The Balkans Wars

[Fing0lfin]

Yes, i am Bulgarian

[McMonkey]

Sorry for the delay Fing0lfin. I had problems uploading the files yesterday and ran out of time. Here is where you can download the Alpha files:

The Balkan Wars Alpha

As I said before it still needs quite a bit of work but it would be good to get some early feedback and new ideas for when I resume development in earnest

[Fing0lfin]

I have just downloaded it and started playing. At first glance, i think that the names of some cities should be changed: Tolbukhin- Dobrich
Rustchuk-Ruse
Sistova-Svishtov
And also the Pillbox and the Priest should have higher cost.

[McMonkey]

Names

I got most of the names from a historical atlas of the era but I definitely need to run them all through Wikipedia to check them!

Dobrich. Bulgarian: Добрич, historical names: Hacıoğlu Pazarcık in Ottoman Turkish, Bazargic in Romanian, Tolbuhin during the Socialist era.

Rousse. Also transliterated as Ruse or Russe; Bulgarian: Русе ['ru.sɛ]; formerly also Rusçuk
During Ottoman rule, the invaders destroyed the town, reacting to a 1595 unsuccessful liberation attempt by a joint Vlach-Bulgarian army, led by Michael the Brave. After its rebuilding in the following years, Rousse was dubbed Rusçuk (Turkish for "little Rousse") and had again expanded into a large fortress by the 18th century.

Svishtov. Bulgarian: Свищов, known as Sistova during Ottoman rule.

The problem is choosing a system for picking names. Should the towns occupied by the Ottomans at the beginning of the game have Turkish names or the Anglecized ones?

Should I give cities the names they are known as now?

It gets confusing as there are English, Turkish, Greek, Serbo-Croat, Bulgarian, Romanian, Italian, German, Albanian, Hungarian and Russian versions of the names for many of the cities in the game.

On the plus side I have a good excuse to look through Wikipedia and learn the history of places I may otherwise not have paid much attention to!

I think my final solution may be to include a list (in alphabetical order) of all the city names I finally chose to go with. This list will include all the variations and the player can then chose what they want to rename the cities once they are captured. Some of the cities will probably have to be set as it would effect the events if they are changed.

I am still working on the stats and will add any suggestions to my list of things to do

[Fing0lfin]

On the senenth turn the Rumanians sneak attacked me(i am playng Bulgarians) and my allies decaleared war to Rimania, too. I think that this should be prevented somehow.

[Fing0lfin]

I will now write a short summary of my first game. I played 35 turns. I stopped when i captured Istambul.
At fitst i launched two offensives: One to Kumanovo in the west and one in Thrace. The offensive to Kumanovo was unssecusfull and i pulled back my troops. In Thrace i attacked from to directions: one at Kirk Kilise and the other was towards Edrine. The first direction was pretty succesful and i fast ran deep in Ottoman teritory. Meanwhlie i was fighting heavy fights near Edrine. My offensive was stoped near Chatalja(which also happened in the real history ) Then i changed the direction of my offensive and conquered the rest of Thrace(including Edrine).
Then i headed to Kavala and Salonika. I launched another offensive through Petrich. The good thing was that it really was "the run for Salonika". I managed to capture it, but the Greeks were really close. They were attacking the city from the other side . I think that if a human player plays the Greeks, he would manage to take Salonika first The Serbian offensive also went good and they conquered much of Macadonia including Skopie(Uskub). Generally this is pretty historically accurate(except the Bulgarians capturing Salonika).

But now come the bad things I think that there are a lot of things that should be changed. As i said before, the costs of some units(pilbox,priest,shepard,supply convy) should be significantly increased. Honestly, those priests spoil a lot of the game When you are before some hard to capture city, you just go and iniciate a revolt. This way you can eliminate strong deffensive possitions like Chatalja for example(which is small city and it's not expensive to iniciate the revolt)
Also by a priest i managed to capture most of the turkish fleet, and i payed only about 200 gold. Their fleet attacked one of my harbor cities and captured it. On the next turn i iniciated revolt in the city and all the fleet in and around it became mine...
Also i think that the strenght of the artilery units should be increased. Now they are pretty useless. It's better to use an infantry than an artilaery unit(i am talking about sieging cities)
The other weak point is the lack of events I can help you with the Bulgarian ones and some general events.
The main things is that there should be an events(ot series of events) by which you will pass from the first Balkan war, to the second. Because practically, now i stayed allied with Serbs and Greeks till the end of the game.
Also the Rumanians should't sneak attack before the begining of the Second Balkan war.
It became tooo long. If i had forgotten something i will add it later. Sorry for the long and may be boring post

[McMonkey]

Thanks for the feedback Fing0lfin. This is exactly what I was looking for

I am glad the game ran roughly historically. The trick is to get the two non-human combatants to make it seem like a race. My idea was to have three versions.

For example, if you play as Bulgaria then you play from the rules file where the Greeks and Serbs have improved stats. I could also create three separate events files and the player would run a batch file before starting play.

Regarding Salonika. In real life the Bulgarian Army was only narrowly beaten to Salonika by about 24 hours so this outcome was not so unrealistic.

Unit costs and stats can and will be amended. Artillery will be strengthened and the priest will be for spying only. It is quite easy to forbid him from inciting revolts and stealing technology by amending the game text file.

Once I am happy with the stats and general flow of the game (which I am close to being now!) I will add the events. These will both strengthen the Ottomans defences and give the players rewards for capturing cities etc...

I would certainly appreciate your help with this. What I think I may do is try and finish off this scenario and use the experience I gain from developing the batch files (my first attempt) to help e develop the more complex one I will need to use in my Fortress Europe scenario.

