1989: Scenario Development Thread

Thank you, gentlemen.

Lionic said:

Anthony, what is the unit that could be seen right of Belfast? British Modern Infantry?

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I'm calling him "British Infantry 1970", and he's a Cold War era guy with an SLR. By 1989, the active duty guys have the new uniforms and weapons, so this guy represents Territorial Army reservists with older equipment. He's actually standing on Belfast...British cities are invisible because they haven't been finished yet.

Delta_Strife said:

Anything in particular you need in the naval department?

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Since you asked... I know some of these you're already planning to do, and others will have no available models. Anything would help.

Charlie ¬II - Yes
Foxtrot - Yes
Ivan Rogov - No Model
Perry - Wyrm did one Could redo one
Belknap - No Model
Iwo Jima - Nope but perhaps Wyrm's Tarawa would work?
Charleston - No model
Algol - No Model
Invincible - Talking to a guy about his model
Type 42 - No good model but http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_details.aspx?id_product=726696
Type 22 - No model
Type 82 - No model
Type 12 - No model
Type 21 - No Model
Trafalgar - Yes
Swiftsure - Yes
Gearing - Maybe see what I can do
Yankee - yes
Sierra - No Model
Tango - yes
Juliet - yes
Riga - No Model
Leahy - No model
Kidd - Yes
Lafayette - Yes
Garcia - No Model
U 206 - yes
Valiant - yes
Sir Galahad - no model
Sauro - Yes
Peder Skram - no model
Type 207 - Yes
Type 209 - Yes
MEKO 200 - No model but
http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/meko-200-3d-max/739160
Koeln - No model
Oslo - No model
Ula - Done
Annapolis - No model
Mackenzie - No Model
Restigouche - No model
Damavand - No model
Kotor - No model
Heroj - No model
Babr - No model

Anthony, what will be the role of gunships in the scenario? Strong land attackers or air units?
And forgot to ask. I have seen that there is no Albania as a possible player. Will it be completely left out of the scenario?

Damn, Delta, you ain't playing around! I think it's pretty surprising that we can't seem to find any models for British and French surface ships. I've looked around a lot, also. I've got Bebro's stuff for the Royal Navy now. I'm using Wyrm's Tarawa as itself, Iwo Jima and Wasp currently. That Meko is really nice...tempting. It seems that you found a lot of sub models!

Lionic said:

Anthony, what will be the role of gunships in the scenario? Strong land attackers or air units?
And forgot to ask. I have seen that there is no Albania as a possible player. Will it be completely left out of the scenario?

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Western attack helicopters are currently land units that ignore terrain costs. They can bombard or attack directly. The Hinds are set up as air units. Currently, they can both do air bombard and airdrop infantry units. The Hinds are much tougher than many Western helicopters but are vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. This is done because Soviet gunships are used more like sturmovicks in attack runs, whereas the Western choppers tend to be lighter, shoot and run. This isn't set in stone, though, and I've considered removing the air transport from the Hind since they're supposed to be dedicated gunships.

Due to the 31 civ limit, Albania is part of Yugoslavia for game purposes. Tirana is the only Albanian city on the map. I'm still planning to write a post about southeastern Europe and Turkey here in the near future.

AnthonyBoscia said:

Western attack helicopters are currently land units that ignore terrain costs. They can bombard or attack directly. The Hinds are set up as air units. Currently, they can both do air bombard and airdrop infantry units. The Hinds are much tougher than many Western helicopters but are vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. This is done because Soviet gunships are used more like sturmovicks in attack runs, whereas the Western choppers tend to be lighter, shoot and run. This isn't set in stone, though, and I've considered removing the air transport from the Hind since they're supposed to be dedicated gunships.

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Warsaw Pact Flaks and SAMs will be quite useless against Western attack helicopters, I suppose?

Anthony, I´m glad your great scenario makes progress and your new units are looking awesome!

May be, you can use this for some units in your scenario: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=499159
In the next version of my mod some units will have "NBC-protection".

Lionic said:

Warsaw Pact Flaks and SAMs will be quite useless against Western attack helicopters, I suppose?

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That is correct but there is a reason for that. Soviet air defense against helicopters is provided by the short range systems. These include MANPADS like the SA-7, and vehicles such as ZSU-23-4 and SA-9. These systems are part of the air defense battalion of the regiment. Thus, these weapons are included in tank and motorized-rifle regiments. Their stats are included in the regiment's stats, and they are not represented as separate units in the scenario. The divisional and army level air defense systems are primarily designed for mid-to-long range targets, meaning fixed wing assets. These regiments are on the map as separate units and fill the normal "Mobile SAM" role. They are highly effective against air units, as Soviet missile defense technology is very advanced by this time.

The Allies, in contrast, rely heavily on short range systems like the VADS, Gepard, Rapier, and shoulder-fired systems. These vehicles are separate units in the game, but do not equal the Soviet division and army level air defense units in strength. So these NATO systems would be more likely to engage helicopters than say an SA-4 brigade. Like Vuldacon said, playtesting will help ensure that this is the best set up.

Pardon me that I write about this stuff in the present tense. The civilopedia is being written in present tense and I have the habit of thinking as if all this stuff currently exists.

Sounds quite reasonable.

.....

Maybe...

