Swedish UHVs

Now, I'm going to start by saying that I don't want Rhye to add/remove/replace any civilization and this is going to be my personal project. If everyone can agree to that, then there's something I need help with. Don't worry, it's nothing technical. Anyone can throw around ideas and see how far they'll go.

I'm trying to replace the Viking civilization with the Swedish in the original Rhye's and Fall map/mod. Currently I've re-located their capital area (from Nidaros [x=61,y=61] to Stockholm [x=63,y=58]), gave them a few more starting techs, new UU and UB (which were practically taken from RFCE and fiddled around with a little), changed their button, flag, national color and adjectives and names. Right now, they're "Swedimised Vikings" but not actual Swedish yet. Their spawn zone, spawn date, research rates, national interests, settler maps, UPs and UHVs are still under construction and this time around, I decided to start working on the UHVs.

Now, I could use the UHVs people already gathered in the RFCE project but the Sweden in that project focuses on the governance of so little land while in the original RFC map it can pretty easily encompass whole of Scandinavia so the size scale is a little different between the two projects. I'm not sure if customizing some files will even be needed (.dll) but for the moment next up is going to be working around with the Python files and thinking of new UHVs for the soon-to-be-Swedish nordmen. I can't focus on conquest as much as people working with RFCE can so I need some new ideas to come about.

Shortly speaking, I need good suggestions as to what the historical Swedes should have as UHVs and perhaps also something to back that up with.


What I've come up with so far is that their first UHV should focus on conquest of Scandinavian lands, Finland and the Baltics, but that's it. Should they have resource-oriented second UHV or have to control all sea tiles in the East Sea? Don't lose a city before a certain date? Build a certain wonder? Make Stockholm #1 city in Europe/World in culture, population, production?

Ideas, people! Come forth with what you have!


EDIT:
The burnout faded away. I'm working on this project again.

How about:

Not lose a city to Russia before 1800-something.
Control Finland and Scandinavia, excluding Denmark and Iceland.
Control northern Germany by 1700.
Don't know if it's possible but; have larger land and armies than Russia by 1800.
Control every sea tile in the Baltic sea, including the kattegatt straight.
Create one colony in Africa and one colony in the Caribbean.

I'm out of ideas

Sette7 said:

How about:

Not lose a city to Russia before 1800-something.
Control Finland and Scandinavia, excluding Denmark and Iceland.
Control northern Germany by 1700.
Don't know if it's possible but; have larger land and armies than Russia by 1800.
Control every sea tile in the Baltic sea, including the kattegatt straight.
Create one colony in Africa and one colony in the Caribbean.

I'm out of ideas

Click to expand...

Maybe the "first city in America" UHV could be left unchanged?
Do you know if any resource or building-related UHV would be okay?

Historically they settled some of Russia/Ukraine.

They made a lot of money controlling the fur trade with the Byzantines and Arabs.

So maybe 5 fur resources or control russia would do?

Historically the Swedes had a colony in America under Gustav Vasa I think. Maybe it should just be ''create a colony in the US before 1650?''
Seems more rational for a 1300ish spawn date.

TDK said:

Historically they settled some of Russia/Ukraine.

They made a lot of money controlling the fur trade with the Byzantines and Arabs.

So maybe 5 fur resources or control russia would do?

Click to expand...

Wouldn't that be a little too harsh? 5 fur resources would mean both controlling the Vologda area in Russia and the coast areas in eastern Canada. If the resource requirement would be lowered to 3, then the requirements could be met either throiugh conquest or colonization, opening a variety of ways to get the job done.

Maybe "Control the land between the Baltic and Black Sea"? That would lead to a conflict with the Rus and Germans eventually.

Cethegus said:

Wouldn't that be a little too harsh? 5 fur resources would mean both controlling the Vologda area in Russia and the coast areas in eastern Canada. If the resource requirement would be lowered to 3, then the requirements could be met either throiugh conquest or colonization, opening a variety of ways to get the job done.

