to resist the mongol attacks and
disruptions. However, it is doubtful that it would have been able to withstand a determined siege. Yet this
siege never materialized, because in early 1216 Genghis Khan ordered a withdrawal from Jin territory. He had
made the decision to attack westward instead, and leave the final conquest of Jin for another time.

The 'Fords of Yen' is a fictitious place, which I created to have a logical location for a river with crossing
points. There is no historical record of Emperor Xuanzong ordering the construction of a line of outposts
between Zhongdu and Kaifeng at the time of the 1214 mongol invasion, but it is plausible that this occurred.

For specific historical information about the events portrayed in this campaign, visit this weblink:

http://www.koreanhistoryproject.org/Ket/Idx/KETIndex0506.htm = See the section 'Building an Empire'


CAMPAIGN DESIGN NOTES

When Granite Q and Jayhawk approached me about building a contest campaign for The Bureaucratic Examination, I decided to volunteer for the military theme. I had several design ideas floating around in my head that I
wanted to see if I could mesh together.

1. Could a campaign be designed with a very short timeframe and still being playable/enjoyable?

2. Could a small-size map be effectively incorporated into a military-oriented campaign?

3. Exploring how the scripted flood event effects combat.

There was really no debate about which enemy I should choose for the player to fight. The mongols are the
toughest military adversary in the game. To my thinking, this makes only the mongols worthy of representing
a true 'test' of military skills. Once I had chosen the enemy, it was easy to pick an appropriate historical
setting for the campaign.

Very quickly I saw that using a small size map was perfect for using a short timeframe for the campaign.
Many game mechanics just happen faster on a small map, such as immigration, trade, combat, hunting, etc.
This allows the timeframe to be more easily compressed without losing game balance.

The custom map was deceptively challenging to build. I wanted multiple invasion points, and each one had
to be placed so it would be covered by flood waters when the floods triggered. I needed to make sure each
invasion point was within the arrow range of no more than four or five towers, to maintain the challenge of
combat. On the other hand, the entry point on the map needed to be kept free of the floodwaters. The
available space for building the city infrastructure needed to be adequate while still providing a challenge.
Lastly, I also wanted to ensure that perfect Feng Shui was attainable.

The map has three invasion points. They are each placed along the river that runs along the south and west
edges of the map. Invasion point 1 is at the river crossing in the southeast corner of the map. Invasion
point 2 is at the crossing at the southwest corner. Invasion point 3 is at the northernmost point of the river
at the northwest edge of the map. This invasion point can be targeted by more than 5 towers (if they are
placed correctly), but I allowed this to offset the disadvantage of this invasion point being so close to
the main entrance point to the valley where the city must be built.

The map has fishing points in the river, and a pheasant spawn point in the southeast corner (across the river).
It is not necessary to use these for food production. They are designed to be more of an enticing distraction
than a necessary food source. A player must carefully weigh the benefit of using them against the defensive
liability they introduce. They do have some utility (especially in mission 1 to jump start housing evolution),
but they must be used with care, and the knowledge they will probably have to be abandoned by mission 2.

Preliminary testing with scripted floods revealed some very interesting interaction with military units. If
a player's military forts or troops are covered by floodwaters, they will be destroyed. Hence a player must be
careful where they place their fort on the map, and where their troops are positioned when the floods trigger.
The prudent strategy is to make sure your military unit remains behind city walls/gatehouses at all times in
this campaign, since those structures will block floodwaters. Enemy troops are effected by floods differently. The floodwaters will hold them in place for the duration of the flood (1 month). Also, the floodwaters will cause heavy casualties among the enemy units. For example, the two mongol invasions that arrive in April and
July of 1215 both have 30 troops in them. When these invasions enter the map, they are covered by floodwaters.
When the floodwaters recede in the next month, only 8 troops remain (without factoring ranged attacks against
them while they are held in place).

(Side note: I have an unconfirmed suspicion that the game patch changed the way floods effect enemy units.
I had done some prior testing in the pre-patch game, and my observations then showed that when enemy units
were covered by flood waters they were only held in place for the duration of the flood, they did NOT take
casualties from it. The patch's introduction of casualties from floods seems more fair - especially when
weighed against the devastating effect floods have on the player's own military units.)

