Russian Civil War Scenario

[Cal]

note: this was originally a PM to techumseh, but he asked me to post it here, so I did.

I know it has been awhile since techumseh released it, but it was only recently that I downloaded his Russian Civil War scenario for test of time. I've played at Proletariat level and managed to bring the revolution to germany, but the entente and the whites were still giving me problems in the east. It is much like his version of the scenario for regular civ2, you have to choose whether to devote resources to maintaining siberia, or to maintaining east europe and carrying the revolution to berlin.

The only problem I may fault it with is that the scenario is a bit too... linear. You start the first few turns conquering Russia, putting down revolts, and waiting for more to spring up. There's only one "infantry" at a time, so it's easy to simply have every city producing that unit and let the cities update their production once new techs are researched. Also, there seems to be a problem with updating railroad to "double track," one time I set a worker to this, and it took three or four turns. Then I did it again on the next one, and 20 turns went by without a change.

Also, petrograd starts the game starving... is this intentional? The workers disband after one turn unless you disband them or rehome them. And at harder difficulties, the city goes into disorder and won't let up until a few people starve.

Also, one problem that is typical in a game where you have to conquer lots of small cities, is that frequently objective cities get destroyed. And city walls are expensive enough that it doesn't seem practical to rebuild them. Destroying cities is a BIG problem when you have armored trains. Once the entente got ships in the black sea, they destroyed all the units in all my coastal cities (including two armored cars), and took odessa. When I sent armored trains to retake the city, I ended up destroying it because there were too many ships inside of it.

Also, I tried attacking leipzig with an armored train, but it wouldn't let me. Did he forget to make that city passable terrain?

Finally, I couldn't keep myself from looking through the events.txt file, and I couldn't help noticing there are a lot of "non-active" events. Event commands with semi-colons in front of them so the game won't recognize them as events language. Are those not supposed to be a part of the game? What's wrong with having stalin tell you when you successfully put down the ukrainian rebellion?

Also, does it make any difference whether you play as lenin, trotsky, stalin, or... I can't remember the last one off the top of my head. I'm guessing the leader doesn't matter.

Did anyone play Alex the Magnificents last scenario, which had you playing the Russian Civil War as the whites? It had several good ideas: killed deserters or conscripts joined your army, and so did your units when they were killed.

And as for one last minor detail, the sound effects when an infantry man attacks... it sounds like he's using a barrage of lasers. It's distracting.

It is a great scenario and techumseh obviously put a lot of care into it. Playing a ToT scenario can be strange when you're used to MGE or FW, but the Russian Civil War scenario is quite enjoyable.

As for general strategy:
basically, when you have tons of NONE support units, it can be bettwer to leave cities unguarded and work solely on conquering. If you don't conquer the two distant cities in siberia in the first turn, it's very likely you never will, and you'll never wipe the whites off the map.

Also, objective cities are everywhere. At least one chinese and one japanese city are objectives. (Taking the chinese one isn't too hard, but the japanese one...)

Building comintern and red terror early is recommended. Red Terror later becomes expired by another tech you get, so it's better to build it quickly. Essential if you're playing at a higher difficulty level.

The hardest rebellion, I've found, is when the french lead czech soldiers to take the siberian railway. They get several armored trains, and really cause a lot of damage. (Thankfully, they don't know how to really use armored trains that well)

Moscow is your best producer. It's a good idea to move the capital there, if for no reason other than a cooler graphic.

I haven't played a full game yet, but I will attempt one at "comrade" difficulty soon.

[techumseh]

Thanks for your questions, Cal. And thanks for posting them here on this newly revitalized forum.

I'll try to answer your concerns as far as memory allows.

-Linear structure. Guilty. As I studied whatever accounts of this campaign I could get my hands on, there seemed to be a number of fairly distinct phases to the Civil War, with the Bolsheviks reacting to one crisis after another. I tried to replicate these crises as accurately as possible, making use of ToT's vastly superior events. The result is a historical and therefore linear game sequence.

Tech research is completely linear, given the short time frame of the Civil War, which I've streched out to 48 months. Military technology just didn't advance much, as the RCW was mostly fought with weapons left over from the First World War.

-Building double track. Don't know about this one. In an update I may take away the RR tech so only single track can be built.