Maybe "Control the land between the Baltic and Black Sea"? That would lead to a conflict with the Rus and Germans eventually.

Click to expand...

You are probably right about all that fur. I think the most important aspect of a Swedish UHV should be that it somehow reflects that Swedens interests was more to the east, as oppposed to other european powers.

When is the spawn date?

Speaking of UHVs, is there an easy way to change a UHV? I have made a scenario with playable byzantines 610AD, and I can change the text of the UHVs in the game, but it is not reflected in the UHV counter. My byzantine civ is built on the Greek civ so the counter starts greyed out, any ideas?

TDK said:

You are probably right about all that fur. I think the most important aspect of a Swedish UHV should be that it somehow reflects that Swedens interests was more to the east, as oppposed to other european powers.

When is the spawn date?

Speaking of UHVs, is there an easy way to change a UHV? I have made a scenario with playable byzantines 610AD, and I can change the text of the UHVs in the game, but it is not reflected in the UHV counter. My byzantine civ is built on the Greek civ so the counter starts greyed out, any ideas?

Click to expand...

I haven't yet looked up on the actual UHV remaking process but it's all Python. I'm a starter when it comes to that stuff but there's nothing what looking through the RFC and RFCE Python files won't fix.

As for the spawn date, I'm not sure yet. I was thinking 800-900 AD because by 1050 the Swedes had already become a Christian nation and set foot on Finnish soil so they need some time to settle the Swedish core area and work the surrounding area. The 500-800 timeline will be barbarian Vikings' time to shine.


Below: Swedish Russia. That resulted from a pregenerated 3000 BC American start. (See map.)



At this moment they still start at 545 (600) AD and their spawn area still encompasses whole of Scandinavia, including Denmark. I figured that if Denmark would be considered a necessary part of the Empire for them in their conquest-natured UHV, they should have to spawn before Germany does so they have a chance to settle Copenhagen before the Germans do. If they are to spawn only after the Germans, then their UHV area might as well exclude that tip of land altogether.

This is a really good project, it would replace the silly Vikings. I'll help out with any code you need.

- Control the Scandinavia/Baltic region in X AD
- Control two colonies in the Americas and two colonies in Africa by Y AD (maybe 1650 since this is historical)
- Have the largest army in Northern Europe (Sweden, Germany, Russia) in Z AD

Panopticon said:

- Control the Scandinavia/Baltic region in X AD
- Control two colonies in the Americas and two colonies in Africa by Y AD (maybe 1650 since this is historical)
- Have the largest army in Northern Europe (Sweden, Germany, Russia) in Z AD

Click to expand...

Those are actually very good suggestions. They cover a lot of ground on their own.
I will look a little on to history and see what the proper dates should be. Seeing Battle of Poltawa (turning point in Swedish history) occurred in 1709, either 1700 or 1750 might be good time to mark the final UHV to be completed.

What areas do you think should be included in the first UHV? Finland, Sweden and current Norway are pretty mandatory but what about East European countries (Estonia, Lithuenia, Ukraine, Latvia) and Denmark? While they are resource-wise rather insignificant, they were certainly in historical Sweden's interests. However, one "Control Empire's core area" UHV is enough. Though the way it is now, Russia isn't quite the enemy it really was.

However, thank you for the offer. I'll try to figure out the actual spawn and UHV dates over this week.

Maybe they should control all cities within a rectangle described as follows:
North side runs through Narvik
South side runs through Copenhagen
West side runs through Stavanger
East side runs through Saint Petersburg

If that is too easy, push the line further east so am aggressive war with Russia is necessary. That is difficult in and of itself due to General Winter.

1. and 3. are because Sweden sought regional hegemony. They dominated through land armies, not the navies of their Viking ancestors. 1. is based on their conquest and colonisation of the area around Scandinavia, including Finland and the Baltic states.

