Tweet
During this summer I was reading up on my Chinese history (mostly 1750 to present) and I was thinking about making a scenario for the relevant time periods. The following thoughts crossed my mind:
1. One of the probable reasons why there is such a dearth of Chinese scenarios in Apolyton is probably because very few people have an understanding of medieval and ancient China - especially difficult would be the aesthetics of units, cities, and city improvements.
1a. Thus, I could set the scenario closer to the modern period of China when the style of dress and city etc. are easier to locate in library resources and other materials. In other words, the more modern, the better.
2. Most scenarios are combat based. China in the 1800s and 1900s had more than enough of this. Possible conflicts include the clashes with the Manchu rulers, the Boxer Rebellion, the Taiping Rebellion, the various wars against European powers. The main problem with this is that, just like in the World War 2 scenarios, China is largely a passive and decayed faction. She lost most of these battles and if the overwhelming corpus of China appearances in Apolyton scenarios is as a victim nation in the world wars, then that does the country something of an injustice.
3. A scenario that focuses on the civil war and the accession of the Communists could therefore be aesthetically easier to program, and would do well to focus on combat. The Communist forces were hailed as heroes while they held the revolutionary, guerrilla-based resistance efforts. A scenario that focused on that time period would sidestep the sticky questions of misrule and corruption that later dogged the Communist party (and in fact every ruler before them). Later scenarios could try to address how the Communist rule met with these problems.
4. So how about a Long March scenario? I'm thinking of something a little like the Sword of Shannara scenario, wherein the action was focused on one single unit, traveling around the cities. This scenario would be unusual in that there is no real building going on. The player would play as the Communists under Mao Zedong, and would have to move essential units across the map from the southern Jiangxi Soviet (abandoning their main base) and up northwards in a tortured arc towards the Yan'An communes in Shaanxi.
All the while they would have to absorb various attacks from better-armed and stronger Nationalist troops. Tactical scouting would be essential, as would a knowledge of when to send units on a suicidal attack to break the enemy lines.
Every so often, there would be cities set to produce capitalization. When the Communists reached those cities, they would trigger events that would give them more units. Some cities would have grain stores (resulting in more foot soldiers) and others would have stores of ammunition (resulting in artillery and stronger units). The cities, once under Communist control, cannot be set to produce anything else. The benefit would be that the events would trigger regular recruitment of more forces in those cities. This would keep the pressure on the Communist player to continue moving towards the Yan'An city. (Once they take that, then various techs could be made available to allow them to start building improvements and units.)
Essentially, the scenario would be one of balancing cautious scouting and the need for speedy flight.
The Nationalists would probably have overwhelming numbers of units with high defence ratings staking out vital mountain passes, and a few units with very high attack ratings to chase and try to bring down the Communist vital units (General Zhu De, Chairman Mao Zedong, Comrades Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, etc).
If any of these units is killed, the Communists lose. On a large enough Test of Time map, this could use a mixture of impassable terrain and partisan movements to simulate the tortured convolutions of the march.
I am just planning this and probably will not start programming it until later in the month. But either way I'm hoping for suggestions and maybe see if this can help rectify the lack of China scenarios.
1. One of the probable reasons why there is such a dearth of Chinese scenarios in Apolyton is probably because very few people have an understanding of medieval and ancient China - especially difficult would be the aesthetics of units, cities, and city improvements.
1a. Thus, I could set the scenario closer to the modern period of China when the style of dress and city etc. are easier to locate in library resources and other materials. In other words, the more modern, the better.
2. Most scenarios are combat based. China in the 1800s and 1900s had more than enough of this. Possible conflicts include the clashes with the Manchu rulers, the Boxer Rebellion, the Taiping Rebellion, the various wars against European powers. The main problem with this is that, just like in the World War 2 scenarios, China is largely a passive and decayed faction. She lost most of these battles and if the overwhelming corpus of China appearances in Apolyton scenarios is as a victim nation in the world wars, then that does the country something of an injustice.
3. A scenario that focuses on the civil war and the accession of the Communists could therefore be aesthetically easier to program, and would do well to focus on combat. The Communist forces were hailed as heroes while they held the revolutionary, guerrilla-based resistance efforts. A scenario that focused on that time period would sidestep the sticky questions of misrule and corruption that later dogged the Communist party (and in fact every ruler before them). Later scenarios could try to address how the Communist rule met with these problems.
4. So how about a Long March scenario? I'm thinking of something a little like the Sword of Shannara scenario, wherein the action was focused on one single unit, traveling around the cities. This scenario would be unusual in that there is no real building going on. The player would play as the Communists under Mao Zedong, and would have to move essential units across the map from the southern Jiangxi Soviet (abandoning their main base) and up northwards in a tortured arc towards the Yan'An communes in Shaanxi.
All the while they would have to absorb various attacks from better-armed and stronger Nationalist troops. Tactical scouting would be essential, as would a knowledge of when to send units on a suicidal attack to break the enemy lines.
Every so often, there would be cities set to produce capitalization. When the Communists reached those cities, they would trigger events that would give them more units. Some cities would have grain stores (resulting in more foot soldiers) and others would have stores of ammunition (resulting in artillery and stronger units). The cities, once under Communist control, cannot be set to produce anything else. The benefit would be that the events would trigger regular recruitment of more forces in those cities. This would keep the pressure on the Communist player to continue moving towards the Yan'An city. (Once they take that, then various techs could be made available to allow them to start building improvements and units.)
Essentially, the scenario would be one of balancing cautious scouting and the need for speedy flight.
The Nationalists would probably have overwhelming numbers of units with high defence ratings staking out vital mountain passes, and a few units with very high attack ratings to chase and try to bring down the Communist vital units (General Zhu De, Chairman Mao Zedong, Comrades Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, etc).
If any of these units is killed, the Communists lose. On a large enough Test of Time map, this could use a mixture of impassable terrain and partisan movements to simulate the tortured convolutions of the march.
I am just planning this and probably will not start programming it until later in the month. But either way I'm hoping for suggestions and maybe see if this can help rectify the lack of China scenarios.
I just think R3K is exactly the kind of story CivII was meant to represent, is all.
Oh well.. maybe someone else who's better at this sort of thing can come up with something.
Comment