I will start on the events file straight away

[McMonkey]

OK. I have fixed all of the things mentioned except the events.

I have had a look at the Red Front batch file and think I have worked it out logically. I would test it but I have no idea how to save it as a .bat file. When I edit and save the only option I get is to save it as a .txt file.

I will have a scout around for info on batch files but I wonder if someone could explain what I need to do.

Here is my attempt:

@echo off
cls
echo.
echo THE BALKAN WARS Version 1.0
echo.
echo Loading starting rules and event files for the game
echo Please choose from the options below:
echo.
echo 1. Load Serbian rules
echo 2. Load Bulgarian rules
echo 3. Load Greek rules
echo X. Exit without Loading
echo.
choice /c:123456789X Enter your selection

if errorlevel 4 goto done
if errorlevel 3 goto Greek
if errorlevel 2 goto Bulgar
if errorlevel 1 goto Serb

:Serb
echo.
echo Serbian rules
copy rules1.txt rules.txt
copy events1.txt events.txt
DELEVENT RF.sav
goto done

:Bulgar
echo.
echo Bulgarian rules
@echo off
copy rules2.txt rules.txt
copy events2.txt events.txt
DELEVENT RF.sav
goto done

:Greek
echo.
echo Greek rules
@echo off
copy rules3.txt rules.txt
copy events3.txt events.txt
DELEVENT RF.sav
goto done

:done
echo.
pause
exit
quit

[McMonkey]

No probs. I found a guide on the web and realised where I was going wrong. Instead of saving it as .bat I saved it as .BAT and it works.

I am quite pleased with myself now as I am a big technophobe normally and give up too easily

EDIT: A quick question though. Why is it the Civ II engine can run files named Rules1 and Events3. Normally if you changed it from simply Rules or Events the game what recognize it! What wonderous computer thingy makes this possible?

[GhostOfDisco]

Re: Names

Originally posted by McMonkey
It gets confusing as there are English, Turkish, Greek, Serbo-Croat, Bulgarian, Romanian, Italian, German, Albanian, Hungarian and Russian versions of the names for many of the cities in the game.

I know what you mean. In making my Sobieski scenario, there seem to be several different names for many of the cities (is it Lvov, Lwow or Lviv? Wilno or Vilnius? Ryga or Riga? Kyiv, Kiev or Kijow?) Usually, I go with the "English" version of the city (though, as of these days, I've made an exception for Vienna/Wien, though I might change that), but that gets harder with the lesser-known locales.

Also, when I tried to play it, Civ 2 shut down. Why is that? Same thing happened with Of Celts and Iberians, but I got good copies of that scenario from civfanatics and the Spanish Civ 2 site. Is there just something wrong with the SL wiki? (As always. )

[McMonkey]

Lvov, Lwow or Lviv or Lemberg if you want to use the german name!

I don't know if there is an easy solution to the city names question. I will probably go with the Anglecized names or the most common version or failing that the one I like the most

I am not sure why you are having problems running these scenarios. I have tested my downloads and they seem fine. Other people have also played them and not had a problem. Most puzzling

[Fing0lfin]

HM, i looked through the rules and i realised that the rules in the Bulgarian folder, were the same as the others. In other words, i have played the Greek version with Bulgaria, so my units were stronger, not weeker....

[McMonkey]

DAMN IT

That's the second time today I have typed a lengthy message and lost is...GRR!

Anyway I will start again!

I have had a look at the rules and seen that the Bulgarian units are the same in all of them. That is OK as in the final version they will have these (or very similar) stats. Of course the Artillery will be improved as suggested. In the final version, if you play as the Bulgarians their stats will remain the same. It will be the Greeks and Serbs who have improved stats to help the AI gain ground and add to the race vibe. Of course it will be more challenging for the player if they go to war with their former allies!

The units costs have been modified. The only reason some of them cost 10 shields was that I had not decided how much they were going to cost.

The priest can now only investigate cities. Useful for planning an attack. He can no longer bribe units, incite revolts etc...

The Batch file is working so the file swapping process before starting the game should be easy for the player.

I intend to begin working on the events today. If you have any ideas please feel free to post them. I will give you a shout if I need advice

I also need to create a tech tree that will trigger additional events. This could include the Romanian intervention.

The Balkan Wars were a testing ground for new weapons such as the Machine-gun, barbed wire and the Aeroplane (along with the Russo-Japanese, Boer and Italian-Ottoman wars), but there was not really any technological breakthroughs during the wars. Therefore I will not use a traditional tech tree.

[Fing0lfin]

If it's all reight, i would like to see the events you have already done, and then if i have some ideas, i will share them

And also, what do you think of more detalied events ? I mean the event/battle etc. beeing explained in some details, giving correct historical infomormation.

[McMonkey]

Good plan. I will post the latest files (including batch files, amended rules and initial events) onto the Scenario League later today.

I like the idea of having information about the battles, the only problem is that text takes up a lot of space in the events memory. I can make the game more challenging by using the events to create units for the defenders and some reward units for capturing objectives. There will be some text for capturing cities but I will try and keep it brief.

I could include some kind of text document in the scenario folder that the player could refer to if they are interested in the history. When an event triggers it could have a number in the text (like: *3). If you look at *3 in the attached text document it would give a detailed account of the history! Just an idea.

I will post again when I have uploaded the new scenario folder.

Right now I am preparing for the Merseyside Derby (Everton vs Liverpool) at 12:45. I am a life long (IE Long suffering) Evertonian and this is the biggest event of the season!