Has this been done?

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

I've had this scenario idea for a few days and I can't quite shake it. Essentially, it's a near future-age military scenario, USA vs China.

The principal gimmick would be that there would be completely different unit-sets for each protagonist. US units would be hugely expensive (many, many shields), and Chinese units would be cheap to build (and correspondingly numerous). US units would be qualitatively superior, and they'd have to be, as the US would be run as a Democracy with very limited access to happiness wonders (events might allow wonders such as the (renamed) Women's Suffrage to be built). In the meantime, keeping large numbers of units in theatre would be very difficult for the US.

The Chinese, meanwhile, would be a Fundamentalism and suffer the usual science penalty. Catching up to the US in technology would be difficult.

In lieu of the normal trade system, I thought a nice touch would be to create Freight units for each civ by event. For example, for each of the US and China, 1 Freight unit would be created for every nation they are at peace with - or allied with, perhaps. This would represent the value of world goodwill (for the US), or foreign military aid (for the Chinese).

Nukes would probably not be present - if they did exist, they would be created by event, or possibly unbuildable, and present in limited numbers at the start of the game.

I'm not sure if the intended protagonist should be China, with the aim of capturing Taiwan and some other US possessions in the area, or the US, with the aim of capturing Beijing and performing a "regime change". Thoughts?

There's more to this, but I'm new to scenario design, and wanted to check here to see if this a) had already been done and b) was feasible.

[Harry Tuttle]

Well, first off, all freight created by event will carry the NONE flag, I do believe, making the trade bonus somewhat small. Also, with no wonders to build, the bonus of getting these trade units would be so-so.

You could however make the "trade" units have a high value, which, if I can remember from building Gold Gulch, will allow you to disband them for some decent shields.

Though I might be wrong. Someone call me out.

[AGRICOLA]

AFAIK, the scen closest to what you are proposing is Case's Raging Dragon, which deals with a present day war between China and all its Asian neighbours plus NATO. The US plays only a marginal role in it as a member of NATO.

. . . . In the meantime, keeping large numbers of units in theatre would be very difficult for the US.

This problem can be circumvented to a great extent if there are the right, closely spaced resource squares in the US. The following post outlines how democracies can support very large armed forces with no concerns about unhappiness due to units away from home cities.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=33287&goto=nextoldest

I'm not sure if the intended protagonist should be China, with the aim of capturing Taiwan and some other US possessions in the area, or the US, with the aim of capturing Beijing and performing a "regime change". Thoughts?

There could also be a squabble over the oil in the South China Sea.


@Harry Tuttle
You can specify the home city of a spawned freight, no matter where it is actually spawned by an event. However, all spawned freights automatically carry the least valuable commodity.

[Mercator]

Re: Has this been done?

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
Also, with no wonders to build, the bonus of getting these trade units would be so-so.

You only use trade units to rush wonders? In a normal Deity game, I believe, trade units tend to be the key to quick victory by giving science and money bonuses and increased trade.

Especially if you could make production relatively low, generating money through trade could be a requirement to be able to run the military for the US, while for the Chinese the trade bonus would be key to keep up with the US in science.

Then again, that's more something for the long term. The scenario might not be long enough.

Not to mention that I'm not sure how well the AI is at dealing with trade. Making trade too important might cripple the AI, unless you give it other advantages.

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
In lieu of the normal trade system, I thought a nice touch would be to create Freight units for each civ by event. For example, for each of the US and China, 1 Freight unit would be created for every nation they are at peace with - or allied with, perhaps. This would represent the value of world goodwill (for the US), or foreign military aid (for the Chinese).

That isn't really possible. There is no way to determine how many civs a civ is allied/at peace with. Or well, actually, you could try using CSPL if you're ambitious.

Without CSPL, the best I could come up with is using flags, delays and/or "trigger" technologies to keep tabs on who has attacked whom and not awarding any Freights to civs that have killed eachother's units or taken eachother's cities in the past few turns.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
@Harry Tuttle
You can specify the home city of a spawned freight, no matter where it is actually spawned by an event. However, all spawned freights automatically carry the least valuable commodity.

Oh yeah... The trade unit turns to NONE if it's bribed. Now I remember.

[Case]

Re: Has this been done?

As AGRICOLA notes, my old scenario 'Raging Dragon' comes closest to this, albeit in a very marginal way.

I think that the idea of a scenario modeling an all-out Sino-US war is a very good one.

Some sugestions:

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
The Chinese, meanwhile, would be a Fundamentalism and suffer the usual science penalty. Catching up to the US in technology would be difficult.

The problem with this is that it gives the Chinese a free ride on civil disorder and free support for many of their miltary units. As the Chinese government is currently facing a slowly growing groundswell of pressure for reform, it's simply not realistic to assign the fundamentalism government to China - if you used something like Republic (or even Monarchy) you'd capture the internal disorder China is struggling to supress while also modeling the inefficiency of much of China's industry.

