Jan III Sobieski scenario

[techumseh]

This looks great, I'm glad you've got a playtest version out at last.

1. Are the Poles supposed to be able to build Cossacks, Tartar Inf. and Danish Cav.?

2. Why not use CivStack and make the scenario stackable - use airbases, not fortresses.

3. What is the recommended playability level? This should show when you launch the scenario.

4. Playtest versions of scenarios need a Readme file. What do you want us to look for? How do we win?

Otherwise, at first glimpse, it looks grand.

(Aggie, the reason it takes a few seconds to load is that Ghost didn't put a semi-colon in front of @DEBUG at the start of the Events file.)

(edit) After a couple of turns of play, I discover that you have already added airbases and the scenario is stackable. You've eliminated the text, so I couldn't tell. May I suggest that you use some other text name for airbases, like stackable? The problem is that sometimes AI-controlled units pillage airbases or fortresses, and you will have no way of telling, which may result in the otherwise avoidable loss of stacks of units.

[McMonkey]

Techumseh post covers everything I noted. Looks like you have the basis of a great scenario here. With all the loose ends tied up it should be amazing!

I noticed a couple of Polish cities have no improvements at all. Also, why is Edirne and the Crimean Tartar cities size 1? Also the intro text events could do with being spell/grammar checked (IE Khan's, Republic, Veteran when first word in sentence, experienced). Of course I am a great big hypocrite who can't spell himself and relies on the Google spell checker

Hopefully I will be able to start a game this evening if work is quiet.

[AGRICOLA]

The first phase of Jan Sobieski's master plan for creating a Polish empire has been completed with the destruction of the greatest threat to Poland . . . . . the Muscovites. Here are the major events of the 3-year conflict and some comments on the scen.

Congratulations on creating several really scary moments for the poor, beleaguered Poles. Very well done, I've enjoyed every bit of it so far.


1667
Turn 1 - Aug '67________ Start of scen. Sold improvements for 400,000 gold.
Turn 3 - Oct '67________ REVOLT
Turn 4 - Nov '67________ Switched to COMMUNIST government
Turn 5 - Dec '67________ Ochakoy captured from Tartars; 1 Tartar city razed

1668
Turn 6 - Jan '68________ Muscovites sneak attacked
Turn 7 - Feb '68________ Polish units assembled for a counterattack
Turn 8 - Mar '68________ Kiev (Pyramids) and Smolensk captured. Muscovites paid 400,00 for peace treaty.
Turn 10 - May '68_______ Discovered Sun Tzu tech, absolutely critical for Poland in this scen. Most cities are size 6 or less and it would be prohibitively expensive to build Barracks in each one.
Turn 12 - Jul '68________ Sun Tzu wonder completed in Krakow
Turn 13 - Aug '68_______ Units assembled to attack Muscovites
Turn 14 - Sep '68_______ Diplomatic double dealing got Muscovites to declare war. Poles captured Riga, Pskov, Vyazma, Cernigov; razed Wolmar. Moscow paid 250,000 gold for peace.
Turn 15 - Oct '68_______ Krakow completed Factory.

1669
Turn 18 - Jan '69_______ Muscovites launched futile sneak attack. Poles captured Perejaslav, Lubnie, Poltava. Moscow paid 150,000 gold for peace.
Turn 21 - Apr '69_______ Krakow completed Hanging Gardens wonder
Turn 23 - Jun '69_______ Muscovites declared war. Poles captured Tula, Tver, Belgorod; razed Bryansk, Kharkov, Yakutsk.
Turn 24 - Jul '69_______ Novgorod, Stary Oskol, Orel, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, Rewal captured by Poles. Moscow paid 150,000 gold for peace.
Turn 25 - Aug '69_______ Krakow built Manufacturing plant. Start of 6 months of reoganizing and assembling units for final offensive against Muscovites.

