US Civil War 2012 - Scenario Idea/Discussion

[GhostOfDisco]

Originally posted by Jerec
On the balance-

The Union has a clear cut superiority in ground troops, with Fort Knox, etc building M1A2 Abrams and other wonderful units.

Yeah, I've seen that. I've eliminated mosted of those discrepancies in my, though at the time I did so I left a few in (Fort Knox, I think) in for the heck of it, though I probably will go back

GoD, did you intend for both sides to be played? Or just the Clinton/Obama side?

Both sides. That's why there's different events files for the Union and the Commonwealth - so that either side has its own unique SP challenge.

In fact, the reason that I gave Canada and Mexico the ability to build all their own units (including tanks and planes) at the get-go was to offset their obvious disadvatages in size and resources vis a vis the US and CNA.

Also, the "Yankee" civs (USA and CNA) shouldn't be able to build tanks and stuff until they've researched the appropriate techs (unless you're playing with one of the specific SP events files, in which case the enemy will be spawning Abrams and/or Bradleys every turn (if playing with the CNA events file) or will spawn Liberator tanks every month (if playing as the US.)

[GhostOfDisco]

Well, I've done some graphics updating...

I've made a new CNA flag, as the old one really wasn't very clear or anything. The new one reflects the unit shield, so it should be good.

Also, you can see below some of the proposed icon graphics for the "Propoganda Center" city improvement, which I think would be more appropriate than "Police Station." Most of them are national (how do you make that batch program thingy? I'm thinking of making it so you can "choose" the right icons, units, events files etc. for each nation's SP game), each one trying to show the current units as the heirs to heroic soldiers of old (CNA/USA troops=Continental Army, Canadian soldiers=1812 Voltiguers, etc), the leftmost one shows a gurellia and a purple flag (purple being between red or blue, or arguably one of the two), and the rightmost one is a blue-to-red/left-to-right "generic" graphic, with Michael Moore for the left-wing propoganda, and Ann Coulter for the right.

There's also something I'd like your opinion on: should I keep the gunboats, or scrap them so as to free up another unit slot?

[Jerec]

The transport and battleship unit could take on quite a few gunboats. Seeing the superiority, I don't build them at all; I just take care of my own battleship unit which rules the seas after I took care of the Commonwealth's battleship and transport. IMHO, do cut the gunboat out. This is a mainly land battle after all.

btw, could you put ALL the units in the cyclopedia? You did a pretty good job on this point, but it was irritating being forced to look up the mtn. battery in the rules.txt.

[:) Smiley]

This is looking better and better; will you have it done by November?

[GhostOfDisco]

Hopefully.

And since it takes place after the election after the next one...

[GhostOfDisco]

Did a little bit of playtesting, modifying and so forth last night...

For some reason, the game doesn't like it if I try and take Canadian cities as the Commonwealth. It shuts down immediately (while still playing the in-game music) if I try to take London or Toronto, and seemed to be fine for a little bit when I took Vancouver, but soon shut down (and kept playing the tune). However, it didn't do this kind of thing when I tried to take Union cities like Baltimore or Mexican cities like Monterrey and Mexico City. Don't know why it's doing this...

Also I've been giving some thought to the tech tree. While EZRhino's suggestions are imaginative, the scenario's tech tree is more about re-establishing the military-industrial complex and such rather than researching new technologies. I might use his "Distributed Manufacturing," tech, but still... I'm thinking that the "industrial" part of the tech tree will be about re-industrializing America's (service-oriented) economy, while the "naval" branch of the tech tree (which begins with "Naval Advance #1, "Science Advance 2" and "Code of Laws," and ends with "Science Advance 4" which, with "Mfg Plant Tech" leads to the ability to build battleships) will be about re-establishing naval stuff and re-discovering the doctrine of Amphibious Invasion with perhaps some emphasis on Shore Bombardment, which means the ability to build Invasion Fleets/Amphibious Assault Groups and later Battleship Task Forces would be down its line.

(Speaking of boats, should I get rid of the gunboats and, by extension, the navigable rivers? I know at least one person here thinks so but I'd like some other opinions - if there's a consensus that they would probably add much to the game, then I'll definitely abandon them. If, not, well...)

Not to mention I've done a bit of graphics modifications, too. Namely the icons. I changed the Factory graphic to what the Mfg Plant had (now that the "Factory" is now a "Munitions Plant") and gave the Mfg Plant a pic complied from two different Rise of Nations icons. I also gave the Coastal Defense improvement a new pic; I took the equivalent pic from CS's old Vendetta 2 and modified it for my scenario's graphic style.

Here below are the two new icons:

[GhostOfDisco]

I've been playing the game as the Union on Deity level, and I was wondering if it seems too easy (I dunno. When playing I wondered if the AI was aggressive enough).

One thing I thought about is having the CNA player receive Venezuelan armor units every so often (every turn with the Union events, less so with the others) I know that the Venezuelans operate AMX-30 tanks, but have been looking into purchasing Leo 2's. Any chance they might get them? I know it might not seem to matter, as my scenario necessitates the stretching of reality a bit, but given that one is a light tank (in the scen, more powerful than the Mexican Armored Recon but not as powerful as the big MBTs) and the other is an MBT...