I'm not sure if the intended protagonist should be China, with the aim of capturing Taiwan and some other US possessions in the area, or the US, with the aim of capturing Beijing and performing a "regime change". Thoughts?

Given the problems the Civ engine has with naval operations I'd recomend that you go with the later option. You could use an alternate timeline, with the September 11 attacks not occuring and the Sino-US tensions which seemed to be building in early 2001 (remember the EP-3 Orion incident?) spilling over into a new cold war.

[our_man]

You could design a scenario where the player was intended to play the Chinese and recapture Taiwan. Think of the intial stages as similar to 2nd Front, except worse. You'd be sending your soldiers across in ships despite not having air superiority. It would be a desperate race to get them across to Taiwan before the USAF shot them to bits.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Hmm, on reading the responses here, it seems that my reach may exceed my grasp. Particularly with this being my first scenario.

@ Case - thanks for pointing out your scenario "Raging Dragon". I'll take a look at it and see if it basically matches what I had in my mind's eye (if it does, I see no need to go over the same ground). I agree that Monarchy makes more sense for China - I want the Chinese to have a lot of units, but it would be just as easy to give them masses of NONs that wouldn't create unit support problems.

The trade issue... requires more thought. It might just be a distraction. With a Chinese protagonist, it might be simpler to just have events-generated "gifts from the Russians" (or Indians) of cash, units or techs...

@ our_man - I like your idea. OK, assuming a Chinese protagonist:
Perhaps a very large map of Taiwan and mainland China would work. The US mainland would be one city on the eastmost side of the map, surrounded by unbreakable units (like the mines in RF). Additional cities such as Okinawa could be added, but would be heavily defended. Perhaps one Russian and one Indian city could exist for trade purposes. All other cities would be Chinese and Taiwanese (effectively US; I'm guessing that having the US and Taiwan as separate allied AI civs is NOT a good idea).

Events would generate US reinforcements as the turns passed, forcing the human player to conquer Taiwan fairly quickly, and making holding the island to the end of the scenario difficult.

OK, I'm thinking out loud here. Maybe I'll take a look at Case's scenario before putting more thought into this.

[our_man]

What you could do for the American civ is to have their only city as an aircraft carrier - just create a one-square island and change the city graphics sufficiently . Alright, it couldn't move which is a bit unrealistic (maybe a Chinese sneak attack damaged their propulsion system?) but it would mean that if the Chinese could take out the carrier city they would effectively eliminate American presence in the conflict. Of course, the aircraft carrier would have to be almost invincible.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I'm thinking of a map that has Taiwan in the middle as a large island, and a good chunk of the mainland in the upper left quadrant, and a series of islands. The US might be deployed at bases in southern Japan, perhaps as far as Kitakyushu, and the Philippines.

An interesting dynamic you may want to try is giving the ROC/USA access to fighters and (especially) bombers. These units can "hold" squares by simply flying over them and resting a turn, depriving other civs of access. The Chinese would be largely denied this, reflecting their lesser air projection, and would have to make careful use of their scant air force to poke a hole in the US/ROC patrols.

The PRC's air force is currently very limited, consisting mostly of 60s era jet fighters and a small elite core of Russian MiGs and Sukhois. They also have a large naval force that is mostly short-range, although a few Sovremenny destroyers (with AA capability) represents their elite. Both might go well with the "build it yourself and deploy carefully" model.

What PRC does have a lot of is missiles, but the true utility of this is somewhat tricky to determine. The Chinese missile strength has generally been enough to send the island up in flames if it chooses, but that doesn't help the PRC gov't at all when they'd much rather "jie fang" (liberate) the island rather than burn it. Maybe give them missiles that are actually nuclear, but say that they're typical ballistic missiles and the pollution squares reflect collateral damage. Thus, if a Chinese player launches one at the island, they're only slashing and burning their future territories.

Depending on the map size, and your skill with graphics editing, you could make ROC cities at different sizes into air bases, military installations, etc. Things like fortresses and farmland could also be changed into suburban sprawl, to give the feel of a nice zoomed in map. So a city might occupy one space (graphic: city center) and then surround it with four or eight squares of suburbs.

The PRC's main drawback right now is projection. The gov't has already expressed plans to establish a "second island chain" of islands in an arc off the coast of the mainland to help with early warning and defenses. Maybe if the map is large enough, you could put a few airbases or small cities (painted to look like tribal huts?) on these islands and then gift the Chinese player things like planes and ships when they capture them.

As far as the US goes, I think they can start off either with a huge invasion/patrol fleet of troopcarriers and aircraft carriers, and the mission is to reinforce Taiwan and then maybe take the fight to the mainland. Having them build any large number of troops probably wouldn't be too realistic - more realistic would be to periodically gift them with a new carrier group of units at key points, such as when key Taiwanese cities fall. America doesn't have much in the way of training/recruitment in the area - it's more akin to massing the needed power at home and then shipping it out to Asia in a fleet.

China could be a nation with easily buildable manpower, but difficulties in getting it to the needed area. Connect the Chinese cities with a few railroad links and a load of rural roads, so then if the Americans and ROC to block those, the Chinese player has real problems (especially true on a large map).