1670
Turn 30 - Jan '70_______ Poles sneak attacked Muscovites after diplomatic moves failed to prod them into attacking first. Voronezh and Tambo were captured; Narva, Vyborg, Saratov razed.
Turn 31 - Feb '70_______ Helsinki, Wasa razed
Turn 32 - Mar '70_______ Scattered units returning to Moscow and Sietch areas.
Turn 34 - May '70_______ Sietch captured, leaving Moscow as the sole Muscovite city.
Turn 35 - Jun '70_______ Krakow completed Hoover Dam wonder. 70+ attack units completed assembly in Tver, Vyazma, and Tula for assault on Moscow.
Turn 36 - Jul '70_______ Moscow captured. Muscovite civ destroyed. Over half the attack units were lost in taking the city. Bloody strong garrison.


COMMENTS & SUGGESTIONS

I have some doubts about acquiring techs by capturing cities. In most cases the available techs were of no interest to the Poles but merely increased the number of flasks needed to complete the research in progress. Any chance of having a "NO Tech" with which everyone starts the scen with but which is taken away from the Poles by events whenever they have it? This would effectively allow players to refuse to take a tech when they capture a city.


The Tartars are a major nuisance, especially when they repeatedly throw a dozen or so units against the Poles. The Muscovite spawning is nicely balanced: a significant problem but not to the point of making it the focus of the scen. The one exception was after Jan '70, when all hell broke loose in the Smolensk - Vyazma - Tula area just as Polish forces were massing for the attack on Moscow. Very good stuff.


Could you please make the following change in the GAME file so that players can see the amount of gold that the other civs have?

@REPORTFOREIGNMULTI
@width=800


Because of the large shield production in Krakow, the first global warming symbol popped up on Turn 22. I turned pollution off in the scenario parameters but am not sure if that will do the trick. If you wish, I can hexedit the .scn file to entirely eliminate global warming.


I would have thought that if a road is built across a swamp, any unit can cross.


I was puzzled that it is impossible to establish embassies with either the Turks of the Tartars. Sending a diplomat, merely opens the civ's information screen. Marco Polo and the UN have no effect.


Some of the popups, such as the one

"According to the Treaty of Andrusuovo, Moscow is supposed to return the city of Kiev to the Republic of Poland and Lithuania."

came long after the Poles had taken matters in their own hands. Regrettably this type of thing is unavoidable.


You have done an amazingly fine job on the scen so far. It played flawlessly and most events seemed to happen at the correct time.


Onward to Phase II of the Great Plan . . . . . to turn the Turks into good citizens of the Greater Polish Empire.


P.S. The famed Polish Winged Hussar unit spent its time in Krakow. Not as a defensive unit but as a mobile source of 100 shields. Some of the building of critical wonders was competitive and, if needed, the Hussars provided the means for adding 100 shields before rush buying. I suppose that there is a first time for everything.


@Techumseh: I agree that the scen uses airfields in a most interesting way.

[Turno71]

Take a look

http://steppes.proboards.com/index.c...ead=824&page=2


Useful link to polish units.

[GhostOfDisco]

Sorry for the monster post. I've had a lot of things to reply to.

I'm giving the scen a try. After a couple of hours of going over its details, here are a few comments.

Do change the unit name John Sobieski to Jan Sobieski. There is no reason to use the anglicized version of his name.

Well, I tended to use the Anglicized version of names when people have Western names (Frederick William instead of Fredreich(sp) Wilhelm, for example), but I could do that...

I found that the scen loaded very slowly, 2+ minutes, possibly because the virus checker (AVG) was checking every step of loading the events.

(Aggie, the reason it takes a few seconds to load is that Ghost didn't put a semi-colon in front of @DEBUG at the start of the Events file.)

D'OH! I didn't even realize that. I'll make sure to do that!

Given that this is an alpha version, the descriptions of civilization advances could do with some editing in order to make them more descriptive of what the techs accomplish. There also seem to be some dead end techs that seem to acomplish nothing. Similarly, government forms like Imperialism and Sultanate have no descriptions.

Yes, I do need to work on the Pedia entires. I'm just confused a bit with how the whole entry things work (at one point, it seems alphabetically arranged but at another it doesn't...)

