Seeking advice for El Aurens v2

[Boco]

Thanks, Tech!

Latest alpha test is going technically well, but the balance is out of kilter. Trying to get my thoughts together...

• The Turks in the Sinai are simply too strong. Historically, Katia/Oghratina was a tough nut to crack, but I've gone a little overboard.
  
• Elsewhere, I've made bedouins too expensive to build on the tribal map. They're a little too scarce at the start of the rebellion.
  
• Oases in the Western Desert are too slow in building gendarmes. That causes Siwa to be too hard to take in a timely fashion.
  
• On the bright side, the Sudan mini-campaign continues to play well. Egyptians methodically take all the cities, but the Fur and Sanussis rule the plains. All towns along the line of advance have been attacked by the AI from El Fasher to the Nile.
  
• German U-Boats are being nasty to any flotilla that lingers too long on the coast. Plenty of intermap movement by them.

[techumseh]

Would you explain the role of each of the maps?

[Boco]

You asked for it!

"Near East Theatre" = The main theater from Libya to Iraq. Most of the conflict occurs here. It's pretty conventional, except that large swaths of desert are impassable terrain. Using this and other standard tricks, the map is designed to segregate Arabia from Egypt as much as possible. This keeps most Western units from roaming Arabia, and most Bedouins from roaming Egypt.

"Arab Tribes" = A placeholder for Bedouin cities. No fighting occurs here, but irregular Arab troops (i.e. Bedouins, Ikhawan, and Tribal Volunteers) are produced in cities here. Cities are named after tribes. As transporter squares (typically located in cities of Arabia, Jordan, and Syria) become friendly, the player can reinforce the Near East Theatre with Bedouins. Gives the player incentive to capture otherwise useless cities. Theoretically the same scheme works for the AI, but sadly it is seldom bright enough use intermap movement in this instance.

"Order of Battle" = A placeholder for a large number of cities named after military units. Little building or even city maintenance occurs here. When a reinforcement tech is discovered, the affected units, which have been on sentry since turn 1, are both wakened and linked to intermap transit squares. The entire scheme allows the player to see upcoming reinforcements. Plus, since cities are named after historical units, the Status/Information gives the feel you get with those old hex-based board wargames.


"The Sudan" = a mini-campaign against the Sultan of Darfur. It extends from the Chad border to Khartoum. The map also serves as a conduit between Egypt and Arabia. Certain Western and Egyptian units can take advantage of this to reinforce Arabia. The map also contains some stuff with the Turks (OOB cities) and Germans (U-Boat cities) that I want to sequester from sight. The U-Boats are built by the Germans on this map, but have native transport ability to hop to the "Near East Theatre" (which the AI does use frequently). They also have the "Invisible until attack" flag. In short they're hard to attack.

This reads as clear as mud, but the scheme is easier to play than describe. Hope this helps explain a little.

*Note to Fairline* If you were thinking of remaking the Seaplane Tender (airbase), don't! It's been replaced by a U-Boat scheme.

[Boco]

It just might work!

Okay I think I have a theme. I'll use a map of France as the spaceship itself. As structures are built, the front will advance toward Germany. Possibly, I might be able to insert arrows to depict offensives. These would be associated with components and/or modules. There's a problem — most of the arrows would be located where US and French offensives occurred.
Waitaminnit! I forgot that the USA came in and singlehandedly saved the Allies from defeat.



Question: how many paintings should I leave in the screen: 2,1, or 0? Come on, folks, don't make me design in a vacuum.

[AGRICOLA]

I'm awestruck with yet another example of what can be done with the TOT engine if it is driven by the right engineer.

By all means include both paintings. The two that you have selected seem highly appropriate for the way you are using the SS window.

The paintings and maps in the v1.0 guide add so much to the feel of the scen. I suspect that most players are like me in that they are absolutely fascinated by the work of war artists.

Could you share your source(s) for the WWI art you are using. I'd love to take a look at what else there is.

[Case]

Re: It just might work!

Originally posted by Boco
There's a problem — most of the arrows would be located where US and French offensives occurred.
Waitaminnit! I forgot that the USA came in and singlehandedly saved the Allies from defeat.

Bah! - everyone knows that the Australian Corps won the war single handed in 1918.

Question: how many paintings should I leave in the screen: 2,1, or 0? Come on, folks, don't make me design in a vacuum.

Leave both of them in - they look great and are well chosen. Do you have a larger version of the convoy picture? - it would make a great desktop image.

