World War II scenario

[Constantine]

I am working on a WWII scenario and i'd like some help and suggestions. The map i am using is Aanar's europe map, and using the multitool save game editor to create edit the game appropriately. for those that know the map, i am mostly placing cities according to the wheat locations on the map, but i am adding other cities for balance and historical purposes. my first attempt will have the player play as germany. I have one scenario so far that i am working on: one just before the poland invasion, but i'm not sure if i should do this, or go with the style in the civII scenario
given, it wont be at the level of the civ II scen., but it should get the feel across. if someone can recommend a good wwii modpack, that would be great. any suggestions on how to edit diplomacy? so far in the game i have to declare war on all the allied powers, and try my best to ally with italy (should italy be under the player's control?) and the axis minor powers. the scenario will be a save game, of coarse. i dont know aht difficulty to set it at, but that can be change easily with the multi tool. the player will not be required to play germany as well, with the help of the tcg editor.
give me lots of suggestions, i will post my first version of the scenario next week perhaps.

[Verto]

suggestions

Make sure Japan is a major power in the game. Most people leave Japan out of the game. Also, by including Japan you've greatly increased the importance of the naval units. I played a WWII scenario were Japan was an insignificant nothing. This gave Russia an advantage with the USSR having to fight on only one front.

Another suggestion I would have would be, depending on the year, to focus each civilization on the strengths and weaknesses they had. The US was economically strong, yet militarily weak, etc.

[Kuciwalker]

suggestion

Wait until we have a scenario editor

[Il Duce]

It probably wont be great

[Coracle]

Until we have dive bombers and other carrier-based planes, and until bombers can sink warships, there is no point in a WW II scenario - even though is no way we can make a scenario as yet without a scenario-builder.

[Thrawn05]

I'll keep playing Close Combat until they release a scenario editor.

[Constantine]

Thanks all. I will create a good map and everything and design the different civilisations now. When the scenario editor is released, i should be able to combine my completed work with all of the element allowed with it. Multi tool is useful, but ended up causing too many crashes when i edited the cities, so i guess we'll have to wait for the editor (which had better be coming soon!).

[Smoking Mirror]

The best way to direct efforts for a WWII scenario for the moment would be to work on the units, improvements, leader heads, wonders and sounds ect... There are some units already posted, but I think there are still some gaps to be filled.
I am working on;

The T34 (the only one I have posted any thing of yet, check it out, its the one with the, um, 'snow')

A couple of mobile infantry units (for use with all the major powers, A general truck and an armoured car. This is not the same as mechanized infantry and is sorely missing).

The KV1 (russian heavy tank) and the Churchil/crocodile (british tank) I need to find bluprints of these two first to get the rigt mesurements fo my 3d model.

I will not be making the american tanks cos they look silly and performed badly.

[Constantine]

Does it seem right to make tundra have a two movement requirement for units to move on? I was thinking that it would be good to represent how the Germans were slowed and halted partially due to the Russian winter, but it would the snow can't just appear seasonally. This would make it tough to invade the USSR through the whole game, and might ruin a bit of the gameplay.
As for air units, which power had the best planes in their airforce? The American and German motors were quite excellent, though the Germans took an bit too much time making their engines perfect. The British performed well in the Battle of Britain, but this was due much to radar and the fact that the luftwaffe was low on fuel by the time they reached the isles. If anyone has a good source on comparitive militaries in WWII, that would be good info to share.
As for the map, I was going to use just a Europe map, but the pacific war was very inportant in the second half of the war, and Japan is also an important factor. However, most of the action occurred in the northern hemisphere, so it might be good to drop the southern to eliminate contextually unimportant land. This would drop the interesting factor of a Japanese invasion of Australia, which would give the Japanese aluminum.

[Smoking Mirror]

I have been thinking of how a WWII scenario would be designed. I recently made the sugestion of having the Tanks act more like armoured artillery suport, using the bombard action. I think this ultimately would make for very interesting games, but I forgot one important fact; the AI cant use artillery units for any thing else than shooting enemy roads and irigation! it wouldnt be much fun having a dozen Tiger II's running around blowing chunks out of the scenery!
For a good WWII scenario we need an events editor like in CivII, with;
A no diplomacy option, a no government switch option and possibly a city captured or per turn triggered reward system. These were the sort of things that made scenarios in CIV II entertaining and even possible. I can imagine a Civ III scenario where on turn five the germans made peace with the british and switched to a democracy!
The only scenario I can think of that would work is a "what if?" scenario, with a 1936 start date and a chance to change history through a combination of diplomacy, espionage, government switching and military action.

[Admiral PJ]

Constantine, I think tundra could be given a bigger defence bonus to show the problems germany had invading russia. Russia should have a bad,unequiped army at first, and behind in technologies.. later it can research advanced tanks (fast or heavy tanks). It needs to make more money and borrow some from other allies maybe , so russia can upgrade all its riflemen/conscripts to infantrymen for example.

I think you can make a good beginning to a world war game,
just save a game at a good place and make this the scenario.
If you make conditions good enough, the axis shouldn't make peace with everyone.. it won't matter as long as you don't accept peace when playing as the allies, or germans.