I'm deep into a full test game playing as Canada. No crashes so far. Turn times dropped from 30 to ten to two minutes in the first 15 turns or so. The fighting is still raging every turn. NATO has recaptured all lost territory and invaded East Germany. The front line is western Poland now. The AI Americans are performing really well. They launched amphibious invasions of Rostock, Murmansk, and Severodvinsk (!) and are pouring reinforcements across the Atlantic. There are still a lot of adjustments and changes to make to get things right. Next game I'm going to make the northern Soviet littoral inaccessible because the Amis always invade Russia, and once the novelty wears off it's a terrible waste of effort. Also, trade embargos should go since they are a needless distraction that contributes nothing.

All the pieces are in place for the 'Political Victory' space race so we'll see if the AI is interested. This is an area I'm struggling with graphics as well. I can't think of a good way to represent it. The number of points for victory will have to be upped as well because the team is going to hit 600,000 before anyone finishes a space race.

This thing will be ready for closed testing at the end of the summer. Then it's going to be additional graphics, the odd unit, and tons of tweaking. With some luck it could be a Christmas miracle!

wow, beautifull buildings!!!! bravo!

I check this thread at least once a week. It's great to see it's still going on, can't wait for it to be finished!

AnthonyBoscia said:

No crashes so far. Turn times dropped from 30 to ten to two minutes in the first 15 turns or so. The fighting is still raging every turn. Also, trade embargos should go since they are a needless distraction that contributes nothing.

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Anthony, this is very good news in the -in my eyes- most ambitious scenario ever done for Civ 3 by a single modder. I´m not aware of any other Civ 3 Scenario where a single modder has created a completely new huge map, tons of new units and to overcome the problems of the gigantic mod/scenario itself. May be for the dramatic reducing of turntimes you should write some lines in the tutorial sector, if there is any time for it.

AnthonyBoscia said:

All the pieces are in place for the 'Political Victory' space race so we'll see if the AI is interested. This is an area I'm struggling with graphics as well. I can't think of a good way to represent it. The number of points for victory will have to be upped as well because the team is going to hit 600,000 before anyone finishes a space race.

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In this case, maybe a real kind of a space race installing SDI would be the most convincing layout for this kind of a victory. It would be too dangerous for any attacker to be completely destroyed by nuclear weapons while one´s own nukes can´t do any harm. May be a layout as it is used in the spacerace of CCM, but not with the moon but a functional Super-SDI could be a way to that kind of victory in your scenario with a limited time-scale. For your "all-war"-scenario it would be the super-weapon to end the war as it was the nuke in WW II.

AnthonyBoscia said:

This thing will be ready for closed testing at the end of the summer. Then it's going to be additional graphics, the odd unit, and tons of tweaking. With some luck it could be a Christmas miracle!

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I wish you good luck with finishing your ambitious project and will try to help when the next version of my mod is ready for testing - and please don´t forget: a very good backup of your modding efforts is really necessairy for this project.

Civinator, thanks for the input. For the turn times, it is still a mystery why there is a short pause at the beginning of the Soviet turn and a big pause at the start of the U.S. turn. Although the many units involved play a part, there is another factor at work. I have even cloned test Biqs, where I removed all immobile units, Reforger units, and other usual culprits, and this had no effect on the time. Whatever the hold up is, it goes away after a few turns and game gets very fast, even with the 15 or so trade buildings in play.

As for the Space Race, I should have clarified that the issue I was having was just the graphics, and that the mechanics are working fine. Although initially, I forgot to make an 'Apollo Program Wonder' to enable the Space Race and nothing could be built! The Star Wars program is a cool idea, even though such technology and development would not be available for decades. At this point, though, I think I have a good idea how to represent the Political victory graphically.

One strange issue I am having now deals with non-era techs. The Socialist states have a non-era tech called Marxism-Leninism which enables all the Era 1 communist technologies. At present, though, this only works for the Soviets and the other nations cannot research these techs. I do not know why it would work for one and not others.

AnthonyBoscia said:

One strange issue I am having now deals with non-era techs. The Socialist states have a non-era tech called Marxism-Leninism which enables all the Era 1 communist technologies. At present, though, this only works for the Soviets and the other nations cannot research these techs. I do not know why it would work for one and not others.

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Have you checked to see if Governments or Flavors are a factor here, or if the Soviets have a unique tech somewhere along the line that may have accidentally been marked as a prereq? The only times I've seen this behavior in my mods thus far has been one of these factors...

AnthonyBoscia said:

Civinator, thanks for the input. For the turn times, it is still a mystery why there is a short pause at the beginning of the Soviet turn and a big pause at the start of the U.S. turn. Although the many units involved play a part, there is another factor at work. I have even cloned test Biqs, where I removed all immobile units, Reforger units, and other usual culprits, and this had no effect on the time. Whatever the hold up is, it goes away after a few turns and game gets very fast, even with the 15 or so trade buildings in play.

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The game plays the civs in a specific order for a given mod, every time. If the pause is before the first turn, that civ (US) is later than the other (Soviets). If the pause is between Turn 1 and Turn 2, then the opposite is likely true.

If you are the first to go, then you move first, but have to wait for 30 other civs to take their first (and longest early) turn before you can take move 2. If you are the 31st to go, then you only have everyone elses second (and faster) turn between your first 2.

The scenario/mod I am looking forward to the most. Great work so far!

Gojira, I figured out the tech thing. They are working fine in game, they just don't show up in Steph's editor preview for some reason.

Cultural advisors:

Milli Vinilli could be an Improvement available with Radio - one that generates pollution and unhappiness and negative culture.