The Vietnam War development thread

[McMonkey]

Settlers

I had an idea for hiding the locations of most Communist cities from the Americans. It went like this:

- Create settler that cannot move and place them at start of game where VC bases should be. Start game and the VC should build some new cities. These new cities would not show up on the US players map until they are discovered by one of the players unit.

Well that was the idea. When I tested it using the Knight slot with the following stats:
Knights (or static settlers), Ldr, 0, 0.,0, 4a,2d, 1h,1f, 4,0, 5, Chi, 000000000000000, nothing happened. No new cities. What am I doing wrong?

Don't know if it makes any difference but the AI did not have the Ldr tech!

I would like to get this idea to work as it will make the Communists seem a lot more shadowy!

[McMonkey]

I think I may have solved (?) my own problem...sort of.
I now think the 'static' part of the units stats is preventing them from founding cities. I tested it and found that if you set movement to 0 you cannot build a city!

Does anyone know if there is a way around this?

[Mercator]

Yes. Give those settlers a movement rate of 1 as usual and hex-edit the fertility value of the tiles those settlers are on.

With the highest fertility value (15, normal is 8, I believe), they will (almost?) certainly build cities right away without moving.

... But then, is this all at the start of the scenario and just to prevent those cities from being on the Americans' map?

You'll have to ask some more experienced scenario designers, but I'm pretty sure you can hide those cities without having to do this. I think you can do it simply by making sure that you build those cities after you've set the "map visibility" for the US.

[Von Bert]

@Mercator

but maybe hiding part of map was easier in MGE.. he's using TOT.. i dunno, maye in TOT cant be done that way..
otherwise SURE.. better hide the "new" Viet cities to USA with hiding maps then make it with that clever trick..

a problem in life.. and in scenario design is maybe that the stronger will get in time stronger and will win easier..

with TOT to make a challenging scenario, maybe using FLAGS, (if america conquer that town, if american conquer that other town.. then.. china/ussr send troops in..and NVA gets more angry.. ) is just the case..
AI must be supported.. boosting it up wiht events/presents related to american conquest..that's Escalation..
supposing human is the player is USA sure.. otherwise the reverse... with TOT something clever can be set up and i'm sure werd100 ll do !
(and i wish for "for what is worth" too .. Buffalo springfield yeah !! )

[McMonkey]

@Mercator
Thanks for the advice. I have never done any hex-editing before but it sounds intriguing. It will open up a whole lot of new possibilities. Someone has given me a link to a page that explains how it works so I will have a proper look tommorow (too much alcahol has been consumed tonight!). Even if I can't work it out (which i'm sure I will) I think that the other solution will have the same sort of effect!

Today I built the main arteries of the Ho Chi Minh trail with a bright red RR terrain that will be invisible to the player when I am finished. I am posting a wee picture of it so you can see what I am on about!

[McMonkey]

@ Von Bert

I totally agree with your point on the strong growing stronger. I intend to balance the game in the following ways:

1. Communist main bases will be located in neutral countries (Laos and Cambodia) and will be protected by the border which the Americans cannot cross (Impassable terrain) but they can (VC/NVA ignore impassable terrain).
2. A House rule regarding neutrality will mean that only certain US units (I.e. Special Forces + a few covert aircraft + sensors) are allowed over the border.
3. Most Communits main bases will be out of US bomber range until later in the game and they will be protected by SAM batteries (or equivilent) and AA units.
4. The Communist bases in Laos and Cambodia will be connected by the Ho Chi Minh trail that will allow them to redeploy rapidly and launch attacks/infiltrate all along the border at will.
5. Communists will recieve the Great Wall so all their cities will recieve city walls as standard.
6. Most VC villages in South Vietnam will be built on hills and be in inaccessable areas and be protected by mines and ambush (missile units).
7. Events will create VC units inside south Vietnam.
8. Another event will spawn Communist recruits when certain units are killed.
9. Most Communist units will have good movement rates and be able to cross jungle and hills easily (Alpine ability) and they will ignore ZOC. Their offencive/defensive stats will also be good.
10. A lot of VC units will be free support (if I choose fundamentalist government)
11. Your suggestion for escalation when certain towns/villages are taken is an excellent one. This will be a simple way to build up the conflict and trigger events!
12. Most cities in the South will be ARVN controlled and their army will not be too strong. The US (player) will build up slowly and will need to plan the location of his/her bases carefully to stem the Communist encroachment!
13. Buffalo Springfield tunes will blare out at the US player making him more inclined towards 'peace and love' than 'Napalm and B52s'!
14. I have not thought of 14 yet! Wait...Hopefully a good playtester can give it the once over before release to make sure it is hard enough without being impossible.

In response to your e-mail on the Unit tabs. I though I would post a reply here as it is easier to upload the image. The example I have made is for the US 1st Infantry Division (plus made up stats). I won't use it in this scenario but it is an interesting concept. I think I saw it done in a scenario called 'Battlefield Chess'!

Thanks for the inspiration once again VB.

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by Von Bert
maybe im getting older and my sight needs to be helped in detetc units over the map ?

I rather doubt that your eyesight is the problem here.

I am absolutely ruthless when it comes to altering units, terrain, cities, civ colors etc. if I find any of them cause me serious difficulty in playing a scen. Black ravens grow scarlet wing feathers; olive wyverns turn bright yellow as they mature; similar looking units are issued differently colored helmets or acquire colored shadows underfoot; tank turrets sprout bright pennants; engineers straighten all roads and resurface them with off-white asphalt; my red RR's can be seen from space; terrains get edited or imported from other scens; terrain improvements that obscure the underlying terrain as well as roads and RR's get edited to a manageable size, etc., etc,.

