Spanish Civil War ToT Mod

Good to hear. You are definitely making better progress than me. I'm looking forward to playing it.

Thanks Tech. I'm hoping its not too far off being ready. Hopefully I can get a fair bit of work done over this weekend. As long as there are no major disasters I should (fingers crossed) have naff all to do on the graveyard shift. Where my little office space is situated I'm pretty much all alone at night which suits me fine. Plenty of uninterrupted time to work on my projects or watch some films, providing no pesky work comes along to spoil it! (*Note to employer - just kidding, I was just kidding!!! ).

Regarding Burma. Just keep on plugging away old chum. It seems like a never ending task, but all of a sudden you will finish something off and realise it is practically ready. If you need a play-tester you know where to find me!

It looks like I have run out of luck and into one of those frustrating problems that is almost inevitable in Civ2 design. It seems to have occurred after using ToTPP to add and remove some river terrain from under cities. Suddenly all of the rival Civs names have reverted to the ones in @LEADERS section of the Rules.txt and I can't seem to put them back to normal again. Presumably this could break all of the events and so on.

Does anyone have experience of this type of thing happening and can anyone suggest a fix? I do have a master copy of the save prior to the issue so its not a disaster, but I would like to find out why it has happened as I was pretty keen to make these in game terrain alterations (mostly for cities built on rivers that should not have higher than normal defence stats).

Strange...I have a slightly similar thing in 1870...!

I cannot edit the Russian civ to change leader title (from emperor to tsar), no matter what.
There is a terrain-swap event in that scen too...I am wondering if that is a CIV2
thing that has nothing to do with TOTPP, but is a weird event/rules bug?

My initial instinct is that it is a ToT bug and changing the terrains triggers it. Hopefully TheNamelessOne will find a solution (if he ever has a minute). If not then I will use the more laborious but reliable workaround. It only seemed to affect things when I used it to change terrain under cities, not when I made changes in the open.

I sorted out the problem with air carrying ships transporting their entire 20 capacity by splitting air reinforcements created in Odessa more evenly across the tech tree. It turned out to be easier than I anticipated. I also solved the problem of submarines attacking the aircraft before the Merchant Ship by setting its defence higher than the fighters but its hit points to 1. This way the subs attack the ship first. I will have to include a house rule that all remaining fighters must be disbanded.

I had another go at changing the terrain under cities and this time I got no bugs crop up. I think it is OK to remove rivers and change the terrain type. To me it would seem that adding rivers to a city square could be the cause of the issue, but I haven't looked into this in detail.

Finally I have added quite a few move unit events for the Army of Africa and the Italian submarines that tend to congregate around Barcelona. I really hope these work as they are the last part of the jigsaw. I'm all set for my second proper test tonight.

This time I will start with a solid plan in place as going at it haphazardly plays into the Nationalists hands. Republican offensives will probably have to be focused local attacks for strategic towns, roads etc... rather than sweeping offensives across a whole front. There just aren't enough spare units for this. I will probably have to re-think the objectives system as total annihilation of the Nationalists seems unlikely.

Is there a way to prevent fighters from being attacked first by enemy forces when they have the strongest defence stats of any unit in a city? I didn't consider this when sorting out the unit stats and it is a bit of an issue. I guess I could tweak the aircraft stats down (fighter attack and all aircrafts defence) but I'm a bit loathed to do that as they work so well aside from when attacked by a land unit. Ideas welcome!

Regarding my fighter being the primary defender problem. Would it be possible to half the defence values of aircraft but give them the AEGIS (x2 defence vs air) flag to boost them straight back to normal. This would mean their lower defence values would make them the last defender unless the city they are in is attacked by an aircraft. Does this sound right? Does the AEGIS flag work in addition to the scramble (x4) defence bonus?

I'm reading through The Complete Civilization II Combat Guide v1.1 but any advice you guys can give me would be appreciated.

I have just tested this and it works perfectly and will solve my little dilemma. Now front line cities can have fighter cover without the unrealistic attrition rates from enemy ground attacks.

I carried out my test ten times with the full defence value set, with half defence value and with half plus AEGIS flag. The results were pretty consistent against enemy fighters and bombers. The defender usually winning when on full defence and full defence + AEGIS flag and usually losing when at half defence. Judging from the test results the Neiuport 52 fighter actually scored slightly higher with the AEGIS flag. I wonder if it only doubles the defence factor or if it also has an effect on the hit points?

I'm going to use this test method to go over stats for the late war aircraft and adjust for any hidden bonus AEGIS may or may not give. When fighters are pretty evenly matched I would like the outcome to be roughly 50/50. For bomber attacks I would like the defender (I-16 Mosca and the like) to have a 70-30 advantage so that a single fighter will usually win against a single bomber but will probably succumb to multiple attacks. I'm only into the 4th turn of my second playtest and there hasn't been a massive amount of aerial combat yet so I plan to tweak the stats then carry on the test from the point I'm at now.