There were peace deals in worldwar2 anyhow, like with Vichy france and germany, until germany occupied south france as well.

It would be good to have a worldwide ww2 game, not enough scenarios have been done with the Us/Japan pacific war, which is an interesting one.

Remember to use resources realistically, and in a fun way in a ww2 game.

good luck, maybe i can help a bit

[Constantine]

I'll use the increased defence bonus 100% on the tundra, thanks Admiral (100% may be high, but its the only way for the rifleman to have any chance). Another aspect I may change is river movement. Although I will probably remodle the entire tech tree, I disallowed the bridge-building bonus of engineering. This will simulate the effect of defenders destroying their bridges behind them to slow the advancing enemy.

[awesomedude]

If anything, I think the russian tanks should be strong, even in the beginning of the war. I mean the Russian tanks slaughtered the German tanks to begin with (as did the british and french). The first two series and most of the third of Panzer tanks were light and fast, without any greater caliber cannons, whereas the Russians had heavy tanks such as the KV-1 and KV-2 and well balanced tanks such as the T-34, which cannons easily penetrated the weak German armor. Early German success were of course more due to the preparedness of war, the tactical superiority and the experience (as Stalin had already executed most of his top military officers). Later on the Germans built much heavier tanks with the IV, V and VI series of the Panzer. The Russians had great trouble with these during late '42, and '43, but fitted the T-34 with a 85mm cannon and suddenly the battle were even.

I wish Civ3 had a battle-system similar to the one in Panzer General .

[Constantine]

When did the French tanks slaughter the Panzers? When the Germans invaded France the French had a greater number of tanks (2445 German tanks vs. 3063 French tanks), but were unable to stop the German advances anywhere. This are several reasons for this: the French had their tanks at the Maginot line, their tanks were spread through their infantry devisions, the Stukas in the luftwaffe effectively destroyed French tanks, and the Panzers were a superior tank compared to those of the French. The Russians had very few tanks, so to start, they will have a very limited mechanized armed forces, and the Russian cities will have a poor level of production to insure that they can't produce overwhelming numbers of T-34's too early. I'm also not sure how well the British tanks did against the Germans, as the British didn't fight the Germans on land until late in the war (Dunkirk wasn't a good exhibition of the British armoury). As for American tanks, they will need to be included, silly or not . Russian, British, German, and American tanks were the only really distinctive tank builders, so I will have to make different designs for these civs. Other nations will just have generic tanks (it would be silly to design a dutch tank, seeing as they had 1, that's right 1, tank at the start of the war).

[awesomedude]

Originally posted by Constantine
When did the French tanks slaughter the Panzers? When the Germans invaded France the French had a greater number of tanks (2445 German tanks vs. 3063 French tanks), but were unable to stop the German advances anywhere. This are several reasons for this: the French had their tanks at the Maginot line, their tanks were spread through their infantry devisions, the Stukas in the luftwaffe effectively destroyed French tanks, and the Panzers were a superior tank compared to those of the French. The Russians had very few tanks, so to start, they will have a very limited mechanized armed forces, and the Russian cities will have a poor level of production to insure that they can't produce overwhelming numbers of T-34's too early. I'm also not sure how well the British tanks did against the Germans, as the British didn't fight the Germans on land until late in the war (Dunkirk wasn't a good exhibition of the British armoury). As for American tanks, they will need to be included, silly or not . Russian, British, German, and American tanks were the only really distinctive tank builders, so I will have to make different designs for these civs. Other nations will just have generic tanks (it would be silly to design a dutch tank, seeing as they had 1, that's right 1, tank at the start of the war).

I was more thinking in terms of tank vs tank battles. Of course there are always other factors that play in, such as some that you pointed out. If you want to represent this by increasing/decreasing tank strenght, it's up to you, but I think that would be up to the player to play those strategies out. Unfortunately it all comes down to how well Civ3 could manage that, since it's far from a battle simulator.

The french tanks were stronger, especially the Char B1 and the S35. However they were not utilized effectively, as you pointed out, and were used in infantry support roles to a too great extent. But in the few cases that they did face off with German tanks on equal terms, they slaughtered the Panzers. As for the numbers you put up about the French having more tanks than the Germans, I cannot confirm or deny, but they sure sound interesting. What exactly would you count as a tank in that case? For the most part, German early Panzers were not even able to penetrate the thick armor of the strong French tanks, unless they flanked (which they did to a great extent).

The British tanks did fight the Germans before Dunkirk and they did have strong tanks in the Matilda's, which was an excellent defensive weapon in the beginning of the war in France (they were "lent" to the French). However, they were few and they too were utilized poorly (of course they did also have some very poor tanks in the Crusiers and the Crusaders). Also, the Germans had a great advantage in the 88mm Flak gun that was way superior to any Allied AT-Gun seen during the entire war.

So the question is, should German superior tactics and experience, as well as air superiority render the Allied tanks attack and defense numbers weaker? But again, maybe this is a little too intricate for Civ3.

I also think the Italians should be counted as "distinctive tank builders" of WW2. Maybe that would be a waste of time to add that to the game, but the Italians did have a good number of own tank designs, although they were useless in battle compared to the Panzers.