The Distant Rumblings of War!

[curtsibling]

Even better was the large steel bar to stop panzers.

The (insane) idea was to poke this giant lever held by
two soldiers into the wheel rollers of armoured tanks.
Only we Brits could think of something so nutty.

Concrete blocks or bombs? Nah! We're British!

We did have one real weapon...'Dad's Army!'

[curtsibling]

As soon as I get the edits complete this weekend and get the
SCN sorted (cheers, AGRICOLA!) I will post up new zips, etc.

Stay tuned!

[curtsibling]

New zips coming soon!

D7 is finally getting near release!

[AGRICOLA]

New zips coming soon!

D7 is finally getting near release!

In that case, this is probably a good time to post this.

I finally had the time to start on D7 Soviets/Deity. Here is what happened in the first dozen turns plus some comments

DICTATORISSIMO STALIN'S STRATEGY
1. Stop the treacherous, doublecrossing Teutonic scum.
2. Squish the revanchist Finns.
3. Amphib invasion of northern Naziland.
4. Grab whatever is not nailed down in continental Europe and around the Med for the Empire of Stalin the Conquerorissimo.


JUNE 1941
- Began pillaging roads wherever possible. Good results in Baltics and Belarus. Not so good in northern Ukraine. Major difficulties in southern Ukraine.
- Set up 'killing grounds' around cities . . . . squares with no roads and no fortresses. That will permit the killing of entire Axis stacks. Nasty, eh?
- Avoided combat except for minor fight with some Romanian units.
- Garrisons withdrawn from western cities and valuable units moved east and rehomed. Cities being starved . . . . no point to handing them over to the Germans in good condition.
- Sold improvements. All Sewer Systems dismantled and used to construct Baku - Stalingrad oil pipeline . . . . another Soviet first, the world’s first recycling program.
- Began IRB program that will complete 11 Katyushas, 2 KV-1's and 1 Shturmovik in July.
- Researching Flak Batteries. August is the projected completion date.


COMMENTS
- In order to pillage a road, one has to first pillage the fortress [stackable terrain]. Is there any way to change this?
- I removed the first turn money bug from the .scn file so the workaround in events is no longer needed. However, all contributions from the events workaround are gratefully acknowledged..
- Changed the denominators for spawning Engineers and Workers to the following values: Allies/3, Soviets/2, Germans/2, Italians/4, Finns/6, Romanians/6, Vichy/6.



JULY 1941
- Had a good month . . . . . lost only Viipuri, Kherson, Grodno and 29 Red Army units.
- Continued program of pillaging roads, creating killing grounds and selling improvements.
- IRB program will deliver 6 Katyushas, 8 KV-1's and 3 Red Army in August.


COMMENTS
- Found that range of Shturmoviks (Mv=6) is inadequate for many ferry flights. Increased it to 8, same as the German Stuka.



AUGUST 1941
- Another good month . . . . . lost only Chernovtsy, Kishinev and 14 Red Army units.
- Discovered Flak Batteries. Researching AA Artillery.
- RB 10 Flak Batteries in front line cities.
- IRB program will deliver 7 Katyushas and 1 KV-1 in September.


COMMENTS
- Playing the Soviets is going to be SLOOOOOOOW. Their economy is lousy and their productive capacity limited. By contrast, players wallow in gold when playing the Germans.



SEPTEMBER 1941
- Another good month . . . . . lost only Brest-Litowsk and 12 units.
- The Soviet defensive front is finally solidifying as KV-1's and and Katyushas are joining city garrisons. Leningrad, Minsk, Gomel, Kiev, Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk are now well garrisoned. In the north, Riga and Daugavpils lack KV-1's and Katyushas. Riga can probably be reinforced in time but Daugavpils will have to abandoned. In the south, Krasnoperekopsk and Sevastopol need more heavy reinforcements but should be able to withstand all but the most determined attacks.
- RB 1 Flak Battery.
- IRB program will deliver 3 Katyushas and 2 KV-1's in October.


COMMENTS
- A Shturmovik killed a stack of 7 German a/c near Rovno. Should the 'vik be able to attack aircraft or should it be equivalent to and have the same parameters as the ground attack German Stuka?