Excepting the changes I make to all scens, the graphics are generally excellent.

I have some doubts about the future of the Polish economy. It looks like a long, slow development to something that can support a large army.

Well, I'm glad that's true, because it's generally historically accurate. Poland went through the devastating Swedish/Russian "Deluge" not too long before the scenario begins, and the country historically didn't as much as it should have afterward (long story there, but I do hope to give the player the chance to revitalize the Polish economy.)

Please edit GAME/@PRODUCTION to width=550 so that there is no overwriting in the City Window "What shall we build?" screen.

Will do.

Excepting a few city improvements and some Pikemen, most cities were set to produce Cossack Storozhas. This unit appears to be an incredible bargain when compared to the similar Pacerni.

Cossack Storozhas____A/D/Mv/HP/FP/COST = 7/3/4/2/2/20 + all roads
Pacerni______________A/D/Mv/HP/FP/COST = 7/3/4/3/2/100

Did you intend this?

No. Cossack Storozhas are in there solely to ensure that The units that come out of villages will be Cossacks (or maybe Tatars,) instead of some inappropriate unit (like Swedes or Germans. )

Cossack cavalry should be recruitable with Cossack Ennoblement, and their infantry counterparts with Three-Nation Republic, but other than that Cossacks should be unbuildable by any civ.

I know in playtests I've seen Brandenburg Cossacks and Tartar Infantry, even though I thought I set the @UNITS_ADVANCED so that the Prussians and other inappropriate civs could not build said units.

This scen looks very interesting with Poland having to fight desperately for its survival from its historical situation of being surrounded by enemies on all sides.

Thanks.

1. Are the Poles supposed to be able to build Cossacks, Tartar Inf. and Danish Cav.?

Well, Cossacks can eventually be built, but Tartar Inf. is only there to garrison Tartar cities, and Danish Cav only exists for the Scanian War events. I thought I had adjusted everything in @UNITS_ADVANCED to ensure that only the proper civs could make certain types of units (only Tartars can make Tartar units, etc.) But apparently I haven't. Could anyone help me with this.

2. Why not use CivStack and make the scenario stackable - use airbases, not fortresses.
...
(edit) After a couple of turns of play, I discover that you have already added airbases and the scenario is stackable. You've eliminated the text, so I couldn't tell. May I suggest that you use some other text name for airbases, like stackable? The problem is that sometimes AI-controlled units pillage airbases or fortresses, and you will have no way of telling, which may result in the otherwise avoidable loss of stacks of units.

I've wondered about that. One thing that happens often in Polish military history is that some king or Hetman scores a great victory against a larger enemy (but lacks the political muscle to exploit it, but that's another story) but thought that, if the whole world was "airbased", then some of those victories could not be feasible, due to the out-of-way place of some of the battlefields - for example, when testing to see how to get from Lwow to Chocim (below Kaminiec - it's in the events), it turned out that a long-range, non-"all as roads" cavalry unit (such as Sobieski or the hussars) only has one move left after arriving at the battle site. Therefore, I thought, if everything was stacked, the Turkish AI could just overwhelm the Polish army when its turn came because the smaller Polish forces could not defeat all the Turkish forces in time. However, it appears that, at least historically, the Turks and Poles had about an even number of forces at that battle. Plus there could be strategies you could use to prevent the surviving Turks from overrunning you in a single turn, methinks...
So I think I'll airbase the whole thing! (Well, save for the Austrian Garrison square (so only the Pasha can attack it) and the Italian City squares (so that they can't be attacked).

3. What is the recommended playability level? This should show when you launch the scenario.

Not sure.

4. Playtest versions of scenarios need a Readme file. What do you want us to look for? How do we win?

Long story short, you need to reclaim the Republic's lost lands, defend her against foreign enemies, reform her political system, and establish a hereditary Sobieski dynasty. I could elaborate a bit, but 1)this post is long enough already 2)I need to get to bed sometime.

Also, why is Edirne and the Crimean Tartar cities size 1?

They should be larger. They might look size 1, but if you get a unit near them, they should be bigger.