2. reflects Swedish colonisation. There should be few technical problems with this, as they will have naval access through the North Sea and Norwegian Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.

Panopticon said:

Maybe they should control all cities within a rectangle described as follows:
North side runs through Narvik
South side runs through Copenhagen
West side runs through Stavanger
East side runs through Saint Petersburg

If that is too easy, push the line further east so am aggressive war with Russia is necessary. That is difficult in and of itself due to General Winter.

Click to expand...

Not bad thinking. I'll try to "paint" the spawn and UHV areas as described and upload them here.
Naturally, Swedish spawn map would be smaller. I probably will downize it to include just Central and Southern Sweden, the core area. It's not like Russian or American spawn area is as big as one would imagine at first.

Panopticon said:

2. reflects Swedish colonisation. There should be few technical problems with this, as they will have naval access through the North Sea and Norwegian Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't be too afraid of that. Out of the many times I've done an auto-start as America (both 3000 BC and 600 AD), the Nordmen have hardly managed to get any colonization done. We're speaking about seeing no Viking settlements outside of Scandinavia in 30 or so starts. Even if they got around to getting the prerequired technologies in time, they'd still have the British Isles and the English Channel to pass through. They're not all that different from the Vikings, they're both equally far away from Atlantic access.

I like this idea and just want to voice my enthusiasm for the project. I remember reading a biography of Peter the Great a few years ago and realizing that Sweden was on the path to becoming the major power in the region until they lost their war with Muskovy and their King got stuck in the Ottoman Empire for a decade while his centralization of power was picked apart by aristocrats back home. Interesting stuff...

KaiserBenjamin said:

I like this idea and just want to voice my enthusiasm for the project. I remember reading a biography of Peter the Great a few years ago and realizing that Sweden was on the path to becoming the major power in the region until they lost their war with Muskovy and their King got stuck in the Ottoman Empire for a decade while his centralization of power was picked apart by aristocrats back home. Interesting stuff...

Click to expand...

Glad to hear others approve of the project as well. If more people are willing to participate, those with proficient Python skills are more than welcome to join in.

Update on how this project is coming along: I experimented with adding new UHVs for the Swedish populace. I'm following Panopticon's suggestions and so far I'm only missing the know-how on how the last UHV should be coded.

Is anyone still interested in this?

Try

Didn't work. I got the automatic "You have been defeated!" Python error message after trying that one. I might have done it wrong so I'll try it again soon enough.

New topic in the meantime... what about the Swedish UP? I could copy RFCE's but I don't want "my" project to be just meeting odds and ends of other people's work.

How about "Can draft military units after the discovery of Gunpowder"? To my knowledge, the form of military which can be called a national army had been around in the Swedish Empire longer than since the discovery of Nationalism and would serve our purposes well. Swedish core area has a lot of food but not so much production - why not put it to use?

Only problem this possibly would bring along is that right now my UB for the Swedes is the same it is in RFCE; replacement for Barracks which adds +25 production bonus for land units. I was thinking this could be replaced with additional Formation or Combat 1 bonus for all new units built in the city, to keep them on par with the Russian UU (which replaces Cuirassier in my game currently). Karolins differ from original Musketmen with an extra strength point right now, which might be another thing I have to keep an eye on. Throwing in a free Combat 1 there would potentially leave the political map in a very different shape than it really turned out to be.

Any ideas, opinions, suggestions, criticism?

EDIT:
I replaced the additional strength point for the Karolins with a free Combat 1 promotion. In my eyes this will increase the Karolin's tactical value and also reflect the military formation aspect better than the actual Formation promotion. Even if you wanted the actual Formation so bad, you wouldn't need more than Barracks and Vassalage or Theocracy to get it this way. I'll roll a few American starts during the week to see how what effects it will leave in the hands of AI, although I don't expect to see much change in Ragnar's behaviour (another thing in progress - new leaders).

Of course, this means the Soldier Tennant must either provide the +25 land unit bonus or be replaced with another building.