[Cyrion]

Boco, this is truely amazing!

Please go on!

[fairline]

The paintings look good

Some of the turqoise numbers look strange however. You may want to simplify some of the text a little as well - I'm not sure what an HE.17 is for example..

EDIT: That's because I'm an idiot HE.17 is the number of the convoy, isn't it?

This scenario has more innovative features than any other I can recall. Good work fella

[Sarsstock]

I'll second that Gareth! Finally having the capacity to re-tool the spaceship feature will open up a new door for Civ II scenario makers thats been closed for far too long.

[Boco]

Barring hex-wizardry into unknown realms ( ), the eye-punishing green, cyan, and red letters are fixed in color. The blurry screenie actually is the layering of 2 screen dumps, each with slightly different numbers of structures and components. I wanted to demonstrate how the map and spaceship overlay.

Please continue with the suggestions. My imagination was stretched to come up with the items in the list, and I'm certainly open to changing them. There are a few restrictions (this is Civ2 after all):[list=1][*]Lines 2 and 11 come from the same source (the count of one of the component types).[*]"Population" and "Support" are used in the city screen as well as here.[/list=1]

And yes, HE.17 etc. are (absolutely fictitious) convoy numbers. I cheated by using WWII letter codes and fantasy numbers. A little lame, so I'm open for replacements. The associated improvement (ss module) is currently a "Troop Convoy".

The ss component is called "Departure Timetable". Left untouched by micromanagers, it gets built the turn before a troop withdrawal occurs. "53 Welsh completes Departure Timetable". Next turn that home city is destroyed by ChangeTerrain. Now, a ruthless player might be thinking: "This turn, those units are cannon fodder." Could be a good strategy , except for the victory point penalty given for each lost unit.

The ss structure is called "Labour Corps Coy". The Egyptians supplied somewhere over 10,000-20,000 (AFAIK) labourers to France, who along with Chinese, Indian, West African, North African, Vietnamese, and even Europeans laid the logistical framework for Allied victory. The Egyptian labourers weren't all volunteers. Conscription and work beyond the term of the contracts rankled the Egyptians. In late 1918, their independence movement ignited. To reflect this, I wanted to use the spaceship to put some economic hardship on the player. Now you have to choose between raising gold to bribe Turks and building the spaceship.

[Boco]

Hijacked!

@Case: I just finished a pair of Bergerud books. Then found they were recommended by some whatshisname on Amazon. Bergerud stressed that the 2nd AIF fielded the best, excepting perhaps the USMC, infantry in the Pacific. Was there a difference in the TOE between Militia and AIF in '42-43? Or was it just experience and motivation? Did it persist into '45?

[Edit]
@Agricola:
Art of the First World War

@Case: Maritime Art Greenwich: Everett

[Eivind IV]

Very interesting use of the spaceship feature indeed!

[curtsibling]

I will have to look into this spaceship trickery too!

[Mercator]

To be honest, I think that last screen there looks pretty mediocre. There's only so much you can do with it of course, with those awful fixed cyan/red/green colours. But you can change the palette of the GIFs just fine. Though you'd better use the same palette for all "Spaceship" images. And you can change the Buttons too.

I think the use of those borders and the Comic Sans font makes it look kinda cheesy. You'd better make that Times New Roman, to make it fit with the other text at least, and Comic Sans just doesn't look too professional.

Those paintings are nice, but they just look kinda misplaced and random.

What program are you using to do the DLL image replacing by the way?

I wish I could give some suggestions as to what to do with the images to turn them into something interesting, but I don't really know. The fixed positioning is a *****.

[Boco]

Honesty helps!

Using ResHacker. Much of the tackiness does arise from using the original palette. For some reason, I had thought that I couldn't replace it. Thanks for the info!


Merc, some of your criticisms are a tad premature. I'm somewhat less advanced in this scheme than you assume. Borders, buttons, fonts, and final painting positions are to be polished (or even integrated into a common theme ) once I've accomplished a few basics such as:

• Decide on a text theme (hence the request for feedback)
• Decide whether to have any paintings, and
• Decipher where the various spaceship gifs are plastered.

This scheme needs more research. Besides working out all the restrictions, I also need to integrate this with the play-testing. No sense in having a 1918 front show up in 1916.

Once the research is worked out, I could use a volunteer to draw a better backdrop. (hint, hint)

By the way, gents, while I am very grateful for the kudos, more constructive criticism like Merc's could speed things along. Any suggestions for changes in the text?