So what does this mean for a player? First and foremost, a player must understand how invasions are spawned
when they arrive on the map. An enemy invasion will spawn by random determination at one of the designated
invasion points, UNLESS the pathing from those invasion points to the city is blocked. If the game engine
detects blocked pathing, the invasion will spawn near the map's entry point, OR at a location NEAR the
selected invasion point that has clear pathing. City walls will cause the pathing to be blocked, but a
gatehouse still allows pathing to be traced through it.

Failure to understand this game mechanic can spell disaster for the player in this campaign. If city walls
are placed so that every invasion point's pathing is blocked, the invasion will spawn somewhere unexpected.
If this happens, the invasion spawn point will most likely not be covered by floodwaters during the months
the floods occur, which means those 30-troop mongol assaults will fall on the player's city at full strength.
It is doubtful a player can survive these attacks.

I gave a hint about this in the Designer's Advice section of the First Command Game Page. (You have Granite Q
to thank for squeezing this hint out of me; I was quite prepared to be ruthless and not mention it.

Let me make one last comment about the scripted floods. Perhaps you noticed that the 'Flood!' message does not
pop up during gameplay in this campaign. The reason for this is a small game bug; if a flood is scripted in
the first year of a mission, it will occur as scheduled but its message does not appear.

The missions include scripted events for requested food and military aid. These events are chiefly for the
historical storyline, and should be ignored by the player. Zhongdu is scripted to be conquered, and cannot
be saved.

The mongols are scripted to become rivals at several times over the course of the campaign. This was done
to stop the strategy of lavishing them with gifts and then allying with them, which makes them call off their
invasions. The 'city becomes rival' event was used to do this, and it works fine. However, I had failed
to remember one side effect this event has - it removes vassal status from a player (if they had lost a
battle). This was not caught during playtesting, and allows a player to achieve the mission 1 victory screen
and proceed through most of mission 2 by simply surrendering to all the invasions except the last two. Since
that is unacceptable in a test of military ability, I introduced the special rule which forces a player to win
every battle in order to have a valid contest entry. In hindsight, I could have avoided this problem by
employing a more tedious scripting method of using 'set favor' events in EACH month of both missions to insure
the mongols favor remained consistently low. This would have been another way to keep the player from allying
with them. On the other hand, the 'city becomes rival' scripting does have a benefit. It allows a player to
continue playing the missions even after losing a battle, which enables them to preview what happens throughout
the campaign. After this preview, they can go back and play the missions again, armed with this foreknowledge
that will help them prepare for, and win, all the battles. Perhaps not a bad way to design a contest campaign,
where contestants will run the full gamut of military ability.

There are two main strategies for building the city defense structures. For this discussion I will call them
the 'wall-and-gatehouse' option, and the 'military gauntlet' option.

The wall-and-gatehouse option uses careful placement of defensive structures to block off MOST of the river,
while still allowing a small gap in the northwest corner so pathing can be traced. The southeast river crossing
can be completely blocked off with walls, and at least 4 towers can be placed there so that arrow fire can
be poured into the enemy units arriving at invasion point 1. This same defense can be built at the southwest
river crossing, to defend invasion point 2. The northwest corner of the map can be defended two ways. First,
a gauntlet-type defenseworks of at least five towers can be placed among the rocks just north of the river
(make sure it does not block off the river). This will allow invasion point 3 to be targeted with arrow fire.
Next, a double-line of gatehouses can be placed in the gap leading into the valley. This redundancy is
an option to consider because it is quite possible that enemy activity will destroy at least one gatehouse
sometime during the campaign (and gatehouses cannot be built in mission 2). Without a second gatehouse to block
enemy movement, the mongol cavalry can easily sweep into a breach and enter the city, sewing destruction.