-Petrograd starving. Semi deliberate. An accident which I decided to keep. I build a food caravan or two for Petrograd during the game.

-Elimination of cities. A problem which I struggled with all during development and playtesting. City walls have been made as cheap as possible, and I've tried using a Citypref. txt file, which is supposed to instruct the AI to build a specific improvement first. I'm not sure it works all the time, but it seems to help.

In a future update, I may try an event that awards a City Wall improvement to the attacker whenever it captures any city. In theory, that should ensure that every city has walls.

-No trains in Liepzig. Liepzig was known for it's anti-armoured train defenses, so that's why..... No, sorry that's BS. Just an oversite to be corrected in the next version. Until then you'll have to through Posen or Vienna.

-Inactivated events. Well, 100kb of events was supposed to be enough for anyone, but...

-Choice of leader name. Just a bit of chrome I picked up from a tip on text files by Allard. It makes no difference to the game.

-Infantry sound. I dunno, I kind of like it. At least it's in stereo!

I'm glad you like the scenario. It WAS a lot of work. One of the main objectives I had for this scenario was to show ToT's superiority in a straight up historical scenario. I'll leave it to others to decide if it did so. It can be downloaded from my site, here: http://www.tecumseh.150m.com/

[Boco]

In a future update, I may try an event that awards a City Wall improvement to the attacker whenever it captures any city. In theory, that should ensure that every city has walls.

Does BestowImprovement give the improvement to the top-rated city that does not have the improvement? For some (untested) reason I just assumed that if the civ's top-rated city contained the improvement, the improvement wouldn't get 'bestowed'. Hmmm, this may have some applications....

[Cal]

Originally posted by techumseh
-Linear structure. Guilty. As I studied whatever accounts of this campaign I could get my hands on, there seemed to be a number of fairly distinct phases to the Civil War, with the Bolsheviks reacting to one crisis after another. I tried to replicate these crises as accurately as possible, making use of ToT's vastly superior events. The result is a historical and therefore linear game sequence.

Historical scenarios can still be fun. The main problem with it here is while playing, I saw little need to produce any units but Red Guards (and the infantry that follow them), and armored trains. Most of the cities except for petrograd and moscow have poor production, and the scenario has so many crises that building anything but conquering infantry seems silly. I recognize there are other units, but their importance eludes me... maybe a better explanation in the readme? What are commissars to be used for?
The agitator diplomats aren't as useful as they could be, because bribing white cities is expensive. I remember in one of you strategy hints, you said bribing Minsk and Pskov would give you deserters that could be disbanded to build two armored trains. But it cost over 500 GP to bribe the cities. It's almost more practical to just walk an infantry into the cities and rush build the trains in petrograd and moscow.

Maybe toggling with the infantry stats would make the game more challenging? Instead of having red guards just being replaced by conscripts, and then infantry, make conscripts better at defense, infantry better at attacking, and allow all to be built at all times...

Otherwise, what I frequently end up doing is leaving all the 5-7 shield production cities building red guards and rush building units as needed in cities like petrograd, moscow, kiev, and kharkov.

It's okay to have a set goal, the fun comes from having lots of different ways to accomplish that goal.

-Petrograd starving. Semi deliberate. An accident which I decided to keep. I build a food caravan or two for Petrograd during the game.

But it's problem on the very first turn. Though I guess I understand it could make the equivalent on caravans more necessary.

-Elimination of cities. A problem which I struggled with all during development and playtesting. City walls have been made as cheap as possible, and I've tried using a Citypref. txt file, which is supposed to instruct the AI to build a specific improvement first. I'm not sure it works all the time, but it seems to help.

In a future update, I may try an event that awards a City Wall improvement to the attacker whenever it captures any city. In theory, that should ensure that every city has walls.

A good idea, but the problem is that even with walls, cities will still lose one person every time the city changes hands. (unless there's only one person left when the city is taken, then it either won't lose any population, or will be disbanded.)

-No trains in Liepzig. Liepzig was known for it's anti-armoured train defenses, so that's why..... No, sorry that's BS. Just an oversite to be corrected in the next version. Until then you'll have to through Posen or Vienna.

Okay.
I was also wondering why trains can only attack units also on tracks, but I guess it makes sense.