IMHO, the only problem with the attached screenshot is the overly and unnecessarily dark terrain. If it were lightened up by two or three shades, there should be little problem with seeing units.

Also, to me, the big unit icons are a step backwards from the realism that the brilliantly talented artists who make unit icons have been striving for. They cover up roads, RR's, terrain improvements and terrain. They detract from rather than make for easy play. Punching 'T' is a nuisance and doesn’t help very much because roads, cities and improvements are not displayed.

@Werd100
IMHO, your screenshot also looks terribly dark. Is there any easy way to lighten it up somewhat?

I assume that the magenta square with the black 'V' [for valuable?] is a poppy field. It is a nice Vietnamese touch of realism. Surely a square like that deserves at least 10 trade arrows.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Von Bert
but maybe hiding part of map was easier in MGE.. he's using TOT.. i dunno, maye in TOT cant be done that way..

ToT isn't that different from MGE. It's got plenty of additions in the text files and graphics files, but the cheat menu is still the same.

Originally posted by Werd100
Thanks for the advice. I have never done any hex-editing before but it sounds intriguing. (...)

There are plenty people here who can help you do the actual editing too if need be (maybe even me)... But in this case I don't think it's necessary.

[Boco]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
I am absolutely ruthless when it comes to altering ... cities....

What do you do to improve ease of recognition for cities? Or are you talking of the symbols in the city screen?

[AGRICOLA]

Mainly city screen but I have recolored the odd roof.

[McMonkey]

Agri
I noticed that the screenshot (turn 39) you posted on the WWII thread had some snazzy grey asphalt instead of the brown mud track!

I think a lot of the graphics in CivII will appeal to one person and repel another. That is the beauty of the game being so easy to edit. If you don't like something you can change it so it pleases your own eye.

On many occasions I have completely changed almost all the graphics in a scenario which I could not understand and discovered it was an absolout jem. In the eyes of the designer it probably made total sense.

One example was Hellas, which I just couldn't get on with until I altered the terrain to something more standard and added some Fairline units. The game itself was one of the Top 10 ever for MGE in my opinion!

I think that altering the city screen or the resource symbols too much can cause unnessasary confusion. Renaming things is less problematic but a lot of symbols make the game really difficult to understand!

Re: My screenshot. I don't quite follow (here we go ). How do you mean very dark. I know the jungle terrain is quite dark but that is Charlies domain and I think it should be. Most of the ARVN cities and US main bases will be located near roads and the terrain there is the lighter rice paddy type terrain. Could you expand on whet you mean?

The purple V square is a marker for a village (city) and will be changed to jungle before the village is built. When I am finished placing villages on all these markers the V terrain square will be free so I am up for suggestions as to what to do with it. Also the Orange C (city) squares will become free.

Some ideas I have had so far are:
- Plantation (i.e. Rubber trees as in Don Diem Michelin Plantation. Many of these plantations were dotted over the south!)
- Free strike zone (An area like the road square that has no defensive bonus. This could be created by a air engineer unit spraying agent orange though I'm not convinced how useful this would be?)
- Tunnels (I had this in mind originally but I think having a high defence bonus terrain square would only be useful if placed under VC villages, fortifications and around spawning grounds.

Any other ideas?

Attached is an early example screenshot of the Saigon area (- al lot of farming etc...).

[AGRICOLA]

What I am trying to get at is that most ground unit colors range from medium to darkish shades, corresponding to actual camo colors. The units in your WWII scen are good examples of this.

However, the terrain in WWII uses lighter shades and brighter colors than do the units. There is no problem with unit camo being so good that it becomes difficult to see them, no matter what terrain they are on.

Both Von Bert's and your Vietnam terrain is sufficiently dark and mottled that unit camo actually functions too well in blending them into the background. Your unit camo is very realistic but damnably hard to play with. That's why I suggested lightening up the terrain.

As for my comment on the poppy farm, it was definitely made with my tongue firmly stuck in my cheek but, actually, what would be wrong with poppy fields as special resources in the highlands? They certainly did grow the blooming flowers.

[McMonkey]

I see your point Agri although it has never bothered me too much. I suppose this could be solved by adding an alternative terrain graphics set when the game is finished.
What screen resolution do you use? I have always used 800 by 600 pixels. Maybe if you are zoomed out a bit more things are harder to see (or perhaps you just need glasses he he)

Anyway, today I have finished the Ho Chi Minh trails and have placed most of the NVA bases in Laos and Cambodia that I will need to hide. Before I go too much further is there a kind hex-editor who could take a look and show me what it would look like when they are hidden? Nothing major, I just need a couple of cities covered up as an example!

Also another question. What exactly is required to get Partizans to appear when a city is taken. I believe you need thr relevent techs (Guerilla Warfare) and the correct unit in the Partizan slot. What else is required?

And Agri, get yourself to the opticians!

Oh and also, I have just counted 255 cities as the maximum allowed in MGE. Is this correct and is it the same for ToT?

[Patine]

The ToT city limit is the same as MGE. This even applies if you're using multiple maps.

[McMonkey]

Map Update

Today I finished building the secure borders, the Ho Chi Minh Trail and NVA bases as well as most of the VC and ARVN villages in south Vietnam. I still need to add a few more villages and a couple of US Special Forces camps and Airfields. Its getting there though.

Note
Most of the darker pink dots to the west are markers and will be deleted. All of the dark blue dots are small lakes. The ARVN are yellow, the Communists magenta, the Koreans white. The two US cities (both offshore) are navy blue. Cambodian cities are orange, Loas is Green and Thailand is turquoise.

Oh and the map has been turned the right way up for the screenshot!