US Civil War 2012 - Scenario Idea/Discussion

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by GhostOfDisco
Well, they are all NONE units...

I should have guessed it couldn't be so easy: you would have found it...

Maybe it has to do with the obsolescence tech of the units? Check here: disbanding units

[GhostOfDisco]

Ah! That makes sense! I made them "obsolete" with the same tech that "enabled" them, so that the AI or player, of course, couldn't build them.

So I immediately have come up with a solution with the problem: make the "king" units' prerequisite and obsolete tech either the other civ's "unique" tech, or the civ's own "obsolete" tech (Not Union for the US pols, Not Commonwealth for the CNA equivalents.) I'll see what I can do.

[EZRhino]

Or you could set them to no,no and then not worry about the Blue states, or worse, the Red states massing armies of Senator Hillary Clintons. Perish the thought.

With no,no they won't be buildable and also won't go obsolete, but yet it is still possible to place them with the scenario editor or creating them by events.

[GhostOfDisco]

OK, I've got a little dilemma here -

Recently, I've been noting the low defense values of the fighters and how they always seem to lose defensive dogfights unless they've got the "scramble" bonus (or is it just me?) I've wondered about how to solve the problem, and thought of the idea of making the defense values of the fighters half their offensive value, and using the "2x against airplanes" flag. That way, I thought, the fighters would be valuable escorts for bombers (who have puny defense stats) and they'd be good for defeating any air units that attack the cities they're in. Good idea, right?

Well, as it turns out, due to the jacked-up offensive stats I've given the planes, to make their defense half of that would be to make them formidable defensive units not only against air units, but against ground as well, and given their range, it seems sort of a cheap shot to make them able to, say, shore up an isolated city's reinforcements instead of having said security's ground defenses depend on, well, ground units.

So I'm wondering what I should do.

(On a related note, I've added events where, when playing US or CNA SP, your AI adversary spawns fighters in several major cities every turn as well as the armor he did beforehand. It does seem add a bit to the AI's punch, which I still think might need to be improved.)

[GhostOfDisco]

Started modifying the techs to make a lot of "no, no" techs into "Useless Techs" (to make it tougher for research) today, but when I tried to load the scenario I got this:

AppName: civ2.exe AppVer: 0.0.0.0 ModName: ntdll.dll
ModVer: 5.1.2600.2180 Offset: 00001230

Don't know why (La Belle Epoque won't load up either - though I think I might have the 1.1 or whatever patch), but here's the latest rules.txt, so hopefully someone can pinpoint the problem:

[EZRhino]

Hey.
The reason your rules.txt is crashing is because many of your techs list themselves as their own prerequisites. Civilization will absolutely not allow technologies to be their own prerequisites. If you want techs not to be researchable and available only through events make them no,no. Otherwise instead of AFl,AFl for instance, try instead AFl,nil

Problems I've had with modifying rules.txts in the past were usually due to misspelled abbreviations in the prereqs. Merc wrote a handy tool to help spot these. DL Here.

[GhostOfDisco]

Originally posted by EZRhino
Hey.
The reason your rules.txt is crashing is because many of your techs list themselves as their own prerequisites. Civilization will absolutely not allow technologies to be their own prerequisites. If you want techs not to be researchable and available only through events make them no,no. Otherwise instead of AFl,AFl for instance, try instead AFl,nil

Well, the reason why I did that was I wanted to make techs their own preferences was so I could give them the technology in the Cheat mode without having it available as valid research. I was going to change it to "no,no" once the civs had their techs. I'll try what you said. Or something.

[GhostOfDisco]

Well, I got the rules thing solved - though it seems that Canada and Mexico have Factory and/or Mfg Plant tech, and thus can give it to the Union and/or CNA at will. Not good (though both Canada and Mexico have one factory+plant city each (Montreal, I think, for the Canucks, Mexico City for the Mexicans), which I did to give them maybe something of an edge.)

Still wondering about fighters and such - the whole problem of ensuring fighters can defend themselves in air, without them being too defendable on the ground. Looking around, it seems that Curt was able to solve this for his Dictator scenario by giving the bombers strong attack, but weak defenses, and giving the fighters (such as the P-51) not-so-strong attacks for ground units overall, but strong enough to shoot down bombers, plus defenses strong enough to defend against other fighters. I've thought about that, but the AI likes to be aggressive with air units, and doesn't seem to care if the unit is a fighter or a bomber, so it might result in the AI sending in waves after waves of fighters against cities in futile aerial assaults. As I want the AI to pose a challenge to the SP player, this is a problem.

