Looking for beta testers for El Aurens v2

[Boco]

It's a busy time at SL, but if you have time, I would be very interested in your feedback while playing the beta version of El Aurens, version 2. It can be found at both Techumseh's Village (This link is temporarily out of date. Will edit post when it is updated) and the SL Wiki. I won't promise a mistake-free beta, but I will try to fix all mistakes promptly.

Files can be found here

• El Aurens v2 at Techumseh's Village (This link is temporarily out of date. Will edit post when it is updated)

and here

• El Aurens v2 at Scenario League



Next post will contain a description and hype.

[Boco]

El Aurens (v2) is a scenario designed for play with “Civilization II: Test of Time”. It portrays the campaign waged during the Great War across the Near East from Darfur to Syria. In it, you'll find four maps with vast desert regions, a juxtaposition of mobile desert warfare with deliberate offensives along the primary Sinai-Palestine-Syria axis coupled to an unusual reinforcement & replacement paradigm.

By exploiting Test of Time’s many unique features, EAv2 attempts to be a challenging game that reflects the historical context. Can you protect the Suez and Nile from desert raiders? Can you advance your massive army across the Sinai past the formidable defenses at Gaza? Can you foment and sustain an Arab revolt so that it can protect your eastern flank as you invade Syria in the twilight of the Ottoman Empire? EAv2 is not your traditional empire-building Civ2 scenario, but I hope you will enjoy or glean ideas from it.

Here're some screenshots (mainly thumbnails).

Various texts that appear during the game:



Some pics of the map during a recent alpha test:



Various minister's reports:





The Civilopedia:

[AGRICOLA]

It is really great to see a beta emerge from your long labors.

Downloading from SL after this post, but with a lot of trepidation. The snippets of info in the development thread are enough to intimidate anyone but a complete fool.

[tanelorn]

Totaly flabbergasted! Downloading asap!

[curtsibling]

Boco, you have captured the mood of the period so well!

Will grab this one as soon as possible, and give it a whirl!

*puts on pith helmet*

[fairline]

As soon as I've cleared the backlog of gfx requests I'll be on this. Congrats for finishing

[AGRICOLA]

@Boco

Installation
1. Test of Time Directory — back up Intro.DLL, Mk.DLL, SS.DLL, and Tiles.DLL to another directory.
2. Test of Time\Original Directory — back up City.BMP, Civwin_bak.BMP, and Dialog.BMP to another directory.
3. Extract All EA*.Zips into \Test of Time\Original\Scenarios\EAv2.
4. Run EASetup.vbs from \Test of Time\Original\Scenarios\EAv2.
5. Start ToT and begin the scenario.

For profound philosophical reasons, I absolutely refuse to mess around with the CIVII and TOT Directories. So, should the following cause any unexpected/hidden problems?
1. Rather than going through steps 1-3, make a new folder 'EL AURENS' on Desktop and unzip all EA files into it.
2. Start TOT and begin scen.

BTW, in a quick initial test, the first turn money bug bit the Allies' butt at the end of their first turn. The Sanussis captured some dusty, fleabitten outpost where they could not have looted more than a couple of farthings rather than 420,000 quid. Fixed it.

Also, have tripped across a few typos of the kind that are not picked up by grammar/spell checks. I assume that you will want a list.

Regrettably, I'm going to have to change terrain and improvement names to English. I'm too lazy and much too dumb to learn Arabic.

[Boco]

After backup up the original DLL's and BMP's, just copy the DLL's to the ToT directory, and Dialog.bmp, Civ_win.bmp, and city.bmp to the Original directory.

That money bug may affect Sanussi production. The Turks sent a lot of supplies to the Sanussis by U-Boat around this time. Not sure what the effect of your fix would be.

Any chance you can email SAV files as you test?

I suspected that you might change some Arabic names. Perhaps I could also issue parallel sets of @UNITS and Events.txt that don't use Turkish.

Please do send a typo list. Even more important, send a list of what tips should be in a Readme and/or Civilopedia that would get ease a player's trepidation. One item is on the list is a table with @TERRAIN costs for all maps. I can't figure out how to have the Civilopedia show it directly for maps other than map0, though.

Are the city screen icons passably usable by your standards?

[AGRICOLA]

Several questions have arisen as I'm still trying to sort out the basics of EAII.

1. How many turns are there in the scen? The TIPS file seems to suggest that there are 39 but nowhere can I find the number stated explicitly.

