Vietnam War Development thread

Hi guys,

Indeed, as for all of us, real life sometimes makes demands upon us that we cannot avoid and that has certainly been true for me for some time now. As a consequence, I haven`t had the time, or to be honest, always the motivation to work nearly as much as I would like to have on my project.

That said, at the risk of repeating myself, Civilization II remains my all time favorite game and I can`t imagine a time where I would no longer want to be involved with it. So to give everyone one a recap of where things stand:

• Fairline and Tanelorn have provided me with an incredible set of unit graphics (for which I`m eternally grateful). Besides maybe one or two last minute requests I may have, I consider my unit grid complete
• My terrain, city, icons, improvements, people and terrain graphics are completed
• All three of my scenario maps are completed ( South East Asia, US OOB and Air)
• I have a fully functional rules.txt file (which doesn`t mean it won`t need to be tweaked during testing)
• I technically have a fully functional tech tree but I`ve identified gaps that affect my events file that I need to resolve
• I`ve come up with three possible scenario paths to victory/defeat. Depending on your decisions, actions and ability/inability to control events you will be forced into only one of the paths below:
Add to this a mix of possible interventions/invasions of Laos and/or Cambodia and its effects on the Ho Chi Minh trail, Chinese and Soviet aid, bombing campaign against the North and you start to get an idea of the scope of the project.

• This leaves me with the events file and the host of difficulties/complexities I`m encountering trying to implement all the features I want to create (including many not listed above).

To date, I`ve coded 8500 lines (almost twice the amount of my previous largest event file, which was 5100 lines for my Total War project) and I think by the end I`ll probably need at least 12 thousand.

It seems every time I go back to work on the file, I realize there`s some element or bit of logic that I missed or need, which forces me to go back and change this, that or those events. Currently, the events surrounding the `Control of South Vietnam population` are the ones that are giving me the most headaches and which I`m stuck on.

Given that I haven`t been able to dedicate as much time as on my previous projects, I hope you understand why it`s taking so much longer to complete this one.

As a little teaser here is a screen shot. The caption should read: `Units of the 1st US Infantry Division supported by mechanized, ARVN army and Marine units prepare a search and destroy mission into the Iron Triangle, north-east of Saigon city`.

EDIT: new image including flagged cities

Good to see things churning along! And that screenshot looks great!

And, if I may ask, are those cities ungarrisoned, or do you have invisible city flags?

Adding units to the map and setting individual city production is always the last task I undertake before starting the testing process.

The previous image was simply a mock up to show members what the scenario will look like. I`ve replaced the original image with one where the cities are occupied. As you can see I`m using the South Vietnamese flag to demonstrate when a city is occupied by ARVN/US troops.

Ah, I see now. It's looking good!

Just a bit of a suggestion from something I recently came across in some online reading. I'd suggest giving the AATTV unit(s) the alpine and/or ignore ZOC's quality(s). From what I've read, the Australian infantry forces in Vietnam far outclassed all other FWA units (except maybe US Army Rangers) in stealth, guerilla-style warfare, and general jungle survivalism. Just a suggestion to consider there.

Hi Patine,

Thanks for the tip. In that case, I will give the unit the ignore ZOC capability though in terms of the game the Australian contribution only represents a reinforced brigade.

The RoK toops had a fearsome reputation too!

Hi McMonkey,

I've read as much about the Koreans, which also happened to have a much bigger contingent, i.e. The Capitol and 9th Infantry divisions along with the 2nd Marine brigade (which are all represented in the scenario).

Do you recommend they have the ignore ZOC as well?

It looks good, but do you really want railways? How about national hi-ways, using ToTPP's feature to give them a higher movement factor than local roads or trails? Or to create an invisible "Ho Chi Minh trail?

Hi Tech,

Thanks for the tips but I was already ahead of you on both counts. I’m actually using the highway graphic from your excellent Operation Market Garden scenario (which I highly recommend to any player who hasn’t already played it) to replace the railway line seen in the screen shot above, and as you indicated are using TOTPP’s road/RR movement modifiers.

tootall_2012 said:

Hi Tech,

Thanks for the tips but I was already ahead of you on both counts. I’m actually using the highway graphic from your excellent Operation Market Garden scenario (which I highly recommend to any player who hasn’t already played it) to replace the railway line seen in the screen shot above, and as you indicated are using TOTPP’s road/RR movement modifiers.

Click to expand...

Great minds think alike!

First, the good news, 11916 lines later, I’ve finally completed the first iteration of my event file. I still need to go over all the different flags and actions to double check for possible errors and need to add more historical and utilitarian text but I’ve finally created all the events and flags I felt I needed to make the scenario flow naturally through the different possible paths a player might encounter.

One of the elements I want to review is the usage of delays which, in the past, could have a significant impact on whether an event would trigger or not, if it happened that the number of delays used exceeded the memory limit imposed on the event file by the game. Does anyone know if TNO’s “Event Heap” feature override this delay limit? Does someone know what the difference is between a “TurnInterval” and a “Delay”. Don’t they both limit the time an action can occur to a specific number of turns? If I use TurnInterval’s with a JUSTONCE modifier instead of Delays does it allow me to bypass the memory limit?

I’ve also run into a little snag with regards the transport mechanics between my maps. I originally created a special event file that allowed some of my naval air units to natively move between all my three maps (South East Asia, OOB and Air). What you do is create an event file that only includes the scripts that assigns the different map transport relationships for each unit type you want to give the capability to, start the scenario and through the cheat mode save the scn file and voila moving forward, whenever you start the scenario the units will possess the appropriate map transport relationships.

But now, I changed my mind, I only want my air units to move between the Air and SE asia maps. So I modified my special event file to only allow my naval air units to move between those two maps and resaved the scn file but when I try and run the scenario, the units still have the ability to move between the three. Does this mean because I already gave the air units the ability to move to all three maps originally that it is now imbedded in the scn file? Does that mean that the only way to remove it is to restart a completely new scn file (which means I would have to rebuild my maps from scratch?).

Sounds like you're making good progress. Unfortunately I have no experience with working with multi maps so can't offer any advice. Sorry

I know for a fact (*cough, cough, Dalek Tyranny) Curt has such experience...

Most of the multimap techie stuff was done for me.

After two years in development, I've finally released my Vietnam scenario to the the Scenario League website, (see post #1 of this Vietnam thread).

It's been a long process but I hope you enjoy it.

Great news!!!
Early Christmas suprise!

This is awesome news indeed! Now I will have to ante up and finish those last touches on my Korean War scenario and get it posted. I think I can finally find some time during the Christmas/New Year's holidays.

Hooray! I''m looking forward to playing this over the holidays. This will relieve some of my disappointment over the failure of Burma. Congratulations!

Great job tootall