I've considered doubling all the units' defense and attack ratings, hoping to keep the unit-to-unit ratios and proportions intact, and modifying the aircraft to suit my needs (as larger numbers allow for more subtlety in variation), but I'm wondering just how it will effect the battle calculations (a difference between attack and defense points of 1 seems different than a difference of 10, for example.) Again, advice would be appreciated.

On another note, I've been gung-ho about making Transport units into something like CS "Invasion Fleet" from Dictator, until I realized that in order to bombard cities, the "Invasion Fleet" couldn't be a "submarine" anymore. As the AI uses the "sub" Transports more or less correctly (though the AI, in recent playtests, puts Hillary and Obama on a transport for an amphibious assault on Washington and/or Baltimore. Maybe they're trying to negotiate peace or something. ) Some experimentation may be required.

Switching subjects yet again, did I make the Urban defense value too high? I put it as high as the Mountain value to show the advantages a defender has in urban terrain, but I'm wondering if it is just too high. (Though maybe not - from my calculations, it seems that a Veteran Cruise Missile will still be able to destroy a Veteran mech infantry inside a walled Urban city. But if the defender is fortified...)

Also, the "light" terrain option seems to have a problem of its own - while units like all the camouflaged infantry stand out better against the lighter terrain, some units (like the Union's mechanized forces) actually seem to blend in more with terrain like the lighter grassland and so forth. (Some experimentation my be needed to correct this problem.)

Looking at kobiyashi's LOTOR scenario, it seems my scenarios have more events space available than I thought, so I might try to make some "city taken" events in order to goad the AI into being more aggressive or launching a counterattack or something (though, given the space taken by just one unit creation event, that might not be that many.)

Finally, while as of right now I'm sticking to the Black Eagle for the CNA's main tank for no other reason than the fact that it's on the title pic, here's an "original" tank I whipped up using the Type 90 turret and Leopard chassis:

[GhostOfDisco]

"Is anybody there? Does anybody care?"-John Adams, 1776

Been playtesting the alpha as the Union in Deity mode, and have noticed a few things:

• The AI always, always, manages to take Cleveland in the first turn. An armor/artillery attack, followed by a unit of the French Foreign Legion jumping into the city. I've managed to retake it with an air assault followed by un-fortifying a partisan and moving him to retake the city.
• Likewise, the AI can always be guaranteed to almost take Baltimore. Almost. The AI appropriately launches an aggressive assault against the Maryland city on the first turn, but always stop short of taking it. It is almost certain that the AI will not, for some reason, attack the Mobile Howitzer unit located in the city, and thus when I move, I can use said 3-move artillery piece to wipe out the mass of Leclercs, Black Eagles and Mobile Howitzers arrayed to take the city.
• On a similar note, there's always a Black Eagle the stops at the outskirts of Indianapolis (probably due to taking up all it's movement space.) I always manage to artillery it out of existence, but still...
• On a similar note, a F-15E Strike Eagle always ends up at 103,53 by the time I can move. Not sure why (probably attacking some of the mechanized units along the Illinois border), but a quick look-through of the events filed ruled out an accidental spawning there.
• New York, Chicago, and Detroit (among others) are tough nuts to crack, especially with the unit-spawned events and all. I wonder if they can be taken at all! (Well, maybe by AGRICOLA... ) The AI is known to counterattack, too - one I finally managed to take Springfield - only to see it retaken when it was the CNA's turn to move!
• For some reason, (maybe to do with the fact that the game begins with the Commonwealth moving) the US gets a "freebie" turn on Feb 2013, meaning that it after its Jan 2013 turn, it moves again before the CNA has a turn to react. This will have to be remedied.

On another note, I noticed while creating more events for the file that I was getting close to running out of events space. To create more space, I decided to trim my lengthy events texts from their long length down to the length of, say, the general length of a Dictator 6 event file text apiece.

While doing so has created a lot more space for spawn events and such, I did like the depth of analysis and such afforded by the long text.

Anyway, attached here is the latest, "condensed" version of the USA single player events texts. It might be incomplete (I might add some more "spawn reinforcements" events in there), but it does have a lot of stuff.