That is not an idle question because, if there are only 39, I'm very tempted to forget about the Darfur and move the 10+ useful units to the main map. TIPS suggests that it will be a major feat of arms to get to Jerusalem by the end of the scen and any additional forces would be most welcome. Besides, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly useful in the Darfur to warrant tying up significant forces.

2. I can't figure out what gives with the Garrison Bn in Khartoum. It can't move S out of the city but can move 1 square N. However, after moving 1 square N it seems to become immobilized and can't move forward, can't move back into the city, or even board a steamer? Elsewhere, similar units seem to behave normally.

3. What is 'Mazraat'? I figured it was irrigation until I saw the the following in a popup: 'this Mazraat is already irrigated'.

4. I don't suppose there is any way that the British could covertly help the Sanussi to boot the Italians out of North Africa? Just looking for an alternate strategy.


IMHO, the city screen looks fine. As I prefer the standard Civ 2 city screen to the TOT version , I only changed the symbols on the little resource map and replaced the pickaxes with shields. The population icons have nicely color coded backgrounds.

[Boco]

Thanks for taking a look at this! You think you have trepidation! [list=1][*]I believe it ends on Dec 1918, or when the spaceship lands. The exact date is a variable that I'll change upon beta feedback. Seems the Tips section has a little too much hype. Jerusalem should pose little problem by early 1918. Aleppo by the end is much more challenging. The key to Palestine and Syria is Siege Arty, not Egyptians or even Ford Lt Cars. If you research and build right, you'll gain enough big guns to win. Now it couldn't hurt to do a little ahistorical rush-building, but that will test your city management skills.* Just keep the tech rate at 1 per turn. You're onto a slick ahistorical strategy by sending Egyptians out of Sudan, though. The Arab Revolt can be an expensive proposition if you build up your forces with bribed Turks (more bribes mean fewer RB'd Siege Arty), but you're going to need desert-able troops from somewhere else if you don't bribe. . It's not impossible to conquer Darfur, garrison it, and send surplus Egyptians elsewhere in a timely fashion. Don't forget that El Fasher and Bir Hakim are worth a lot of points just because of their wonders.[*]Big goof in @TERRAIN3. Need to change three 'yes' to 'no' as shown below. Still, that particular Garrison Bn can't go anywhere useful besides Khartoum or Kosti until the Cook Steamers are built.[*]Mazraat = irrigation with an altered Game.txt entry. Rfg = 'The Bull', so you can't make farmland until then. The costs for irrigation should be high enough to make you question its worth.[*]Sayyid Idris would've loved you. In EAv1, you had no Italians to control in Cyrenaica. In v2, you get a few around Tobruk, but they're of little use except as garrisons. By moving the chokepoint between Italians and British further west, game play is not interrupted as much by Italians trying to wander into Egypt. The Sanussis and Italians battle each other throughout the game exhibiting the brilliant tactics of the AI we all know and love. [/list=1]

@TERRAIN3  Deep Desert,                 8,1, 0, 0,0,   no, 0, 0, 0,  no, 0, 0,  0,  no,   yes, ; Drt 0  
Village,                     1,6, 2, 1,1,  yes, 1, 5, 0, yes, 1,63,  0,  no,   [B]no[/B],  ; Pln 1  
Fertile Land,                1,2, 1, 1,0,  yes, 1, 5, 0,  no, 0, 0,  0,  no,   [B]no[/B],  ; Grs 2  
Qoz,                         4,3, 1, 0,0,  yes, 1,10, 0,  no, 0, 0,  0,  no,   yes, ; For 3  
Jebel Marra,                 8,6, 0, 1,0,  yes, 1, 1, 0, yes, 1,63,  0,  no,   yes, ; Hil 4  
Jebel,                       6,4, 0, 0,1,  yes, 1, 1, 0, yes, 1,63,  0,  no,   yes, ; Mou 5  
Desert Scrub,                2,2, 0, 0,0,  yes, 1, 1, 0, yes, 1,63,  0,  no,   yes, ; Tun 6  
Type ‘n’ for I&ntermap Mvt,  1,2, 1, 0,0,  yes, 1, 5, 0,  no, 0, 0,  0,  no,   no,  ; Gla 7  
Scrub Forest,                3,3, 1, 1,1,  yes, 1, 1, 0, yes, 1, 4,  3,  no,   yes, ; Swa 8  
Sudd,                        3,1, 1, 0,0,  yes, 0, 1, 0, yes, 1,63,  0,  no,   yes, ; Jun 9  
River Nile,                  1,2, 0, 0,1,   no, 0, 1, 0,  no, 0, 0,  0,  no,   [B]no[/B],  ; Oce 

* Make sure you save enough money to RB the final Escort Flotilla for the spaceship in March 1918.