Taiwan has generally very good transit systems and getting troops to reinforce their cities should not be a problem. It may be worth putting a new "minefield" or "coastal defense" unit down, which would require the Chinese marine-style units to attack from vulnerable transports before landing.

For each Taiwanese city captured, all three nations ought to get substantial reinforcements. For each Chinese city captured, the PRC would probably redouble troop strength. And we should probably make the American cities all but unassailable - a project for the Chinese to contemplate when they've reunited the zu guo (motherland).

From the American or ROC viewpoint, there should be key Chinese cities to take and hold (mainly coastal ones) to stop the invasion. Again, to stop the "steamroller" effect, each lost city should translate into substantial reinforcements for the Chinese in their remaining ones - an outright conquest of the mainland should be so difficult as to be practically impossible. (This could be more accurately represented by only having the southernmost provinces in the map - once you capture those, the Chinese invasion is pretty much over.)

I'm currently in Beijing as I write this (after a two year absence) and judging from recent events, I think it would be entertaining, in a macabre way, to somehow allow an avenue whereby Taipei and Beijing sign a peace agreement... and then promptly declare war on Japan.

A final thought is how to stress the importance of trade. Taiwan currently supports a lot of the Chinese economy because businessmen frankly don't let politics get in the way of profits. It could be interesting to have the Chinese player start off economically very crude, and have Taiwan at peace (or ceasefire) and supporting them with a few hundred gold per turn. (If the Chinese are already a Monarchy gov't, with modern city imps, this shouldn't be too hard to do - they'll be in the red already.) Give them a few turns to prepare some economic cushions and then force relations to get worse and worse and stop the gold gifting once war breaks out.

This would make it important for China to prioritize its conquests, perhaps securing the Second Island Chain (and reaping the attendant events gold gifts thereof) until its economy is stable and it's no longer in danger of selling imps per turn.

[jim panse]

It would be interesting, as you (AC) wrote, but bear in mind that the US - especially under president Bush - is bound to defend Taiwan.

Furthermore, US troops in the region are quite strong with bases in Japan, the roughly 38.000 troops in Korea - not to forget the 3rd (I believe) Marine Expedition Force in Okinawa. I suspect US response to be fierce in the air and in the Taiwan straits - I doubt the US would get caught off-guard there with so many resources there - until those (and further reinforcements) are deployed.

About trade, I could only agree with what AC pointed out. If the PRC really does this it will be there financial and eceonomic ruin, no matter how "victorious" they should be - no way they could actually *win* such a conflict - for the US and the other nations (incl. Japan, South Korea, etc) would still be there.

Also, if the PRC does this being the clearly identifyable aggressor I doubt the Europeans would stand aside - even if their support (save the UK, of course) would mostly be a political. One thing to worry about would be the Russian Bear in the UN, maybe also Iran.

I would say this conflict would make China lose most of its friends on earth, ruin its finances and its economy, possibly leading to a removal of the Communist Party from power and/or substantial reforms in the aftermath of such a war.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Politics aside, I agree that the US should start with a large beginning force.

What I was suggesting as an altered version is to make the US bases practically useless for producing new troops (i.e. building troops). So the US player would have to be careful about how they use their large invasion/deterrent force. Every so often, the US might receive another carrier group of units and planes and tanks.

And the global economic impact of an invasion as you say would be very severe, and that's why I think this scenario probably wouldn't have much reach beyond just the Taiwan Strait and maybe some part of Japan.

However, if you're just writing a fictionalized scenario, then the purely military aspects of a possible war between China and Taiwan would be fascinating. The global impact could be represented by some financial losses (especially the loss of trade from ROC and US) but if you represent those too realistically, you have the status quo, namely: the PRC won't invade because it's far too expensive to do so.

[our_man]

I don't think economics should play a role in a scenario like this, and here's why: I can see the scale of the scenario taking place over a few days, or at most a few weeks. Any longer than that and there would be an increasing risk of escalation of the conflict outside Taiwan that neither the USA or China would want.

[Alinestra Covelia]

That would work if the scenario has all three sides with a finite number of assigned forces, and the imperative is to use them properly. (As opposed to the more grand-scale usual aspect which is to build stuff and deploy.) That would more realistically show the lightning-strike nature of the conflict - lasting maybe a few weeks at most.

However, if you want to assume that China has a qualitative weakness and a quantitative strength, then some element of rush-building needs to be in the game. You could just start off the Chinese with all the high tech weapons they'll ever get, and then only allow them to build low-tech units and weapons as backup. Or you could do as my earlier post suggested, which is have a "lead-up" section where the Chinese player gets to build and install things to help later.

In my opinion, this would be akin to a provincial military command getting a phone call from a gov't source saying "Looks like we're headed for a shooting war - the diplomats are doing their best to hold it off but start emergency preparations". The player has a few turns to scramble some economic safeguards and get a corps of elite units to support the mostly fodder units he'll be building later.