-Inactivated events. Well, 100kb of events was supposed to be enough for anyone, but...

You can never have enough events!

I'm glad you like the scenario. It WAS a lot of work. One of the main objectives I had for this scenario was to show ToT's superiority in a straight up historical scenario.

I agree. ToT is what to use if you want incredible amounts of detail. The problem that arises is frequently ToT scenarios have bugs. There's so much to do and program, that missing one little detail is inevitable. For example, there was one entire WWII scenario I once played (can't remember who made it or exactly what it was called...) that while the events were supposed to have you win if you ever controlled say, London and one far away Soviet city, but I was declared the winner when I sacrificed all of my aircraft to take London in June or July 1940.

Also, Final Days, by magyarcrusader, while it is a very detailed scenario, it also has a few bugs here and there.

Hispaniola had bugs too, but since it was an eleventh hour Alex the Magnificent scenario, that's not really unusual.

Other than that, I haven't really played any ToT scenarios... but it's a shame they usually have bugs.

I'm hoping kyokujitsu will be free of bugs when it's finally released.

[Boco]

I was also wondering why trains can only attack units also on tracks, but I guess it makes sense.

I'm afraid that it kinda has to. Trains stay on track because they can't enter impassable terrain. All terrain in RO is impassable except rail beds. ToT will not let a unit attack into impassable terrain, unless it is allowed to move into it.

I see what you mean by debugging, Cal. All those flags, masks, and @AND constructs can become hard to track.

[techumseh]

Boco - I really don't know if the 'BestowImprovement' action will drop automatically down to the largest city without that improvement, even it it's a pretty small city. According to the manual, with the 'randomize' modifier, it will choose from amoung the top 10 cities, so perhaps it won't work.

Cal - The idea of different types of infantry with different stats is worth exploring, although when I play, I build various unit types, though mostly infantry. Cavalry, artillery and aircraft are all part of the mix, as well as armoured trains and once and a while an armoured car. Having a few fighters can be quite valuable. I find some cavalry and artillery essential.

hint: rehome the Petrograd worker on the first turn. In the 2nd version, I think I'll use Carl Fritz's CivCity to add enough food to the city for a couple of turns. You've convinced me!

another hint: wait until Pskov, Minsk and/or Odessa go into disorder, you can get them for half price. (historically, they were Front HQ's) Disbanding 3 deserters will give you an armoured train for no extra cost.

Bugs? What bugs? There are only errors - my errors. Which will be fixed. Eventually.

One technique is to convert MGE or FW scenarios to ToT using Angelo Scotto's 'CivConverter' program. Then upgrade a proven scenario with ToT events, rules, etc.

ToT IS very demanding, but until Civ3 (or maybe Civ4) has scenario editors of any description, it is still the best vehicle for innovative and interesting new scenarios.

[Cal]

Originally posted by techumseh
According to the manual, with the 'randomize' modifier, it will choose from amoung the top 10 cities, so perhaps it won't work.

I don't know about everyone else, but whenever I captured a city building an improvement, it was always a "church".

Bugs? What bugs? There are only errors - my errors. Which will be fixed. Eventually.

Yes, this has been the exception so far... although another challenge ToT scenarios must overcome is ToT itself.

Look at the interface in ToT. Specifically the city screen. It's a lot less open than it is in either civ2. It's easier to figure out things like when the next unit will be done, or when the next citizen will be added, but looking at improvements and support is a chore. Also, the city screen is itself buggy. For instance, in Russian Civil War (although I'm sure this is no fault of yours, techumseh) whenever I click on a city improvement to see how much money I'd get, it doesn't matter if I have the tab set to "never mind" or "sell it," when I hit okay, the menu sells the improvement, even if I had "never mind" selected.

So, the program itself is faulty. Just a little.

edit: Actually, I think this may be a fault with a label somewhere. When you click on an improvement in ToT, you're supposed to have the option of selling it, selling ALL of that type of improvement in every city, and saying "nevermind." Since you can only select two choices in Russian Civil War, you only have the option of selling it or selling all of them.

Also, I'd like to suggest that the movement of the destroyers be reduced from 8 to 4. This would cut down on some of the heavy coastal bombardment the AI does.