The wall-and-gatehouse defensive arrangement is the most conservative strategy. The military gauntlet option
is more risky. A player can build a 'military gauntlet' (two long parallel rows of walls with towers spread
along both wall segments) from one of the open corners of the map into the valley. This will draw most enemy
invasions directly into the gauntlet, which is where their pathing traces into the city. While the enemy units
move up the gauntlet, they take heavy arrow fire from the sentries in the towers. This strategy is more
risky because the gauntlet must be anchored at the far end with your military unit. If it breaks under
the mongol assault, you will be defeated. For this reason, the best military unit to choose for this type
of defense is an infantry unit. Another risk with this strategy is that the enemy catapult units will begin
firing into your city much more quickly, and they may even stop somewhere along the river and begin a
sustained bombardment. Depending on the targeting option the invasion is using (randomized), this can have
devastating consequences. However, the advantages of using this gauntlet defense are that it can defeat
invasions more quickly (which means immigration can begin again more quickly), and it costs less because fewer
defense structures are needed in the northwest corner of the map.

One of the fun challenges of this campaign is that a player must build all of their defensive structures in
mission 1, because city walls, gatehouses, and towers are not allowed in mission 2. I really like the way this
adds to the excitement level of the fighting in mission 2. Alot is at stake; if a key gatehouse or tower is
destroyed by enemy activity, it cannot be rebuilt, and the effect can be similar to a dam bursting.

The most effective strategy to defeat the invasions is simply massed arrow fire, and this holds true
if you have chosen the conservative wall-and-gatehouse strategy or the more risky military gauntlet.

For the conservative wall-and-gatehouse strategy, towers can be built as close to the invasion points as
possible, which will allow the enemy units to be brought under arrow fire as soon as they enter the map.
As the mongol invasions arrive, the player's cavalry or crossbow unit should be positioned as close to the
enemy units as possible, yet still behind the walls/gatehouses. The goal is to allow it to target the enemy
troops with ranged fire without moving in for melee combat. The 'turtle' aggressiveness setting is the best
choice to achieve this. The mongol catapult units are the biggest danger, and a player should try to maneuver
their military unit so that it targets these as quickly as possible. If you have built your defense works
properly, the enemy units will be moving along the river towards the northwest corner of the map (where your
gatehouses are), and this will give you the opportunity to target the slow-moving catapults before they get
within their own firing range of your gatehouses.

For the military gauntlet defense, it still helps to build some towers near the invasion points (especially
whichever point is at the 'mouth' of your gauntlet. Use the 'turtle' aggressiveness to maintain unit cohesion
of your military unit at the other end of the gauntlet. The best tactic is to delay melee combat with the
enemy until the last possible moment, just before the mongols emerge from the end of the gauntlet. This allows
the gauntlet's heavy arrow fire to take its toll on the mongol's morale before your military unit receives
their shock.

A player may choose to build one of several different military units. For the military gauntlet defense, an
infantry unit is the recommended choice. It will be the most effective unit for plugging the far end of the
gauntlet, where melee will ensue. For the wall-and-gatehouse defense, I recommend building either a crossbow
unit or a cavalry unit. The advantage of a crossbow unit is superior firepower and longer range, but it comes
at the expense of a much slower movement speed. A cavalry unit can race all over the map quickly, but it has
less firepower and shorter range. One advantage of choosing a cavalry unit is that it needs less weapons to
equip, and the excess weapons from the initial gift can be used as homage to summon one of the martial heroes.

Which hero is the best? My first recommendation is Huang Di, for his very effective ranged attack. He has
exceptionally long range, too. On this small map, he can target enemy units almost anywhere. This can provide
a crucial edge in bringing fire onto enemy units moving along the river on the west edge of the map (especially
catapults). However, another alternative is Guan Di. He does not have a ranged attack, so care must be taken
when using him in melee combat (you don't want him to be killed), but his blessing of bean curd for the mill
can be very beneficial in this short campaign. The use of Guan Di is an interesting optional strategy, but I
recommend it only for those players who are more comfortable with their military skill. Regardless, summoning
a martial hero is a good tactic from another standpoint - it effectively gives you two military units. For
example, if your military unit breaks morale or is destroyed during a battle, your city will not surrender
if a martial hero is still active at that time.