So, whether or not it might be plausible for Chávez to get his hands on modern-day panzers does matter.

Also, does the AI re-home units that often? Because the idea I initially had with the Venezuelan troops/Chávez thing was to home all the Venezuelan units to a "city" deep off on the Atlantic wall (pun intended) or something and if Chávez got killed, the city square would become ocean and the Venezuelan units would disappear, simulating a troop withdraw. However, I heard that the AI liked to rehome cities, which would make said option superfluous.

And I'm wondering if I should have Venezuela or Cuba be the "liberator" for the "Conch event" (I don't know if I want to marry the event to Chávez, given how it wouldn't be plausible for the event to happen unless ol' Hugo was alive, but I'm not sure if the Cuban governemnt post-Castro (or whatever) might do such a thing.)

[bc1871]

Just in regards to the whole idea of the Ejército Nacional Bolivariano acquiring Leopard's is I would think a very realistic scenario, though I think that realistically even if Leopard's were to be acquired most likely they would see limited combat, and its more probable to assume that the AMX-30V would be the MBT seen on a North American front.(I'm basing this on the fact that the Ejército Nacional Bolivariano would employ the new Leopards in a homeland defense strategy against localized threats). Perhaps another option would be outfitting the Venezuelans with Russian made armor.

[GhostOfDisco]

Been playtesting as the Union on Deity level, and the AI CNA does seem to be a tough opponent (Well, when you get many free reinforcements every turn...)

One thing I've done is give the "Kill Chávez" event cycle one more "terrain change." Given that the Commonwealth (in the US events) recieves a free Venezuelan infantry unit and a Su-37 (both of which leave the square once it's the CNA's turn to move, and that the CHANGETERRAIN only gets rid of one unit (unless the units are all in a city), the might be at most two units on the square, ergo two events to get rid of them.

A question: did I make the Urban terrain's defense bonus too much? I made them the same as the mountains so that it would be a challenge to take the major cities, but sometimes I wonder if any unit can take, say, NYC if it's got a major defense unit fortified and behind defenses. (I'll either lower the defense bonus, or increase the attack of the BB or the B-2, so that at least one unit can defeat the greatest defender.)

Also, for some reason the game just quits around June-July 2013. Does anyone have that same problem and if so, how do I fix it?

(In other news, I got rid of the Mi-17s, as I plan on filling that unit slot with a different type of unit. Hey, the PLA uses Blackhawks, too, and said unit is a "Generic Chopper" in my scen anyway, so...

[Jerec]

Originally posted by GhostOfDisco
A question: did I make the Urban terrain's defense bonus too much? I made them the same as the mountains so that it would be a challenge to take the major cities, but sometimes I wonder if any unit can take, say, NYC if it's got a major defense unit fortified and behind defenses. (I'll either lower the defense bonus, or increase the attack of the BB or the B-2, so that at least one unit can defeat the greatest defender.)

Also, for some reason the game just quits around June-July 2013. Does anyone have that same problem and if so, how do I fix it?

Urban terrain...nope. Not for me. I just stocked up on a few (2) M1A2 Abrams. The real problem was the Clinton unit in the city itself. With the anti-air improvement, that darn lady was impervious to any air units, and it probably would have taken more than the number of Abrams I had at the time after I cracked the urban barrier, so I was forced to withdraw and ravage the CNA around that city.

June-July 2013...not sure if I got there yet. I usually don't pay much attention to dates.

[GhostOfDisco]

Been doing a bit of playesting and whatnot, mostly as the Union.

Playing at Deity level, I was surprised at what an aggressive defender the AI is. Those Liberator tanks and other units just keep coming at you! I think those unit-spawning events may have helped some. There were even some that I didn't could appear, like a Liberator right outside of Columbus after I took it - and it was west of the city (behind my lines, I guess), too. On the other hand, it could have moved there from the northeast...

Playtesting on the lowest difficulty level, I had a better time of advancing and such. I wonder why... One of my cities produced a Canadian Infantry, but I'm not sure why (I'll have to check it). Still, the AI put up a fight, and always likes to stage a counterattack whenever it can.

In June 2013, just after taking over San Francisco, my game quit and I got this error message:

AppName: civ2.exe AppVer: 0.0.0.0 ModName: civ2.exe
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 00028b40

Does anyone know what it means? I know the game has crashed around this turn or so before, but I have no idea why. Could anyone help me on this?

[yaroslav]

I can try to reproduce the conditions if you have a save file, to see whether that happens in my computer too or not

[GhostOfDisco]

Well, here's the latest units file. (I think I'll try and upload the latest beta soon or something.)
Did a bit of gfx revamping. The revised engineer unit seems to fare excellently, but I'm still not satisfied with the AAV...

[yaroslav]

So can I use the standard scenario (that I guess I can get from SLeage) and put that unit file and I should be able to reproduce the issue?

[GhostOfDisco]

Well, I just released the latest alpha (number 9), so you can check it out.

Updates (at least some of them):
• Gunboats gotten rid of.
• Canada and Mexico now have their own infantry
• No US or CNA cities building tanks now (you gotta research their techs first).
• Revised AAV, Battleship Task Force, Amphib. Assault Group, and Engineer graphics (see below, I think)