MAY 1942
- With the advent of summer the Germans resumed their offensive, launching 15 attacks from Leningrad to Sevastopol. None succeeded.
- The invasion of Finland began, and suceeded in capturing 7 cities as far north as Vaasa and Mikkeli.
- The regular building program will deliver 1 KV-1 in June.


COMMENTS
- The invasion of Finland is succeeding, but at an unacceptable price. A Katyusha has little difficulty in destroying a German Army unit in a city but at least 2 are needed to destroy a Schutzen. As a consequence, 5 Katyushas have been lost in this operation.
- As soon as the tech for Assault Guns becomes available [June 1942] Katyushas [ A/D=12/1 ] will be disbanded and replaced by Assault Guns [ A/D=13/2 ]. The planned invasion of Germany cannot succeed with Katyushas as the unit used to attack cities. The Assault Guns will be replaced by SU-122’s when they become available during the winter of 1942-1943.
- In Events: “Rommel is furious as the Italian cohorts rout are routed and the German HQ in El Agheila falls to the Allies...”


WARNING TO PLAYERS
- Workers and Engineers for all civs are not buildable but are spawned as NONE units. This has no impact until one is in a position to destroy a civ. If there is one or more “live” Worker or Engineer when the the civ’s last city is taken, the civ is not destroyed and continues to exist even if all Workers and Engineers are subsequently killed. In D7, this means that the vanquished civ becomes indestructible and all its events remain operational. This technique is used by many designers to keep civs in being for purposes of the scen.
- In D7, before destroying a civ, it pays to find and kill any Workers and Engineers before capturing the last city. In the case of Italy, Finland and Romania it eliminates spawning by those civs but does not stop nuisance spawning of German units on their territory.

I've got the sum of city sizes for all civs for the .scn file so I can fix it in a few minutes.

[curtsibling]

Conquerorissimo! You invented a great new word!

Sounds like you are even more ruthless when playing as the Soviets...

I think you will like the new version, which I will post up soon!



I think also my side-project of D7 will be interesting - !
'The Eurasian Wars' is a more simple 'capture and build' scen,
taking many of the lessons from D7, and applying them to a more
straightforward CIV2-stlye game...Will be finishing that soon!

But one thing at a time!

I'll post up the latest version of D7 to the SL-wiki...

[curtsibling]

BTW - Just noticed - There is an extra wav file that is not needed...!

Please delete 'SP.wav' from your Sound folder!

[curtsibling]

NEW UPDATE!

I am calling this version Dictator7 v2, as it has many edits.

It will be vital to delete all contents of the D7 directory,
save for the 'Sound' folder...Errors will happen otherwise!


Changes in version two:
--------------------------------------------------------------

*Map has been edited. (many units are placed again)
*Units are re-organised. (check the civ-pedia)
*Wonders are not buildable. (they distracted the gameplay)
*Stats have been slightly changed. (a more interesting war)
*Events have been re-written completely. (cleaned up, errors removed)

Scenario Files:

http://sleague.apolyton.net/images/9/90/D7_Scenario_v2.zip

Multi Files:

http://sleague.apolyton.net/images/d/de/D7_Multi_v2.zip

If anyone is playing, let me know what you think of the
changes...I am eager to get this one all wrapped up, and
to get the next project underway...All suggestions welcome!

[PietH]

Started a game as the Germans.

First impressions:
-What happened to the Luftwaffe?? Only four widespread Stukas and Heinkels. That is a serious setback to any blitzkrieg initiatives. I guess it's done to slow down the german progress, but it will require a major change in strategy, since the loss of groundtroops will be a LOT higher. Starting with a rather limited amount of mobile artillery and StugIII, and no aircover, makes for a very hard fight against cities.
-Artillery is now obsolete without the faster movement
-Generals appear too strong defensively, my precious mobile artillery and Heinkels could not dent it.
-it seems production is higher, but science is lower. I don't like spending time and money on building libraries Especially when I need a lot of production capacity to build an airforce.