Only 'martial' heroes are summonable in this campaign. This was done so a player could not use the incredibly
cheesy strategy of summoning a non-martial hero for the sole intent of distracting enemy units. For those of
you not familiar with this, it is exploiting a game bug. Enemy units will be attracted to a hero roaming
on your map, and this includes the heroes who do not fight. Since they do not fight, they cannot be attacked
and are quite safe while being swarmed by enemy troops. Nevertheless, the enemy troops will continue to
swarm around the hero, which makes them easy targets for a player's ranged attacks.

All of the scripted invasions use random targeting and 'fierce dragon' aggressiveness. A player may notice
that most of the invasions spawn at invasion point 1 (at least this is what we saw during playtesting). Why
this occurs, I am not sure. Either there is a slight bug in the randomization algorithm, or invasion point 1
is intentionally weighted to have a higher probability of occurrence. Suffice it to say this observation was
factored in to the placement of the invasion points on the map.

Sabotage by spies is prohibited in this campaign. The missions are so short that it is doubtful that spies
will be of any use, but I prohibited sabotage just in case.

If a player misses the 'window of opportunity' to win a mission at the end of its 1-year survival time, very
bad things will begin to occur at the beginning of the second year. This point is largely moot since the
contest requires saves be submitted in January of 1214 and 1215, but I mention it for those players who
will want to continue playing beyond the survival time 'just to see what happens'. I daresay you won't like
what you find.

The scores generated on the mission victory screens are based on population and treasury, with the
score weighted very heavily on population. So the highest scores will go to those players who have managed
to immigrate the highest number of people while spending the least amount of money. There are four keys to
doing this. First, in mission 1 housing must be either hyper-evolved or overbuilt. Either of these will trigger
massive immigration. It is crucial to get as many people settled as possibly by the time the first mongol
attack arrives. The second key is to defeat the mongol attacks as quickly as possible. No immigration will
occur while a battle is occurring on the map, but as soon as the battle ends, immigration will restart. In this
campaign, every month is precious for immigration, so it behooves a player to end the battles as quickly as
possible. The third key point is to avoid housing de-evolution. De-evolution will cause citizens to be booted
out of housing, rippling into a drop in population. This can be avoided by careful micromanagement of workers,
industries, and essential materials. The last key is to avoid overspending. This is perhaps the trickiest point
of all, since it is easy to identify walls, towers, and gatehouses as extra expenses, but how far can a
player dare cut back on building them without endangering their ability to defeat the invaders? That question
can only be answered by the skill of each player.

You may have noticed there are two distinct pak files for First Command - one for normal play (balanced for
the 'normal' difficulty level) and another for experts (balanced for the 'very hard' difficulty). Both
versions use the same map, but I found it necessary to create two pak files because using just one and relying
on changing the game's difficulty level simply did not provide the proper gameplay balances that I desired.
Here is a list of the differences in the two versions:

1. Commodities for all cities are the same in both versions, except for Kaifeng. In the normal version it
sells cabbage, clay, and weapons. In the expert version, Kaifeng sells less useful goods.

2. In the normal version, the player receives a gift of wood in mission 1. This gift does not occur in the
expert version. (This gift can be used for homage or used to speed up the training of soldiers in a crossbow
unit.)

3. In the normal version, the cities of Zhongdu and Kaifeng start with a favor of 60 towards the player's city.
They will also open trade with the player. The higher initial favor allows allying with these cities to be
achieved more easily, for those players who wish to pursue a strategy of requesting military aid. In the expert
version, these cities have a favor of 50, and their favor is reset to 50 at four different times in the two
missions.

4. Initial funds in the normal version are $8000; for the expert version they are $11000 (which start at $8800
when played at 'very hard').

5. In the normal version, mission 1 has a population goal of 400 and mission 2 has a goal of 700. In the expert
version, the mission 1 goal is a population of 500 and the mission 2 goal is 800.

6. There is an extra invasion in the expert version. It is a 10-troop invasion which arrives in March of 1215
(mission 2). Other than this, all the invasions in both versions are the same in timing and troop strength.
There are a total of 5 scripted invasions in the normal version, and 6 in the expert version.

I made every effort to distill this campaign down to its core theme - a tactical exercise in city defense.
I believe it can retain some shelf-life in the future as a useful training simulation for honing a player's
military skills.