Also, if you look in the events file, you'll see I've used a combination of what I've deemed the "2194" style of keeping a defensive AI "active" (offensive/defensive units are spawned in key enemy cities each turn) with a variation of AGRICOLA's plan for a "semi-competent" AI defense (once a certain city is taken, reinforcements are spawned in a nearby city/ies.) What do you think?

(I'll get around to writing the CNA single player version of the condensed-yet-expanded events, but that might prove to be a bit harder than the Union - writing reinforcements for the CNA, all you have to do is write them progressively deeper into the CNA's territory, something that might be more difficult for the larger and geographically unified Union).

[:) Smiley]

Speaking of events, one thing that would add some depth to the game is introducing a little more action to the western front. Right now it's a city-by-city slog along the Ohio River, with the wide open spaces of the Rocky Mountains being of less consequence. Something that would force a diversion of forces or better yet, a chase through the West, would be

[GhostOfDisco]

Hmm, you might have a point. As for the "slogfest," at least it's nice to know that the CNA campaign isn't exactly a pushover. Attached to this post is a the latest (in progress) CNA events file. I've been doing some "Agricola defense" events, and was wondering, among other things, how "deep" into Union territory the defense should go. The CNA's main goal, after all, is not to conquer the Union (though you can do that if you want to - and can) but to prevent the Union from conquering it.

When I read your mention of how to "spice up" the Western theater of operations, I thought mainly of commandoes, insurgents, and the like.

Some ideas of Western events to make the Union campaign more interesting:

• CNA-supported Mormon polygamist insurgents (not that all Mormons are polygamists nowadays, but there are those fringe groups...) Since Salt Lake City seems like a major staging point for Union offensives in the West, it seems geographically appropriate. It's also a case of "strange bedfellows," for both the CNA elite and the polygamists reject the Judeo-Christian social conservatives' insistence on exclusive heterosexual monogamy, though for completely different reasons.
• In a homage to the USA2010 scenario found in the "BestNet 2" section of Fantastic Worlds, the Chinese use the UN World Heritage Site program to airlift forces into somewhere like Yellowstone or something. (The US protests, saying, basically, "um, that's not what the World Heritage thing is for", but to no avail.)
• CNA funds and supplies some Roswell enthusiast extremists, promising them to make public everything at Area 51 if they capture that and/or the surrounding area.

Methinks said events would probably involve the Insurgent units, with a Mountain Artillery to back them up (given said arty has the "treat all squares as road" flag, they could keep up with the guerrillas.) I might put have some barbarian Klansman be randomly spawned in the South at some times, to spice things up there (hey the South (at least in my map) has a ton of hills, jungles and whatnot. Perfect territory for insurgents and the like. I've thought about using the Chinese paratroopers for the World Heritage event.

I can't think of many other anti-CNA equivalents, except maybe for Unionist partisans near Spokane (given that it, according to one poster here, voted red when its state voted blue), or maybe some commando raids into California or something. Any suggestions?

[:) Smiley]

Nice touches, by far my favorite is the UN World Heritage Site airlifts.

Since the red/blue divide is often between cities and rural areas, one way to add some more realism and dynamism to the scenario would be to give CNA more cities and the Union more guerillas... or better yet, give the CNA troops that actually fight better in cities while Union troops fight better in the wilderness. The all-as-road flag is a good start. I'd expand on the guerilla warfare by making Union pillaging of CNA improvements a useful strategy.

To borrow from an old technique, the CNA could have air units with extremely limited range (maybe up to 3 squares) to represent local forces (unions, immigrant groups, etc) operating within a certain city.

[GhostOfDisco]

Alpha 0.1.5 is out.

It's not complete, and I think there still are some problems left to work out, but I hope you'll enjoy it. (I left the old alpah up there for a reason).

As always, constructive criticism is always welcomed, appreciated, and helpful.

Now, if only I had those last few graphics I need...

[:) Smiley]

I tried running the CNA events on 0.1.5 and I get an error message: "there was an error encountered in the events.txt file"

[GhostOfDisco]

Originally posted by Smiley
I tried running the CNA events on 0.1.5 and I get an error message: "there was an error encountered in the events.txt file"

Yeha, I know. Anyone know why? (Might have to look through the file myself.)