New Civil War Scenario (with realistic map)

I've spent the last few weeks creating a American Civil War Scenario, creating my own map from scratch.

Going to announce a few details now, as I should be finished and ready to post the initial version of the scenario in a few days. Should give everyone an idea of what to expect, and maybe get some last minute ideas.

1. The map itself, is carefully grided, from approximately the 23rd North Latitude to the 47th North Latitude, and from the 68th West Longitude to the 108th West Longitude. Latitude goes up by .15's, and Longitude by .25's. Since the grid is at a 45 degree angle, each full square up or down would be .30 latitude, for example.

2. Cities have been placed with this in mind, to where all but 2 cities are placed within .3 latitude (and nearly all within .15), and all but two have been placed within .50 latitude as well (and nearly all within .25). The two exceptions being Annapolis and Trenton, these being too close to Baltimore and Philadelphia to place in their proper spots, and so I've moved them, as I wanted all the capitals represented.

3. City populations are based on a sliding scale, using the 1860 National Census as a guide, as well as the 1870 National Census to add some cities which weren't available on the 1860 one. Suburbs of some cities have been factored into the resulting totals (such as Boston, which had about 10 suburbs in the top 100 largest cities of 1860).

4. Militia for states and Home Guard for cities also are based on population sliding scales.

5. Terrain I've had a hard time coming up with a decent map to use as a reference and/or guide, so most terrain features are guesses or approximations.

6. Most of the Railroads placed are fairly close approximations to their actual place in 1860, though those in the northeast aren't as accurate due to lack of reference material for said areas.

7. There will be over 3 dozen types of units in the Scenario, with unique units for both Union and Confederacy, emphasizing their advantages/disadvantages.

8. The government types for each side have been constructed as such to approximately match the respective governments of 1861.

9. Army placement with the exception of Cavalry, is approximate with the positions as they were in the summer of 1861. (militia and home guard also excepted)

10. While not in yet, Indian tribes will be placed on the western part of the map to add more realism, and to add a third force into the mix (Union and Confederate Forts from the time period have been placed accordingly).

11. Unit and Building costs have been scaled upward some to ensure that strategy and planning is better used.

Think that is enough for now, more detailed information will be included in a readme file packaged with the completed scenario.

Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.

Procifica

Wanted to add, that the far northwest part of the map, and the area which would be Mexico, have been walled off so as to not be used. There also is a barrier on the far right side of the map, off the east coast, to prevent east-west wrapping.

Sounds cool. Trip also made a ACW scenario a while back, I should probably take a look at that (I'm sure it's around here somewhere).

Originally posted by Procifica
Wanted to add, that the far northwest part of the map, and the area which would be Mexico, have been walled off so as to not be used. There also is a barrier on the far right side of the map, off the east coast, to prevent east-west wrapping.

Click to expand...

If you use PTW you can have a flat map by unselecting XY wrapping I think.

I've looked in detail at Trip's scenario, and have used it as a bit of a reference for a few things, particularly terrain (still haven't found a decent such map), and found alot to be desired, especially how his map is not drawn that well to scale and MANY cities are nowhere near where they should be, while others didn't even exist in 1861.

Though, I will admit, Trip did a nice job considering the amount of work he must have put into it.

I can't get my PTW editor to work unfortunately...no idea what's wrong with it, so I'm stuck with the Civ3 editor. Right now after I try to load the scenario, I'm getting a divide error, right before it fully loads, so I'm looking into that now before completing the finishing touches to the scenario (techs and terrain in particular).

Have you updated to v 1.14?

Yes, I'm using v 1.14 for PTW and 1.29 for the regular game.

Just wanted to let everyone know I found the reason why my scenario wasn't loading correctly, and now am in a position to hopefully complete the beta version 1.00 in the next few days, and then post it on the "completed scenario" board.

As part of my mini-multi unit project I'm putting together an American civil war mini-multi-unit pack for testing. Ive not finished it yet, so I don't know how its going to come out, but its looking good so far.

The reason I chose the American civil war is that there are a small number of different units to modify, but they can be used to produce a high number of different formations;

just using cannon, riflemen and cavalry you can make;

Battery
heavy-battery

rifles
horses
skirmishers

rifle division
horse division
mixed division

rifle battalion
horse battalion
mixed battalion

Divisions are twice the size of a standard formation and battalions are 4 times that size. The size of formations gives a HP bonus, horses give an attack bonus while reducing deffence.
This is just for my test, but if it works out O.k. I'd like to help make a full scenario.
here is a preview of the smallest rifle formation being eliminated;

Smoking Mirror, I hope you are using Dark Sheer's Bandit as the Cavalry rather than the Firaxis Cavalry.

yes, Dark Sheer's Bandit looks like an American Cavalry.

Doh! Forgot all about that, but it shouldn't be difficult to make that as well. Ive made most of the units and they are looking good; I've also made a test in CIV III and that also went well.

I tried using the maximum size unit, just to make sure that it didn't look too crowded. In this case it is the Rifle battalion- a block of 24 riflemen at 50% normal size. This would be a very expensive and fairly rare unit, so don't worry about how every inch of the map seems filled by their ordered ranks.

This is a quick test of what they look like;

Some of the proplems I anticipated;

#1 The units are 50% normal size so I would like it best if they were able to move at 50% normal speed when running, but in game it looks just fine. (though if anyone has discovered a way to the units run slower across the map, let me know).

#2 the animations may be too small to be seen properly; Again not a problem, the troops are small but perfectly formed.

#3 The units would cover the cities; There is somewhat a problem here, but its not too bad, and if you are particularly upset about not being able to see your cities under the bigger units you can always hit the "display units over cities" tab to turn it off.

no other real problems.

here is a picture of two units fighting, I may remake the battalion unit with slightly less ordered formation, it looks a little too artificial;

of course the other civ should be gray.

Here's a preveiw of the battalion attack and death animations joined together.

I've hurried a bit to make these multi units, so there is a bit of a jump between the two animations, all these problems can be ironed out by spending a little more time on the process.
I could do with some help in duplicating my efforts, making the units is actualy quite easy, it just takes a little time.

heres a preview;

Yes I just picked a few civs at random to see how they all looked, it just happened that i was the indians (I was hoping to get grey) and I was fighting the germans.

I was just teasing ya.

Originally posted by Smoking mirror


Divisions are twice the size of a standard formation and battalions are 4 times that size.

Click to expand...

Battalions weren't really used much in the American Civil War, except with regard to artillery. A more proper term for what is larger than a division, would be corps, which was widely used in the Union Army by early 1862, and the Confederate Army by late 1862. A Corps was usually 2 to 4 divisions, though in the Confederate Army it could be as many as 6.

I already have incorporated Divisions into my scenario, and if those work good, then I'll be adding Corps and Armies as well. (these will work like the Civ3 Armies, as I prefer flexibility) Also was wondering if it'd be possible to make Cavalry and Artillery Divisions/Corps in the same manner?

And also, cavalry was mainly used for scouting, and was not effective most of the time as an offensive weapon due to the advancement by that time of fast-firing rifles (particularly after 1863).

I think these units need there own thread! I like them alot.
I love the size reduction, and want a whole mod for just these size of units. I think we need to catagorize Multi-figure Units by 'K' (Kryten style)
and 'SM' models (Smoking Mirror style) what do you think?

At first glance, I say it looks like a highjacking