Proudly present this streamlined fun version 1 of the grand strategic US Civil War.

Readme included with installation instructions.

Download rar at:
http://usuarios.lycos.es/zaberintio/scenarios.html

Download zip at:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Civil_War_-_Thrust.zip


Let me know if it's FUN and PLAYABLE (main objectives of the design).

Sounds great. Did you used the pre-posted confederacy civ or create your own? Btw, some screenshots would be nice.

You could use the upload function to post it on civfanatics. Look for the little button that says "Upload File" at the bottom of the page.

Sounds great. Did you used the pre-posted confederacy civ or create your own? Btw, some screenshots would be nice.

Hi, I have used, slightly modified, the great mod of the Confederate Civ made by Wirklichkeit:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=148523

Screenshots can be found at my own site below.

Thanks Gunner, didn't upload it before because of the 500 Kb limit.
DOWNLOAD NOW HERE:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Civil_War_-_Thrust.zip

I've been looking for a civil war scenario! Thanks, Thrust123 and great job get yourself a beer.
:beer:

I've been looking for a civil war scenario! Thanks, Thrust123 and great job get yourself a beer.
:beer:

Thanks, it's nice to know that someone appreciates the hours of work!

==========================
By the way, appreciate any help from anyone about fixing the problem with the game saves===========================

Just played it and found it fast playing and fun. No glitches or bugs that I found although I'm not particularly good at looking for that stuff. I am better at looking at play balance and design decisions. I would say the scenario is exactly as advertised, and I would recommend it to anybody. :goodjob:

Having said that, I will now proceed to nitpick it's faults. :p Actually the comments I have are both praise and some constructive criticisms.

I played as CSA on Noble, and I think I broke the scenario. Possibly by doing something you didn't expect the player to do.

Just for shats and giggles I decided to take all my Richmond troops and march on Washington right at the start. The second largest troop concentration in the east is in the next city south of Richmond (Charlotte? Raleigh? don't remember), and I shuffled all those troops up to Richmond. When I got to Washington, I was surpirsed to find I outnumbered the AOP. I attacked and one turn later the confederate flag flew over the white house! That was during May of 1861. :D Took Harrisburg in August just for good measure. I didn't continue much past that since I figured the fall of Washington would have ended the war.

The Army of the Potomac should be larger than the Army of Northern Virginia shouldn't it? Historically, Mac saw 'ghosts in the mist' when he thought Lee had him outnumbered, and missed an opportunity to (possibly) take Richmond and end the war in '61. It's possible that the units I fought in Washington were not the AOP, but if so then I never saw it, and I did some scouting with my cav.

Also, is it possible for the south to start with Slavery? I liked the civics options available, but maybe you could make the starting civics historically accurate.

Last nitpick - Enjoyed the map, but I thought it could use some more hills and scattered forests. I noticed you had the Wilderness in there, but it still seemed a little too flat and sparse. City and river placement and general geography seemed good (even figured where my house would be, a tile northeast of Columbus :D ).

I was glad to see you froze the tech tree (mostly) and disabled settlers, both good decisions in a scenario of this scale. I also liked how Richmond and several other southern cities start overpopulated with a lot of unhappy citizens, ripe for whipping. Also liked the naval units. Also liked the overall dispersion of units - just a smattering of cav, cannon, and naval units. Most cities have 2 riflemen garrisons, while some more important cities have a little more. And decent armies already assembled. Did you base the starting dispositions on historical data or a wargame or something? It seemed very plausible (with the exception of the ANV being too large or the AOP being too small).

The part that confused me was the tech tree, especially religion. I didn't understand the red sections, or why all the religous techs were unresearched and were my only research options. Also, why were the religions unlockable at Rocketry? Would I have been able to research Rocketry at some point?

All in all I quite enjoyed the scenario and thank you for the effort. I've been waiting for a civil war scenario, and I think you did a good job and I hope you will continue to update it. I will play this many more times if you get rid of that easy CSA win.

Sid,
I appreciate the time and effort you have made in playing the scenario and giving out cosntructive criticism.
The game map is based a bit on a board wargame called "Civil War" published by Victory Games.
Besides that, the number of units is something I placed to try to have a relative play balance and at the same time not overcrowding the map with units (same idea that for the few cities on the map).

As for reserach religions and all that I was unable to find out how to disable technologies so at the most I managed to block the construction of certain units by simply saying they require OIL to be built (which there's none of on the map). I think I also put as pre-requisite for some technologies to have Rocketry, but that was just an effort to block those technologies. But this system didn't really work as the game crashed so I wasn't able to use that system to block all the technologies (but at least I think I manage to block the new units that some technologies create).