Also the intro text events could do with being spell/grammar checked (IE Khan's, Republic, Veteran when first word in sentence, experienced). Of course I am a great big hypocrite who can't spell himself and relies on the Google spell checker

Well, I know I used "khan" as a noun like "king" sometimes (i.e. not always capitalized), but I think I'll have to look at my spelling/grammar errors.

Congratulations on creating several really scary moments for the poor, beleaguered Poles. Very well done, I've enjoyed every bit of it so far.

Coming from you, that's very high praise. I did hope to make it a challenge for the player...

Turn 36 - Jul '70_______ Moscow captured. Muscovite civ destroyed. Over half the attack units were lost in taking the city. Bloody strong garrison.

That's very good. I intended Moscow be a very tough nut to crack- in fact I put in a whole bunch of events where the Muscovites get a huge army and march all their forces against you, but worried that it took up too much events space. Now I think it's not needed anymore.

COMMENTS & SUGGESTIONS

I have some doubts about acquiring techs by capturing cities. In most cases the available techs were of no interest to the Poles but merely increased the number of flasks needed to complete the research in progress. Any chance of having a "NO Tech" with which everyone starts the scen with but which is taken away from the Poles by events whenever they have it? This would effectively allow players to refuse to take a tech when they capture a city.

I think the best option would be to disable tech stealing from city conquest. The AI civs really shouldn't have any techs that the player would like. (Is it just me, or does Powder Weaponry keep disappearing? I've given it to Poland and the other civs a number of times but it just seems to vanish.)

The Tartars are a major nuisance, especially when they repeatedly throw a dozen or so units against the Poles. The Muscovite spawning is nicely balanced: a significant problem but not to the point of making it the focus of the scen. The one exception was after Jan '70, when all hell broke loose in the Smolensk - Vyazma - Tula area just as Polish forces were massing for the attack on Moscow. Very good stuff.

Glad you like it. I've wondered if it was possible to get the AI to imitate the raiding Tartars' behavior, and it seems like it worked. I might add some events to give the Tartars money if they kill (i.e. enslave) other civs' peasants...

Could you please make the following change in the GAME file so that players can see the amount of gold that the other civs have?

@REPORTFOREIGNMULTI
@width=800

Didn't realize that. Will do.

Because of the large shield production in Krakow, the first global warming symbol popped up on Turn 22. I turned pollution off in the scenario parameters but am not sure if that will do the trick. If you wish, I can hexedit the .scn file to entirely eliminate global warming.

Thanks, but I can handle it. I've got a ton of savegames which are basically variation on what the start of the game is. So I'll just make sure to go to the most appropriate .sav, check the right boxes (like "no pollution" and such) and save as the scenario.

I would have thought that if a road is built across a swamp, any unit can cross.

I've thought that too, but apparently not. Blame the ToT engine, not me.
(Swamps are inaccessible so that the Tartars don't run across the Pripet Marshes and haze Lithuania; while that would add to the difficulty, the Grand Duchy tends to have its hands full when at war with Moscow anyway...)

I was puzzled that it is impossible to establish embassies with either the Turks of the Tartars. Sending a diplomat, merely opens the civ's information screen. Marco Polo and the UN have no effect.

I'll have to look on that one. The Tartars should be able to talk after someone takes Chigirin from them, and the Turks go silent a few times (such as during their invasion of Podolia and the Vienna campaign), but they should be able to talk to you at the outset.

Some of the popups, such as the one

"According to the Treaty of Andrusuovo, Moscow is supposed to return the city of Kiev to the Republic of Poland and Lithuania."

came long after the Poles had taken matters in their own hands. Regrettably this type of thing is unavoidable.

Hmmm, I thought I made sure that flag was triggered only if Kiev was in Muscovite hands at that time.

You have done an amazingly fine job on the scen so far. It played flawlessly and most events seemed to happen at the correct time.

Thank you!