Just a first turn whine for now ;-)

[PietH]

Well, as expected, it's a very hard fight. The German losses far exceed the production. By october 1941 Army Group Centre was nearly wiped out taking Minsk and is now on the defensive. Army Group North managed to take Narva, but has no offensive weapons left to stage a serious attack on Leningrad. Army Group South bypassed Sevastopol and managed to take Kerch, but is at the end of it strenght.

Hopefully I can go on the offensive again after the winter. This is very different gameplay indeed.

[curtsibling]

You are right about the air cover! Ooops!
I will get some changes made, if you want to forge on
with your game and tell me what else is needing fixed?

I'll reduce the General's power a little bit too!

[PietH]

OK, I set my German campaign aside, and decided to play a round as spectator (french, all units fortified) and just click through the events.

I must say that in the development of the war, this version is a bit further from the real events then previous versions.
-On the eastern front, progress by the Germans started slow, and only picked up momentum by late '43 and '44. For a long time the front went from Riga - Smolensk - Kiev - Odessa. Viipuri remained Russian until july '44 (keeping the finns out of the picture). Leningrad fell in sept '44. In the south teh axis got as far as Odessa.

-On the western front the allies had no chance. They're thrown back into the Atlantic, and the only foothold in Italy is Messina.

-By loading the summer '45 files, I got an "error in events textfile", so I stopped my game.

Other remarks:
-AA is too strong. In watching 4 years of war fold out in front of me, I have not seen a single succesfull airraid on a AA fortified city. Especially the Russians send wave after wave of useless kamikaze pilots against cities with AA. I think AA should be able to withstand a few bombers, but not defacto all of them. For fighterbombers the stats should be lower ofcourse.

-My pet pieve is the evolvement of the eastern front. As a spectator the situation now is that the Germans advance as the war progresses, in stead of the Russians.

I have no easy solution either, but the somehow there should be more progression in the production of soviet units. Of course that has the disadvantage that when playing as the russians it gets too easy.
The same of course for the invasions on the western front.

[curtsibling]

Cheers for the headup on that, PietH!
Your patience is always appreciated, sir!

I am going to make some serious changes and get this
scenario working proper - I am focusing on the AA and
tank units to make sure the Germans push forwards
at first but lose their advantage later...Stay tuned!

[civ2units]

I started also a game with the Allies. In the first few turns the Germans conquered about 7 Soviet cities, the Finnish troops Tallinn. I´m fighting against the siege of Tobruk, decide to conquer Beirut and looking for German subs in the Atlantic.

I´ve destroyed great parts of the Italian navy, the british navy will be allways the best navy in the world.

Tomorrow I will continue the game and looking forward how the invasions in Italy and the Normandy will working.

[PietH]

Very curious to see how your game develops, civ2units.

Curt, your scenario IS working properly (except the events error for '45). It's great fun playing. It's just that I'm dreaming of a game that will show me WWII in civ. That is probably impossible to do. Maybe it's possible to tweak it such that it will folow the events of war with only AI players, but then again that might make it too easy for playing. Give the Germans a strong start, and a human player will overrun the whole of Russia. Give the Russians more 'free' units or cheaper production costs, and it will be easier to make a run for Berlin.

But if all, I think making soviet units cheaper to produce (combined with higher production values for cities) could be a way forward. In WWII the soviets managed to produce more units with less raw materials then the Germans had. I don't know how much work goes into that, but it could be a nice experiment.

[curtsibling]

Based on your sound advice, PietH, I have adjusted the generals, AA units artillery units.

*The AA takes about average two (or three) non-veteran Stukas to take it out, fortified in a city.

*Artillery now has alpine ability, so it remains a 1-move units and doesn't bug the AI build lists.

*The Generals are little less hardcore, making them useful, but destructible!

*Beefed up the amount of Luftwaffe reserves! about 15 more units!

Left everything else, as it is still balanced. Certain units were ruining the mix.

And hopefully this new version will be a bit less wonky!

It's true, the perfect WW2 scenario is probably impossible in the CIV2 engine...

...But it's fun trying to find that holy grail!



PS
Patch with these fixes is attached.

Just overwrite everything...
All events go into the events folder.
Other files go in the main D7 folder.