Wow! I think you may have stumbled across a novel new innovation to clip the defensive power of fighters defending cities from land units without killing their air role. At least, I haven't seen it done elsewhere. Civ2 expands in tricks to this day!

I don't recall seeing this before, but that's not to say it hasn't been done. I may have just re-invented something for myself that others have already thought up in the past. To be honest I don't think it has been a big issue in my other scenarios, but it was bugging me as the AI was actually boxing clever and using its ground units first to take out my fighters before sending in the bombers to mop the ground troops. Perhaps, like cyberdyne systems, the AI is learning finally

It was good in a way to have this issue as it has made me re-examine all of the unit stats and I think I have made some significant improvements, as well as coming up with the idea for an additional series of events too. Now the stats are done I have a few hours to crack on with the 2nd playtest. Hopefully I can send you the files in the not too distant future if you're still up for a bit of testing Patine?

McMonkey said:

I don't recall seeing this before, but that's not to say it hasn't been done. I may have just re-invented something for myself that others have already thought up in the past. To be honest I don't think it has been a big issue in my other scenarios, but it was bugging me as the AI was actually boxing clever and using its ground units first to take out my fighters before sending in the bombers to mop the ground troops. Perhaps, like cyberdyne systems, the AI is learning finally

It was good in a way to have this issue as it has made me re-examine all of the unit stats and I think I have made some significant improvements, as well as coming up with the idea for an additional series of events too. Now the stats are done I have a few hours to crack on with the 2nd playtest. Hopefully I can send you the files in the not too distant future if you're still up for a bit of testing Patine?

Click to expand...

I'll definitely give it a try. I don't promise to mop the plains of Aragon with Franco's sorry butt, but it I'll give it my best.

Cool, thanks. I would put myself in the average player category (I'm certainly no Agricola!) but I have the unfair advantage of knowing when and where all of the events trigger. I have also spent the last month or so reading everything I can find to read on the SCW so every historical error the Republicans made and every move the Nationalist took are indelibly etched on my brain. It would be very useful to see how you do without this unfair advantage over the AI. I'll get the files to you as soon as I have finished this second play-test and added a few bits and pieces. So far everything is working as intended, but I really need to go through all 40+ turns to be certain.

Success! It looks like the last major issue I was having has been resolved with a few new move unit events. Now instead of sending its full might east through Andalucia, the Army of Africa now sends its elite Legionaries and Moroccan Regulares north to join the attack on Madrid from the south. There is now only one back road left open to the capital!

The struggle on the Aragon front:

McMonkey said:

I carried out my test ten times with the full defence value set, with half defence value and with half plus AEGIS flag. The results were pretty consistent against enemy fighters and bombers. The defender usually winning when on full defence and full defence + AEGIS flag and usually losing when at half defence. Judging from the test results the Neiuport 52 fighter actually scored slightly higher with the AEGIS flag. I wonder if it only doubles the defence factor or if it also has an effect on the hit points?

Click to expand...

AEGIS actually grants x3 on defense against air units (and x5 against missiles). You can modify the bonus with the AegisVSAirDefense key (Defense bonus patch), or adjust defense values accordingly. This is the only bonus AEGIS grants.

Thanks for clarifying that TNO. All the documentation I found last night said x2 defence vs air. x3 makes more sense of the combat results. As it happens I forgot about the option to alter the AEGIS value with ToTPP and tweaked the unit stats in the rules file until I got them working satisfactorily. I will make a note of this for future projects.

Without wishing to sound self congratulatory, I have to say that this is a most enjoyable scenario to play. Nice pace of turns, balanced unit stats, the economy & science rates are spot on as are the reinforcements and the battle at sea:



I have not quite finished my playtest but so far I have found nothing wrong. There are a few minor tweaks to be made with the events to keep the fighting going on all fronts, but this is a fairly simple task. At the moment it feels like the scenario is on a constant knife edge and could go either way. I think I will make it ever so slightly more difficult to challenge experienced players. I'm hoping it will be just difficult enough to defeat the average player on at least their first attempt. I have always got much more out of scenarios where I have had to try two or three times to win.

I think I'm going to skip sending it out to playtesters as I have a very good picture from my own test of how things are working. As soon as I have finished this 2nd play-test and made the final adjustments I will release the scenario for everyone to play. I hope the screenshots have helped get you in the mood baby, YEAH!

Congratulations! Looking forward to it.

May I suggest adding rivers to connect the ocean terrain that represents large rivers, eg. south of Zaragoza? I think it will look somewhat better.

This is looking very good, MM!

Can't wait to kick Franco's oppressive ass into heck!