US Civil War 2012 - Scenario Idea/Discussion

[Jerec]

Originally posted by GhostOfDisco
These playtest lead me to conclude that the problem lies in the USA events file. But what?

In the zip file below are the five games I mentioned here, plus the current rules file and the current US events file. I'm wondering how to correct events files that run but are still wonky - I've got @DEBUG but can't seem to get a report.txt.

Sounds like a problem I had with CGW's events once, before it was converted to ToT. The message "error in events file" would always pop up, but there was really no errors. Everything was fine. Near to pulling my hair completely out, I started deleting events to pinpoint the problem. That is, I would delete part of the events section by section, and test each time to see if the error message would still pop up. After I had pinpointed the events, I posted them for scrutinization, checking them myself. There wasn't a thing wrong with them! I re-wrote the events from scratch, which were exactly like the buggy ones, and there were no more problems. Weird, but I fixed it.

Since you have the save, pinpointing the crash time, you can probably use this deletion method and be able to test quickly each time.

[Jerec]

I admit, I'm intrigued by this bug. Elusive, for one thing. I have tested, and going from you US events april 2013 save, the game always crashes at the end of june 2013. So, I made another save at the beginning of june 2013. And the bug does not show up from my save! The bug only appears, and crashes the game, from your posted US events save. Interesting, but not the point. Now...

I've been following my own advice and have been deleting the sections of the US events and testing to see if the bug crashes the game. I haven't finished testing completely, but so far the only time it doesn't crash is when only the following events are in the file.

@IF
TURN
turn=1
@THEN
PLAYWAVEFILE
USA.wav
@ENDIF

@IF
NEGOTIATION
talker=Neutrals
talkertype=HumanOrComputer
listener=ANYBODY
listenertype=HumanOrComputer
@THEN
@ENDIF

@IF
NEGOTIATION
talker=ANYBODY
talkertype=HumanOrComputer
listener=Neutrals
listenertype=HumanOrComputer
@THEN
@ENDIF

@IF
NEGOTIATION
talker=United States
talkertype=HumanOrComputer
listener=Commonwealth
listenertype=HumanOrComputer
@THEN
@ENDIF

@IF
NEGOTIATION
talker=Commonwealth
talkertype=HumanOrComputer
listener=United States
listenertype=HumanOrComputer
@THEN
@ENDIF

@IF
NOSCHISM
defender=ANYBODY
@THEN
@ENDIF
@ENDEVENTS

EDIT: Everything else, tested in 3-10 event chunks, crashes the game.

I wonder if this has something to do with the saves. When I made my own save 1 turn later from the US events april 2013 save, the game didn't crash. Maybe starting with new saves, instead of finding and using old ones...go figure.

[GhostOfDisco]

Wonder what's wrong with the Union events file that causes the game to crash? Did I make too many CREATEUNIT commands? Because the CNA events has a lot of created units plus several MOVEUNIT commands, and it seems to do fine. Or maybe it has to do with the fact I made too many events. But then, EZRhino says that then the game would just cut off the "extra" events, and Jerec says the Union events file only works if only the first six events or so remain. So I am confused, perplexed even, as to the Union files' Achillean heal. Are there any MGE experts who could help me with this?

Another thing I'm thinking about has been bothering me (somewhat) for a time. Playtesting the game and noting my events, I noticed that the CNA sends in swarms of first-line tanks after the Union when playing the US events file. This seemed a bit unfair and implausible (even for a "semi-realistic" scenario such as this one ), especially when I remembered that Nemo, in using a similar set of events for 2194 Days of War, had the Allied player fighting a horde of commonplace Panzer IVs (and other various kinds of Nazi units) every turn rather than higher-tech vehicles like the Tiger and the Me 262. However, I reasoned to myself that 1)giving the AI all those great units is a good thing, as the player needs a challenge and, 2)a "cheap" tank would take up a valuable unit slot anyway.

Then I thought about the M60.

The aforementioned Patton tank is relatively modern (in fact, the US was using it as late as the Gulf War) and I can see them being dusted off the shelves/rescued (or reassembled) from the graveyard, in an emergency/civil war like this one where tanks (and maybe APCs) might be needed on the cheap. Whether they'd be in the Union mechanized hordes in the CNA game I am not sure, however it would definitely be plausible to see M60s (and their contemporary, the M113, in the Mech Inf role) coming out of the Commonwealth, as the CNA has virtually no native military of its own at the outset, and thus I can see ad hoc units of such vintage armor happening.

Of course, there is the issue of unit slots: perhaps the best slot would be where the Venezuelan armor currently resides (to give the land element of Chávez's reinforcements the added punch that was lacking in the original events, maybe two Venezuelan Infantry could spawn at the base at the required turn interval, rather than just one), and as for the M113, I could give it the Foreign Legion's slot, and perhaps replace said honorary Frenchmen with some Chinese paratroops.

However, I think it's best that I refrain from any unit modifications until this whole events thing is solved.

Attached below is a file of what the M60 would look like in the game. It's fairline's Gulf War version of the Patton, recolored and MGE-ized to be in harmony (more or less) with the rest of the CNA and Union armored vehicles (both tanks and mechanized infantry.) (Well, I think if the M60 was brought back, they'd at least put on some kind of extra armor, so that it might have some type of chance on today's battelfield.) Hope you like it...