[AGRICOLA]

The good, the bad and the funny.

It looks like I'm going to have to break down and make the file substitutions that you suggested in the TOT and Original folders. I really do want to see your extraordinary space ship presentation.

THE SPACESHIP
I have some concerns about the effect that building 29 Labour Corps Coy @130 shields will have on the scen. I did a quick calculation on the productive capacity of the 6 best Allied cities in terms of how many LCC's they could build per turn. Here are the figures:


Cairo__________1/2 LCC/Turn
Alexandria_____1/2
Port Said______1/3
Port Suez______1/6
Kantara________1/4
Assuit_________1/4


That adds up to 2 LCC per turn. More or less 15 - 16 turns will be needed for all cities to build the required 29 LCC's as well as a few other spaceship components.

Considering that most of the cities can start building them in Feb 1916, that gives them 26 months to have the spaceship ready by April 1918. That means that for 60% of the scen, building will have to be devoted to the SS. That doesn' sound terribly exciting.

Have you considered decreasing the cost to less than 100 shields? None of the enemy cities that might be captured will be able to produce LCC's quickly enough to help.

MY GURKHA AND OTHER INDIAN UNITS HAVE GONE AWOL
At the start of Turn 3, the following cryptic popup appeared:
"After the last Gurkha leaves Gallipoli, the RN disbands the East Mediterranean Squadron"

I shrugged my shoulders and kept playing until the discovery that the garrison of the Dakhla Oasis [1 vet Gurkha] had gone AWOL and the place was in revolt.

A bit of digging showed that the OOB city of Indian EF E had disappeared, together with some pretty good units.
I have no idea if this is connected with the E Med Squadron message. Also, I was more than a bit lucky to have the Gurkha in a place where its absence was noticeable.

THE LETTER BUT NOT THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW
Over the span of a lot of scens, the one house rule that has irked me more than any other is the "No Disbanding of Units" and I have spent some time figuring out a multitude of ways to get around it without breaking the letter of the law.

In EAII I would give my eyeteeth for another Cruiser or two but the only place where they can be built has all its shields tied up in supporting relatively weak/useless units like Gunboats and DD's. I'm going to have to order them to clear some minefields. If that ploy should fail, they can always bombard Gaza.

THE GARRISON Bn IN DARFUR
To get the Garrison Bn to where it is useful [Jebel Hilla or farther west] on the Darfur map, additional land types would need to be modified in order to make them passable.

RIOT IN PORT SUEZ
There was a popup that "The Port Suez Population Revolts" yet the city window shows contented citizens.

VET UNITS
From the EAII Pedia: "According to the default Civ2 Civilopedia, units have a 50 percent chance of becoming Veterans each time they survive a combat encounter. This seems high by a factor of at least 2."

You are right. The chance of becoming a vet unit depends greatly on the A/D of the enemy. The weaker the enemy, the smaller the chance. I'm guesstimating on this, but there is less than a 5% chance of making vet if you attack a A/D = 1/0 unit. In EAII, this includes all tribesmen.

TRANSLATION, PLEASE

[Boco]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
THE SPACESHIP
I have some concerns about the effect that building 29 Labour Corps Coy @130 shields will have on the scen. I did a quick calculation on the productive capacity of the 6 best Allied cities in terms of how many LCC's they could build per turn. Here are the figures:


Cairo__________1/2 LCC/Turn
Alexandria_____1/2
Port Said______1/3
Port Suez______1/6
Kantara________1/4
Assuit_________1/4


That adds up to 2 LCC per turn. More or less 15 - 16 turns will be needed for all cities to build the required 29 LCC's as well as a few other spaceship components.

These numbers are based on initial production levels. Once you've built appropriate production improvements and Std Gge Rwy's, the rates improve as follows:

City__________LCC/Turn
Cairo_________1
Alexandria_____1
Port Said______0.25
Port Said______0.5
Kantara_______0.5
Assuit________0.25

So, from Apr 1916 to Mar 1918 (24 turns), the last four cities can produce 30 LCC's. In practice, I've diverted their production to other improvements for a few turns, forcing me to devote Cairo and Alexandria's production for a couple of turns each.