P.S. The famed Polish Winged Hussar unit spent its time in Krakow. Not as a defensive unit but as a mobile source of 100 shields. Some of the building of critical wonders was competitive and, if needed, the Hussars provided the means for adding 100 shields before rush buying. I suppose that there is a first time for everything.

Hmm... looking at your "cost to Cossacks" ratio earlier, I've pondered making Hussars less expensive (still more expensive than Pacerni, of course) to give the player some more incentive to build and use them...

[techumseh]

Long story short, you need to reclaim the Republic's lost lands, defend her against foreign enemies, reform her political system, and establish a hereditary Sobieski dynasty. I could elaborate a bit, but 1)this post is long enough already 2)I need to get to bed sometime.

I don't need it tonight, but it's difficult to playtest without knowing what any of that entails.

[AGRICOLA]

AGRICOLA:

Excepting a few city improvements and some Pikemen, most cities were set to produce Cossack Storozhas. This unit appears to be an incredible bargain when compared to the similar Pacerni.

Cossack Storozhas____A/D/Mv/HP/FP/COST = 6/3/4/2/2/20 + all roads
Pacerni______________A/D/Mv/HP/FP/COST = 7/3/4/3/2/100

Did you intend this?

GhostOfDisco:

No. Cossack Storozhas are in there solely to ensure that The units that come out of villages will be Cossacks (or maybe Tatars,) instead of some inappropriate unit (like Swedes or Germans. )

Cossack cavalry should be recruitable with Cossack Ennoblement, and their infantry counterparts with Three-Nation Republic, but other than that Cossacks should be unbuildable by any civ.

I know in playtests I've seen Brandenburg Cossacks and Tartar Infantry, even though I thought I set the @UNITS_ADVANCED so that the Prussians and other inappropriate civs could not build said units.

Sorry, if my question about the Cossack Storozhas was poorly worded but I still am not sure if the Cossack Storozhas have the correct parameters.

A/D/Mv/HP/FP/COST = 6/3/4/2/2/20 + all roads

I appreciate your point that the unit is there to ensure that Cossacks come out of the many small villages that produce very few shields. However, if the parameters are incorrect, my playtest is completely invalid.

Are the unit parameters as you intend them to be?

[Turno71]

Danish units from Total War modding projects...

1st row officer + XVII century infantry
2nd row pikeman + XVIII century infantry

3rd row officer + XVII century cavalry
4rth row XVIII century cavalry

On your first danish unit - musketman - you should have ( look at 1st row, number three and four )
a) that hat changed or
b) the uniform colours inverted

On horseman, green instead of red.

[EZRhino]

I appreciate your point that the unit is there to ensure that Cossacks come out of the many small villages that produce very few shields.

I think he may have been referring to the goodyhuts present in the scenario. Though if that is the case was it an intentional design decision for the Storozhas to be buildable by the Pollaks from the beginning?

Fun scenario BTW. Your best so far GhostOfDisco

[AGRICOLA]

What goody huts? Cossack Storozhas have crisscrossed 60% of the game map and have found none. GhostOfDisco is definitely not handing out any freebies in this scen.

[EZRhino]

Indeed, they are cleverly disguised as villages.

[GhostOfDisco]

Actually, I didn't mean to disguise them. Guess I'll have to change the goody hut graphic (it's supposed to look like a Cossack/Ukranian village).

Last night I looked at the rules.txt, and Cossack Storozahs(sp?), Danish units etc. were able to be build by the wrong civs. That has since been corrected. However, if I give all the civs Powder Weaponry tech, they seem to lose it once I convert to a scenario. Your civ (and the rest of them, save maybe the Tartars) shouold have it at the beginning... I dunno. I'll try and fix it.

[AGRICOLA]

Yep, missed the huts.

Went back to start save and found that the Poles could probably have popped 3 of them. Looking farther afield, it appears that the designer has already popped all but a few huts in the NE half of the map.

[GhostOfDisco]

Well, I tried to limit the goody huts to what I thought was generally "Cossack" territory.

Also, tonight I whipped up a different village pic, which should be different enough from the urban graphic to gain notice:

[Cyrion]

Very nice, GhostOfDisco!