All in all I had a limited number of hours to dedicate to this scenario and thus the subtitle "For Dummies". Of course it can be changed for the better and I'm sure (and I invite) anyone who wants to do so to do it (credits given if possible of course).

Perhaps after a few more comments from other players I might be able to at least dedicate some time to making a few play balance changes (unit quantity), but for now I invite you to play with the Union and also perhaps at a higher difficulty level to see how things go.

If you were to create another version of the scenario I would like to see the George Washington leader head replaced with a picture of Lincoln. A little more hills and forest would also be nice. Maybe and General Lee, General Grant, and General Jackson as leaders with unique units. Maybe replace the Blakely rifle (UU for confederacy) with a special calvary or Infantry unit.
But above all it's the best scenario I'ver played for Civ4 yet.

do you know where into the directory i should load this mod. i tried loading it into the Mod folder but it won't work on my computer :confused: any help would be greatly appreciated!

Mike

do you know where into the directory i should load this mod. i tried loading it into the Mod folder but it won't work on my computer :confused: any help would be greatly appreciated!

Mike


As it says in the instructions, you have to put the ACW folder into your MODS folder and the worldsavefile into the PUBLIC MAPS folder.
The folders mentioned are the main installation folders, not the ones in MY OCUMENTS...

I haven't actually played the map yet, but it looks like it could use some more forests and hills, even just to break up the grasslands a little bit. And the Union should probably have some good central rail lines connecting industrial areas, because thats what ended up winning the war for them.

Perhaps a good many plantations in the South as well, but I'm not sure what kind of advatage commerce will get you if the tech tree is frozen.

I really enjoyed playing the scenario (I played as the Union), and I think it has about the right number of cities, and the number of units you start with seem about right.

I do agree with several other people that have posted here in that there should be a few more hills and forests, and I would also add a few plains to the western part of the map.

It also seems that you start of with way too much gold. There was very little production in most of my cities to start with, but by switching civics I was able to buy a unit in every city for several turns, so I essentially bought an army instead of producing it. Was this what you intended? Of course if you did reduce the amount of gold, production would have to be boosted in some way, but more forests and hills would help. Another suggestion would be to place factories in a few of the major cities, but keep it so that you can't research the technology to build factories, that way every city wouldn't become a major production center. (This is just a suggestion, I don't know if its even possible to add a building that requires technology that can't be researched.)

Overall a very good scenario, and I hope these comments are useful.

Hey Thrust..I seem to be having some trouble d/l this mod..(I know you get these all the time so if you can, spare with me)....The d/l the zip file..."Extracted" the ACW to the Civ4 Mod Folder...I did this by selecting my C Drive->Program Files->Firfax->Civ4->Mods...I did the same with the other file saving it to the public maps...I then load up Civ 4 but can not locate the file in the scenario. Any help? Am I possibly doing something wrong?

Hey Thrust..I seem to be having some trouble d/l this mod..(I know you get these all the time so if you can, spare with me)....The d/l the zip file..."Extracted" the ACW to the Civ4 Mod Folder...I did this by selecting my C Drive->Program Files->Firfax->Civ4->Mods...I did the same with the other file saving it to the public maps...I then load up Civ 4 but can not locate the file in the scenario. Any help? Am I possibly doing something wrong?

Better do not try to extract the contents of the ZIP or RAR file directly to your game folders.
Simply select the file right click and you will get a choice to extract it to a folder with it's same name. Do that.
Then just open the resulting folder and copy paste or move the ACW folder and the Worldsave file to the appropriate locations in your Firaxis.../ folders.
Hope this solves the problem.:crazyeye:

Thanks to all those commenting. Even if I don't reply to every one I am taking note of everything and I will probably do a fw changes to implement some things soon but not all. Railways for example, don't fit the picture because it's a technology I don't want available in the scenario. If the enemy cuts the raillines, as they surely will, you will be unable to repair them anyway.

From your first screenshot at your website I noticed a problem with Jefferson City's location. You have it located north of the Missouri River, and not even adjacent to it. I live in Jefferson City, Missouri so I can honestly say it is located south of the river and it's northern city limits border is the river.

This is an enjoyable scenario. Thank you, Thrust, for creating it.

I did miss building railroads and ironclads, but I don't believe it would have been any more fun had it been possible to build them.

Keep up the good work. :thumbsup:

screeine???

:aargh: :aargh: :aargh: :aargh: :aargh: :aargh: :aargh:

The audience (who can't play Civ4 because of insufficient funds for computer) wants screenshots! :lol: :lol:

We're waiting with anticipation!:scan:

Will it be possible to incorperate the Civil War mod (rebelliion) that someone is working on, into this scenario? If so, that would be badass.
There could be new units, more events, rebellion a la "American Revolution" and more.