Considering that most of the cities can start building them in Feb 1916, that gives them 26 months to have the spaceship ready by April 1918. That means that for 60% of the scen, building will have to be devoted to the SS. That doesn' sound terribly exciting.

I've actually found it less boring to devote these four cities to LLC's than to micromanage their production. The primary purpose of the spaceship is to prevent the Allies from getting filthy rich by the end of 1917. Otherwise, it's no challenge to rb lots of Siege Arty units and blow the Turks off the map by June 1918.

Have you considered decreasing the cost to less than 100 shields? None of the enemy cities that might be captured will be able to produce LCC's quickly enough to help.

In my tests, the price has ranged from 60 to 150. It is a variable that is very useful for adjusting game balance. I'll certainly revise the cost based on your play, but please give it a try at this level for a bit.

MY GURKHA AND OTHER INDIAN UNITS HAVE GONE AWOL
At the start of Turn 3, the following cryptic popup appeared:
"After the last Gurkha leaves Gallipoli, the RN disbands the East Mediterranean Squadron"

A relic from a discarded idea. I left it in for flavor, but I see it's misleading. I'll remove it from the release version.

I shrugged my shoulders and kept playing until the discovery that the garrison of the Dakhla Oasis [1 vet Gurkha] had gone AWOL and the place was in revolt.

A bit of digging showed that the OOB city of Indian EF E had disappeared, together with some pretty good units.
I have no idea if this is connected with the E Med Squadron message. Also, I was more than a bit lucky to have the Gurkha in a place where its absence was noticeable.

No connection despite the concidence of Gurkhas. This represents a troop withdrawal. Unlike most withdrawals, it's a surprise. These troops were transferred to Mesopotamia, where an unexpected debacle was developing.

THE LETTER BUT NOT THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW
Over the span of a lot of scens, the one house rule that has irked me more than any other is the "No Disbanding of Units" and I have spent some time figuring out a multitude of ways to get around it without breaking the letter of the law.

Yes, this is central to EA's design, and it's likely to chafe players who enjoy building the ultimate force. Since this theater was a side show, I wanted to give the feel that you don't have unlimited access to the best units. You can increase the numbers of several key units, but it will cost you plenty.

In EAII I would give my eyeteeth for another Cruiser or two but the only place where they can be built has all its shields tied up in supporting relatively weak/useless units like Gunboats and DD's. I'm going to have to order them to clear some minefields. If that ploy should fail, they can always bombard Gaza.

You should have access to ~3 Cruisers, but they aren't much use against ports north of Gaza (coastal batteries). I wouldn't dismiss Gunboats, for they have holds for a passenger. That can be useful in capturing ports. DD's are fairly useless, but they can clear the way of U-Boats so that you don't have to weaken your shore pounders en route to attack positions. I'm open to suggestions about strength tweaking.

THE GARRISON Bn IN DARFUR
To get the Garrison Bn to where it is useful [Jebel Hilla or farther west] on the Darfur map, additional land types would need to be modified in order to make them passable.

You're asking a battalion of geezers and walking wounded to march across Sudan? This is a deliberate design to reflect logistical and political limitations in this side show of a side show. The unit is useful for marshal law and defeating the occasional raid on Kosti. It's so weak and slow that this isn't a huge waste.

RIOT IN PORT SUEZ
There was a popup that "The Port Suez Population Revolts" yet the city window shows contented citizens.

This is a very reproducible bug in ToT. Did you notice that the screen flashed to the OOB map centered on Port Suez Docks? The two cities share the same coordinates, and that seems to confuse ToT. The riot is triggered by the completion of the Indian Base Depot. I couldn't get around it, so I added the odd text that you posted. It delays production in Port Suez for a turn, but that's not critical. There actually was a mutiny in an Egyptian Works battalion somewhere along the canal at this time.

TRANSLATION, PLEASE

Townshend's Regatta was the less than complimentary (in retrospect) name given to the reckless drive up the Tigris toward Baghdad. Relying on a motley collection of boats for transport and supply, the overconfident MEF overextended itself, retreated, became encircled, and surrendered. This "bit of a slog" represented the worst defeat for the Indian (or British) army until Singapore. The critical message that the IEF E is being withdrawn to Mesopotamia is lost in "He'll need a few Naiks from the IEF E". I was trying to convey a jingoistic Indian Office that really didn't know how badly it was doing and was trying to hide its current difficulties. I'll revise the text to be much more explicit.

