Vietnam War Development thread

A troop carrying helicopter (plus Trucks, APCs or Strategic Bombers for that matter) would be an amazing new feature if TheNamelessOne could implement it. It would also make artillery more realistic as they could either be carried (towed) by trucks or could move independently carrying shells which they could then fire, giving them range. Trucks could then be used to bring up fresh ammunition adding a real supply element for the first time. This would add a whole new level of strategic detail to the game! Bombers could be loaded with bombs to drop on targets and so on. Fingers crossed this could be made to work!

If the above was not possible the landing zone concept you outlined should work well, especially in the Burma campaign.

Oh, another unit suggestion, Tootall. I noticed your only Laotian unit on that initial units file are Pathet Lao Guerrillas. But, there's a bunch of new, just recently Wikipedia articles dealing with the actions of the US-backed Royal Laotian Infantry engaged in heavy fighting with the NVN-backed Pathet Lao Guerillas at around that time in the vicinity of the northern Ho Chi Minh Trail. A Royal Laotian Infantry unit might be worthy to consider adding.

Hi all,

It's been a long while since I posted on this thread. Somehow I'd forgotten just how much detail goes into designing a scenario and now see that I still have a considerable amount of work to do.

I've been reading many of your comments and suggestions but I'm not ready to respond in earnest at this time. I have many many ideas of my own I want to implement and I need to get the game to a point where it's ready to start play testing first. It's only when you are deep in the mechanics of the game, I find, that you can really tell what works and what doesn't and that's when I may need to find alternative solutions.

For the time being, I would like to keep my thread more for technical or graphical issues.

As I promised on the 'Modern Unit Graphics' thread post #212, here is my latest Vietnam War unit template. It's not definitive and is subject to change but it's the direction I'm leaning towards. (note: the tenth line is predicated on whether TNO is able to implement his 127 unit and transport mechanics features).



As many of you may know there is a large gap in terms of unit graphics for this particular historical period. I've tried as best as I can to fill in that gap. Tanelorn has already graciously offered some of his help over on the Modern Units thread (you should go take a look if you are so inclined).

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=392298&stc=1&d=1428443551

Here's an example of a technical issue I'm having. I have two maps, 'South East Asia' and 'US Order of Battle', which will allow me to transit all US replacement units to Vietnam.



As such on my Order of Battle map I place map transport tiles which correspond to US bases located in South Vietnamese cities (this concept is based on Boco's excellent 'El Aurens' scenario and on techumseh's recommendation for managing the US Armed Forces deployment and subsequent withdrawals) .

When I place my transport sites on my OOB map, my units are able to transit easily from one map to the other. The problem is that when I then place my cities on the corresponding South East Asia map tiles the transport sites disappears from both maps. I could place the transport sites next to the cities in question but I would prefer that the US units located on the OOB map be able to transit directly into the city map tiles.

I see that Boco was able to do it with his scenario but I have failed to so to date. Does anyone know if there is a particular technique for doing so?

I believe that even base ToT has a "Transporter" city improvement that's used in MPS's own SciFi and Fantasy Mods and Midguard, and, I think, some multi-map fan-based scenarios. As far as I know, it works like a transport site land improvement, but is a city improvement. However, as I, myself, have never successfully created my own multi-map scenario (yet), I can't verify how easy or reliable it is to use in scenario crafting.

I think for a coding reason which I don't really understand, a city and an improvement such as a mine or transporter can't exist in the same square. Depending on what capacity you need, 'transporter' city improvements might work, as Patine suggests. Otherwise, you'll have to put them next to cities with a strong defensive unit.

Hi Tech,

I don't think it's a coding issue. As I indicated when I looked at Boco's El Aurens scenario he seems to clearly be able to set up transporter sites on the same tile as some of his cities. I will take another look to try and see how he did it.

I want to avoid using the transporter city improvement because it would involve more steps to transfer a unit from one map to another, whereas the transporter sites would be much more seamless and have no cap on the numbers of units you could transfer per turn (I think the city improvement acts like an airport, i.e. one unit per turn). I also don't want the NVN air force being able to intercept these transfers.

Then it must be a hex-edit. Ask Catfish.

You're both right. A transporter tile improvement cannot exist on the same tile as a city for technical reasons. But the destination tile of a transporter relationship does not necessarily need the tile improvement! Such transport sites are one-way only, but allow the destination tile to have a city.

Hex editing works, of course, but the easiest way is to add the transporters through the menu (Shift-F8), remove the one on the destination tile through the same menu, then add the city. Now the remaining transporter will drop the units into the newly founded city.

Hi TNO,

You rule! I just tried it and it works as you indicated. Thank you!!

Good to know. Thanks TNO.