[Jerec]

Awesome tank. All the little extra bits and pieces hanging on the turret, etc make it look great.

Maybe just scrapping the old US events file and re-writing it from scratch, with parts pasted in from the CNA events file...it worked for me.

[GhostOfDisco]

Originally posted by Jerec
Awesome tank. All the little extra bits and pieces hanging on the turret, etc make it look great.

Maybe just scrapping the old US events file and re-writing it from scratch, with parts pasted in from the CNA events file...it worked for me.

Would that include modifying it? Because the Union events had a lot more "reinforcement" events than its Commonwealth counterpart, IIRC, and some other stuff.

But I might give it a try...

[EZRhino]

I played several months from each of your saves, but it never crashed for me...

Re: CNA tanks. Personally I think it would be most realistic to just let them build M1A1s (they're all built in Ohio after all). Then add one more tank for the union "next-gen" tank that is researchable as per the CNA black eagle. This could represent the realistic point IMO where the equipment of the different combatants in the civil war is almost identical at the start, but begins to diverge as the war drags on....

[Jerec]

Originally posted by GhostOfDisco


Would that include modifying it? Because the Union events had a lot more "reinforcement" events than its Commonwealth counterpart, IIRC, and some other stuff.

But I might give it a try...

You mean modifying the new events file? No. Theoretically at least, the old US events file is corrupted somehow, although there seems to be nothing wrong with the events' structure. So a new US events file needs to be made from scratch, with cut/paste from the clean CNA events file to save time. The new events file can be identical to the old one, as long as it doesn't have anything copied/pasted from the old one.

It seems strange, making a new file that is exactly like the old buggy one. All I know is that it worked for me when I came up against a similar problem, where there was nothing structurally wrong with the events, but a bug kept appearing until I re-wrote from scratch.

@EZRhino
The buggy save is the one using the US events, named "usevents." IIRC the game crashes more than 2-3 turns from the save.

[GhostOfDisco]

Originally posted by EZRhino
I played several months from each of your saves, but it never crashed for me...

Re: CNA tanks. Personally I think it would be most realistic to just let them build M1A1s (they're all built in Ohio after all). Then add one more tank for the union "next-gen" tank that is researchable as per the CNA black eagle. This could represent the realistic point IMO where the equipment of the different combatants in the civil war is almost identical at the start, but begins to diverge as the war drags on....

Well, some points:

• For one thing, Ohio is in Union hands at the beginning, and while the AI does like to launch offensives into said state , there's no guaruntee that the CNA will get the Abrams factories.
• As per Smiley's suggestion, the nations' logistic lines have been broken by the secession, and thus neither side is able to produce powerful military units at the start. So there might be some time in re-establishing an industrial base with which to make some armor to design a new tank (and, while developing said industry, designing your tools for the tank, or something.)
• I've made a point of giving each side (of the civil war) different vehicles of the same purpose (for APCs, one side gets Bradleys, the other gets Strykers, and so on.)
• I don't think there's a difference between the M1A1 and the M1A2 to merit a new unit.
• A "next-gen" Union tank would require yet more graphics. :P

I know that if I ever get around to adding pedia descriptions to the units, I'll mention that the designers of the Liberator tank claim that "despite appearances to the contrary, it is not a kitbash of the Black Eagle and the K1A1 -it just looks like one" or something like that.

[GhostOfDisco]

Well, I did the cut-and-paste thing and right about May 2013 or so, the game crashed and I got this message:

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

And here's the events file I was using. I made it using the "normal" events file, then copying and pasting modified events from the CNA file into it.

Still not sure why it does what it does...

[fairline]

Originally posted by Jerec
Awesome tank. All the little extra bits and pieces hanging on the turret, etc make it look great.

Thanks

[Jerec]

@Fairline
I should have guessed.

@GoD
Since this didn't work, I guess the problem I dealt with was different than this..sorry.

[GhostOfDisco]

Well, admittedly, I used a previous events file (events_normal) as a basis, rather than starting up a new file and copying and pasting into there. So that may have had something to do with it.

[GhostOfDisco]

Well, yesterday on the History Channel I caught "Dogfights of the Future," where, among other things, they had enemy Rafales fighting US F-22s.

I thought "well, where else can I see F-22s fighting Rafales?" and decided to actually work some on this scenario.

Anyway, I am pleased to announce that I finally have a Union events file that actually works! I played it (actually, I "watched" the war playing the Neutrals) and quit observing at Jan 2014 with nary a crash.

It's probably incomplete, and I will need to work on it some more, but here's the events file as it is, and I hope you can play it without crashing as well.

[GhostOfDisco]

Here's some eye-candy: a security contractor:

[Jerec]

Originally posted by GhostOfDisco
Anyway, I am pleased to announce that I finally have a Union events file that actually works! I played it (actually, I "watched" the war playing the Neutrals) and quit observing at Jan 2014 with nary a crash.

Great! Are the new events a complete rewrite, or a melding of the old ones?