The bad eggs text should immediately preceed the riots in Port Suez message. The juxtaposition of Provos (military police) have it well hand before the picture of British soldiers facing a riot was meant to be ironic.

Thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately, I have to go. I'll return later.

[Boco]

Originally posted by Boco
No connection despite the concidence of Gurkhas. This represents a troop withdrawal. Unlike most withdrawals, it's a surprise. These troops were transferred to Mesopotamia, where an unexpected debacle was developing.

I'll write some text the turn before this withdrawal. Likewise, I'll see what I can do about an unannounced withdrawal involving the Ben-my-Chree RNAS Flight. In addition, I'll revise the Pedia to contain an entry on withdrawals similar to the ones on reinforcements.

Originally posted by Boco
You're asking a battalion of geezers and walking wounded to march across Sudan? This is a deliberate design to reflect logistical and political limitations in this side show of a side show. The unit is useful for marshal law and defeating the occasional raid on Kosti. It's so weak and slow that this isn't a huge waste.

I'll revise the terrain to allow non-desert-able units to move to the railhead at El Obeid. Just in case you didn't notice, since a Garrison Bn has a mf of only 1/3, it can never attack at full strength. To compensate, I gave it an af (6) that is 3x the 'normal' value. In short, its real af is no better than an Egyptian Inf (50% higher df, though).

[Boco]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
It looks like I'm going to have to break down and make the file substitutions that you suggested in the TOT and Original folders. I really do want to see your extraordinary space ship presentation.

If you send info about your tree (path to ToT and path to scenarios), I can write a VBS that will copy custom and restore original DLL/BMP skins for your setup.

[AGRICOLA]

All quotes previously posted by Boco

I'll revise the Pedia to contain an entry on withdrawals similar to the ones on reinforcements.

You're asking a battalion of geezers and walking wounded to march across Sudan?

1. Why not? "War is hell." [William Tecumseh Sherman]
2. The "geezers" have D=3. That is a good number for a defensive unit in EAII.

In my tests, the price has ranged from 60 to 150. It is a variable that is very useful for adjusting game balance. I'll certainly revise the cost based on your play, but please give it a try at this level for a bit.

No problem. I'm checking to see how much RB would be necessary in 1918 if I put a bunch of 4 and 5 shield cities to producing LCC's. There really is nothing else worthwhile for them to build at the start of the scen, especially as 100% of accumulated shields can always be switched to a unit or another improvement that becomes available.

You should have access to ~3 Cruisers, but they aren't much use against ports north of Gaza (coastal batteries). I wouldn't dismiss Gunboats, for they have holds for a passenger.

I suspected that, north of Gaza, things get tough. However on Turn 2, a Cruiser and a Monitor eliminated the protective minefield and destroyed the 4-unit garrison in Romani, and returned to the shipyard in Port Said for repairs. It is my intention to first eliminate the garrisons in all 6 Sinai cities and then capture them starting with the one farthest from the British. Designers have been known to use the capture of a city nearest the enemy to trigger the spawning of hostiles in more distant cities.

I would like another cruiser ASAP because the 4 coastal cities are ideal targets for bombardment. In addition, I am curious to see if and how the AI will attempt to re-garrison its cities.

If you send info about your tree (path to ToT and path to scenarios), I can write a VBS that will copy custom and restore original DLL/BMP skins for your setup.

That would be very nice but it was not my intention to cause you additional work after the monumental amount you have put into EAII.

Here are the paths:
Main TOT folder..........C:\Program Files\A TOT
Original, Fantasy, Sound etc. are sub-folders in A TOT

All downloaded EAII files are in
C:\Documents and Settings\JAS\Desktop\A EL AURENS

P.S. The 'A' prefixes are so that the TOT and EL AURENS folders are listed first when when Program Files and Desktop are opened.


Yes, I have received all your e-mails. Your saves are very interesting. Apparently I'm either more aggressive than you or I've goofed monumentally in moving any unit that could drive, walk, crawl or swim from the OOB to the NE and Darfur maps on Turn 1 and put them to work.

You should have my first 2 saves and the Operational Summary later tonight.