One of the aspects of First Command that I like the most is that the entire campaign can be played in an hour
(or less). It will be interesting to hear how many times some players played this campaign before attaining
their 'best' effort to submit for the contest.

My thanks go to Um Lei Tung and Granite Q for their playtesting and feedback.

Whow, THANK YOU, you are my hero. Such a readme alone makes the scenario outstanding ...
(maybe not from your standards, so far as I begin to see)

LOL, you are welcome.

My opinion is that a custom campaign should be judged on the merits of its design and playability, and not on any other 'extras' that come with it, like readme files. I only included readme files for fun, because I love Chinese history and sharing it with others. I am the first to admit that readme files are really unnecessary window-dressing.

But I digress. If you really like this campaign, I invite you to play the multi-player version of it, which you can play as a singleplayer game. The multi-player version has four different maps you can try out, although the scripted events will be the same on each map.

Glad to see you like Emperor and I hope you enjoy exploring all the old campaigns.

[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 04-07-2009 @ 08:57 AM).]

> readme files are really unnecessary window-dressing
I heard those arguments already ... maybe I have a gene defect? I like reading game manuals on paper too ...

I really love this campaign, had a lot of fun with it, the only thing I regret is, that (after reading the Readme and becoming already hungry) I was intimidated enough to play the 'normal' version (my only experience was that from the tutorial)
Btw, as I see it, the player is always on the defense, no way to crack a fortress, right?

> I hope you enjoy exploring all the old campaigns
You know, I have to ... after the second mission the new luxury housing allowed some more companies, just in time for the final assault - the market ladies made a fortune selling silk & laquerware - but then the game suddenly stopped.

> I invite you to play the multi-player version of it, which you can play as a singleplayer game. The multi-player version has four different maps you can try out,
Same theme, another map, on hard ... great!!!
The PCs it's installed on have no network connection yet. Perhaps that is the reason for I haven't seen the multi-player version 'til now?
(the multi-pak file is in the campaign folder) How to access the different maps in single play?

> although the scripted events will be the same on each map
hmmh, maybe I should update my pharaoheventlistviewer?

IIRC, to play a multiplayer campaign as a singleplayer game, you still have to start it as multiplayer, but then select the LAN connection type. The PC you play it on does not need any type of special connection to other PCs, because you are only playing with 1 player - yourself.

Ok, I've been in the multiplayer submenu, and I looked around just because I was curious. And after that I tried to find the multiplayer campaigns in that menu, with no success.

What is the first & second step after entering this multiplayer submenu?
I see the possibilities of joining a running game (there isn't one, of course) or to host one (won't work without LAN) ...

I thought about loading the pak into the editor and saving as "single play a, b, c", but that seems not the way to go??

Has anything to be done beyond putting the .pak file into the campaign folder?

I just successfully began playing a multiplayer scenario by myself (i.e. effectively emulating single-player mode).
Please follow these steps to do it:

1. Start the game.
2. Select Multiplayer scenarios from the menu.
3. Click the 'Other Multiplayer' button.
4. Click the LAN tab on the left.
5. Click 'Host game' button.
6. In the popup, put in any name like 'game1', then click Create game.
7. In the Campaign tab pulldown menu, select 'First Command - Multiplayer' (or any other scenario you want to play).
8. Select game type = new game.
9. Select your desired difficulty level.
10. In the Player Options tab, choose your city from the cities offered in the list. Note: you can pick a different city each time you start the scenario, to play on a different map each time.
11. In the Zodiac tab, choose your desired zodiac animal.
12. Click on the 'Start game' button at the top right of the screen. The game should now begin.

Hope that works for you.

Thank You VERY MUCH, it works perfectly - somehow I managed some weeks ago to use the "DIRECT CONNECTION" tab two or several times in a row instead of all the possibilities, ie. especially the "LAN" tab ...

One thing I didn't make really clear is that you will only play on a different map for each different city name if the designer took the time to build different maps. I know several of the multi-player campaigns use only one map, so changing the city name will not really accomplish much for your play experience.

No problem at all, I was just looking for the 'First Command' maps ...
They are cute & refreshing different from the single player!

Thanks. Feel free to leave a review of it, even the multi-player version.