Hi Patine,

Patine said:

Oh, another unit suggestion, Tootall. I noticed your only Laotian unit on that initial units file are Pathet Lao Guerrillas. But, there's a bunch of new, just recently Wikipedia articles dealing with the actions of the US-backed Royal Laotian Infantry engaged in heavy fighting with the NVN-backed Pathet Lao Guerillas at around that time in the vicinity of the northern Ho Chi Minh Trail. A Royal Laotian Infantry unit might be worthy to consider adding.

Click to expand...

I did some research on the Laotian conflict at the beginning of my project but decided to exclude it from my scenario. It was by all accounts a complex conflict in itself and to add it to my scenario would have added of level of complexity that I was unwilling to undertake.

In addition, to include northern Laos would have compelled me to increase the size of my current map by 30 %, which is already quite large, and have made it that much more difficult to control the movement of North Vietnamese armed forces, whereby I want their main and only focus to be against South Vietnam.

Therefore, I decided to only include southern Laos, where the main Ho Chi Minh trails reside and assumed that this part of the country was already under control by the NVA and their Pathet Lao allies at the start of the scenario.

The Pathet Lao guerrila unit I asked Tanelorn to design will only reside in southern Laos and only be activated in the case of a US/SVN invasion/incursion.
I'm sorry if this isn't what you were hoping for but very often designers have to make hard choices about what they feel is feasible or not.

I fully understand, and, as a scenario designer myself, I've been there. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't overlooked, as, coincidentally, a bunch of new Wikipedia articles recently had come out on the Laotian Civil War.

Yes I believe I may have read the article on Wikipedia.

How's your Korean project coming along. Can we expect to see the final product soon?

I think it's very close to done. I just have a bit of an embarrassing issue. My skills at actually PLAYING Civ2 have atrophied to the point that I haven't yet even gotten to the point of actually activating the Chinese Intervention in my last sets of playtests, so I'm not yet certain quite how well I've done with them. I hope to rebuild my skills, certainly, but, in the nonce, would you (or anyone else) like to take a crack at trying what I have so far, just to see if it actually works well?

Hi Patine,

If you make your scenario available and tell me (or the community) where it is, I'd be willing to take a look at it, though I can't promise I can be as thorough as Agricola or techumseh. Are you looking specifically to see if the Chinese intervention works?

The Chinese Intervention is my big concern. Other than beefing up the rear and home flanks of NK forces so it's not just a walkover after the initial invasion's dealt with, and adding a few things here and there to the map itself, both of which are quite simple (or, at least, should be), the Chinese Intervention is my main concern.

Another question about your scenario inspired by the Laotian question, but relevant to a lesser extent to SVN of that day: I noticed in the articles on the Laotian Civil War I'd mentioned that numerous coups and coup attempts were made in that struggle, many US-backed. It also seems that the same was true, although lesser in actual number, in the Saigon Government. How, if at all, do you plan to represent the instability, and constant forced change of, the South Vietnamese regime?

Patine said:

How, if at all, do you plan to represent the instability, and constant forced change of, the South Vietnamese regime?

Click to expand...

Without going into too much detail, there are two ways in which I plan in replicating the instability.

The first is through the use of the 'Republic' government. Thanks to TNO's 'Stack Kills' feature I will no longer need to add the 'fortress ' feature to all the map tiles, which means that all SVN units not in cities or on fortresses will generate unhappiness and thereby increase the risk of cities 'revolting' (I may either forbid the building of fortress tiles or strictly limit the number of engineers units they possess during the game to limit the number of fortress tiles they can build).

This in turn may reduce the amount of economic aid they can receive per turn, which is crucial for buying all their non-infantry related weapons systems, i.e. tanks, artillery, planes, etc (because their cities will have very limited productive capacity, it will be much quicker to buy these units then to build them, therefore the more money they have the more they can buy). The generation of the SVN infantry units will be event driven so they won't need to build them but they will be homed to SVN cities, which means there will be a limit on the overall number of units they can support based on their overall productive capacity.

Because the period of instability was more prevalent at the beginning of the conflict I will allow SVN to research the CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support) technology, which will lead to the RUFF/PUFF, Pacification and Phoenix Program advances. The RUFF/PUFF advance will allow the player to build the Regional Forces (Police Station) city improvement and allow them to start receiving the Popular Forces unit through the events. The Police Station will obviously bring more stability to the South's cities by allowing more units to operate out of cities. The Pacification and Phoenix programs will lead to the South's fight to take back the countryside from the NLF thereby reducing the enemies ability to recruit new VC units.

The second method I also envision is creating random coup events which when they occur removes the tech that allows the SVN army to recruit their new infantry units. After a few turns they get the tech back.

Those are the current broad lines but as usual only testing will determine how well my concepts work.