This is to un real 1861-65 is industrieal age and thier should be infaltry and ironclads:crazyeye: :crazyeye:

Wow, great start!

I'm not a developer, so I don't have a clue how difficult it is to make that scenario, but I would make point out some negatives: The terrain is a bit flat, the south is WAY too easy to win with, and I'm not quite sure what the religion tie-in or some of the related buildings are. Unfortunately, I'm better at finding errors, than building the solution.

Overall, it's a great start, and I LOVE Civil War stuff. I wish you well in your efforts!

Hi Thrust,

I just played through this scenario as the Union and thought you'd appreciate my findings. You seem responsive to feedback so I took notes while I played. :)

1) A lot of the larger settlements seem to be surrounded by forts. Is this supposed to represent the difficulty of fighting in a built up area, or are they supposed to be towns?

2) The Union starts off with Despotism, Barbarism, etc. The first two turns of the game have to spent changing civics.

3) Washington starts out in starvation.

4) The Union starts with a ton of gold. So naturally the first thing you do is switch to Universal Suffrage and start buying up units. You can very quickly get a huge numerical advantage over the South this way.

5) Research has all been turned off except the Religious techs. Should they still be there?

6) There's an underwater road near St. Louis to the east.

7) Was it just me or did you reduce the naval bombardment rate?

8) The models for buildings, etc seem to be too modern. You can hear cars and you can see tarmac streets, and skyscrapers.

9) The Union flag appears to be washed over with blue. It is also distorted - I think it should be viewed as if it was hanging down, rather than try to put the bars going across on a flag that is taller than it is wide.

10) The Confederates seem to be wearing light blue, instead of grey.

11) The National adjectives "100% union" are in lower case when they should be capitalised.

12) The sounds for some units were wrong. The Union Riflemen seem to just grunt at you. :)

I had a great time playing this scenario, going so far as to name all my units "25th Pittsburg (Grenadiers)" etc. :)

In one word.....Outstanding!!!
man it's one of the best scenarios i have ever played!
keep it that way....

Problem- after installing, i go to advanced and there is an ACW mod. Clicking on that does not do anything. What could I have done wrong?

Is this avalible in Warlords, if not then are there any plans to make it a Warlords Scenario?

I was hoping that one of the BtS scenarios would be set in the American Civil War, but sadly it seems not. However it appears there is enough demand for a new scenario to be made about this conflict.

I don't think it would be too difficult to put together, it would need a few of new units (Confederate and Union infantry, prehaps a unique Confederate and Union Warlord as well?), a map of the United States and some Civil War buffs to keep it accurate. Sadly I have little knowledge or ability when it comes to making Mods but I am very interested in the period.

Anyone fancy starting a project?

First let me say thank you Thrust123 for making this. I appreciate the effort you put into making an ACW scenario that works.

I started playing the scenario from both sides, but honestly I didn't play either side for more than 10min or so. The scenario needs to be developed a little farther to be fun for me. I would like to make a better one. I have zero experience modding civ4 (I just got the game two weeks ago). Nevertheless I dived right in and tried to improve things. I haven't got very far. World Builder is way more quirky than it first appears.

1) I like your idea for freezing the tech tree. It might be simple to practically get rid of the stupid religous text popups. In the file CIV4TechInfos under mysticism, polytheism, etc about nine lines down it says
<iCost>50</iCost>
This could be changed to <iCost>50000</iCost>
Then the research popup would only appear once, and you'ld spend the rest of the game researching mysticism.

2) The Gold needs to be reduced to almost nothing. Otherwise the only sane thing to do is buy workers like crazy, which doesn't fit.

3) Developing the terrain near cities would help, so the player doesn't need to think about workers. Also the bonus resources seem like a bit much, only a few are really necessary.

4) The biggest problem for me was the entire map. It needs someone with the time to redo the entire thing. I'll give a shout out here to Procifica who made an almost perfect map for a CivIII scenario. Link here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=897887#post897887

Barring that, one solution would be to steal the map from "Eastern United States" also the same map is used for "American Revolution" that come with the game. Then all that's needed is to redo the cites. The rivers and terrain are not perfect on that map, but it's not bad.

Thanks to everyone that has taken an interest in this scenario. It really was a very basic effort at depicting the Civil War an an strategic level and I am happy to see that someone has found the motivation and inspiration to do something more detailed and accurate:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=897887#post897887

Won't be posting much for a while. Best wishes to all.