Blood and Iron

[techumseh]

Thanks for your interest guys. I've probably been tinkering with Blood and Iron for longer than any other project, as Gareth can testify. I even picked a tour of Germany for my holidays 7 years ago in search of inspiration (I know, what a geek!). I have a large collection of Wagnerian clips I'm just dying to use for the soundtrack, as well as a full set of Fairline's units.

There are a couple of conceptual problems that I keep wrestling with and haven't been able to solve. I started over a couple of years ago, reducing the scope of the scenario, but I'm still not sure how to solve the issues.

The main idea is that for Prussia to unify Germany, she has to have a series of successful wars, which, in order to be successful, must be preceeded by the correct Bismarckian diplomacy. Diplomacy is represented by researching the right technologies in the right order. Otherwise, Italy won't join the attack on Austria, France might join Austria, etc. etc.

Manipulating the diplomacy is proving harder than I thought. You can keep states from fighting, and you can make them fight, but having fought, keeping them then at peace is a problem, since you can't enforce a new alliance through events.

The second problem is more difficult. I don't want the various states to be producing lots of units which then run all over the map. So nobody can build any units while at peace. When war is declared, the belligerents mobilize their armies via events. The creation of the armies is no problem, but demobilization is. Even making the units obsolete doesn't seem to get rid of them quick enough, which compounds the first problem.

In the meantime, I've started a simpler project for now, and will continue to work on solving the B&I issues. We have a long weekend and I'll try to upload Red October 2.0 and Prince of Darkness (ToT) by Monday.

[curtsibling]

Good to hear these cool projects are still moving along!

Indeed, sometimes the CIV2 engine limits our ideas in terms of portraying historical items.
Not sure how the problem of enforcing peace would be dealt with. I guess the scope and
design of the whole scenario would have to be re-imagined in many ways...

An Imperial German scenario has tons of fun potential...!
I hope a way can be found to represent that era.

PS
Looking forward to POD!

[civ2units]

I also noticed the limits of the civ2 engine by working on my AWI scenario. To create a historical correct scenario is nearly impossible. But in my opinion, a scenario is really interesting, when there is a chance of playing an alternative history.

In my case should be the Brits get a real chance of winning the revolutionary war. I noticed during the playtests, that nearly nobody was be able to win the war with the British Empire, so I´m working on it to change it. After all, it will be hard to win, but you get a chance.

The same goes for my second, current project. I will give the Confederates a realistic chance of winning the war.

I think in your scenario, the french will be the hardest enemy of the rising german Empire. In your case, I would create a scenario, where the player can play with both sides, rising up a german Empire or avoid it with the french.

Sounds interesting with the mobilize tech. I would like to use it in my AWI scenario for the french.

[typhoon]

There appears to be a Blood and Iron scenario by a Martín Carreras over at the Spanish Apolyton site. It appears to cover the German Wars of Unification and the same period as Age of War on a European map.

http://spanish.apolyton.net/civ2/bestonet/scenxix.html