Yet another WW2 Pacific Mod

Typhoon of Steel V1.0

Typhoon of Steel is the working title for my modification of the Conquests WW2 in the Pacific scenario. It is intended for multi player games such as PBEM or hotseat. The objective of the mod was to create a more detailed simulation and to force the game play along more historical lines. The naval aspects of the game have been greatly enhanced since the Pacific theatre was primarily a naval war.



Time Scale and Player order

1.1 Turns now represent 2 weeks in real time. Game length is 100 turns. Accelerated production turned off. Player order for
the multiplayer version is:

Japan
China
USA
Commonwealth
Netherlands

This is done to avoid the bug with the "no movement on turn 1"
flag that occurs on some computers.

For the single player version, Japan is last and the allies cannot
move on GT 1 as in the original conquest.


Victory Point Level

2.1 250000 points. This will probably need to be adjusted
after beta testing. Capturing a city is worth 10 VP per citizen
and each victory location is worth 100 points per turn.
This will change the strategic focus of the game to capturing
and holding VP locations.

Here is the download for the single player beta version:
Removed V1.06 after 4 downloads. Current version is 1.08
(NOTE: there are 2 .biq files in the zip. Use the TOS_108_ALLIES_BETA
file if you are playing one of the Allies or use the TOS_108_Japan_BETA
if you are playing Japan).
within the next couple of days).

The tech tree is shown on post #20 below.

3.1 Naval Tactics - Eliminated the Naval Academy. Naval tactics
allows the construction of the attack transport, fast battleship
and super battleship and is prerequisite for 2 new techs.

3.2 Underway Replenishment - Prerequisite Naval Tactics. Allows
construction of the Support Fleet Wonder, which increases naval
movement by 1.

3.3 Fire Control Systems - Prerequisite Naval Tactics. Allows
construction of the advanced destroyer and the AA Cruiser.

3.4 Submarine Tactics - Prerequisite None. Allows construction
of the advanced submarine.

3.5 Anti Submarine Warfare - Prerequisite Submarine Tactics. Allows construction of the destroyer escort and the ASW aircraft.

3.6 Guerilla Warfare - Prerequisite None. Allows construction of
the Guerilla unit. Note China has Guerilla Warfare at start.

3.7 Counter Insurgency – Allows construction of the security battalion unit.

3.8 Advanced Flight - Added new unit, the light carrier.

3.9 Long Range Fighter - Prerequisite Advanced flight. Has almost
as much range as a heavy bomber.

3.10 Advanced Construction - Allows construction of the Seabees
unit. Note The US has Advanced Construction at start.

3.11 Uranium Enrichment - Prerequisite Fission. This tech is required before the Manhattan Project can be built. This will ensure the A-bomb cannot be built until early 1945.

4.0 The map covers the same area as the original conquest map.

4.1 The US was given an extra oil tile; the US was the worlds
largest oil producer in 1941. This will enable Australia to get
oil once Southeast Asia falls.

Removed the oil tile near Saigon. The central point of the
Pacific conflict was oil and the fact the Japan had none
(except what was in storage) after the US embargo. This
will make it crucial for Japan to capture the oilfields in
Southeast Asia as quickly as possible.

Also removed the oil tile in China. China will have to trade for
oil with its allies.

4.2 The following places were "demoted" from cities to airbases
(workers were added to simulate the local population)
Midway
Wake Island
Tarawa
Palau
Iwo Jima
Guam
Kawjalein
Saipan
Espiritu Santo
Sarmi
Okaba
Waingapoe

My thoughts on this were that islands which had major port
facilities such as Truk should be cites while the others should not.
Also New Guinea lost 2 cities while the cities on the heavily
populated island of Java got larger. In the Philippines, Puerto
Princess was “demoted” to an airbase and a new city, Cebu, was
added on an island further east.

4.3 Extra radar towers were added in the Solomans, Hebrides
and New Guinea to simulate the "Coast watchers"

4.4 Some airports were removed.

4.5 Added two new cities in China, Sining, and Wuwei west of Lanchow.

4.6 Uranium deposit near Chunking relocated to northern Australia.

4.7 Increased movement cost of coast tiles to 2.

5.0 Tanks and artillery are now wheeled types so they can't
enter jungle or swamps, except on roads. Removed blitz capability
from tanks.

5.1 Removed airlift capability for all units except paratroopers.
The original scenario has way too much airlift capacity to be
historical.

5.2 Guerilla - These units have stealth attack capabilities and
treat all terrain as roads. Also reduced their cost to be less than
infantry.

5.3 Security Battalion – A low cost unit to counter the guerilla.
They have stealth attack capability against guerilla units.

5.4 Seabees Unit - Works 3 times as fast as workers. Has
attack strength of 1 and defense of 5. Note: seabees are
NOT wheel types and can enter jungles to build rods.

Increased the basic movement of all the original units by 1
(except for transports). So for a battleship movement is now 6,
for carriers 7, subs 5, etc.. Transport movement is still 6.

6.1 Advanced Submarines - The development of the snorkel during WW2 made submarines more effective and harder to detect. Increased attack and defense (6) factors, & speed (6). Also have 0 range bombard so that subs in stacks help defense. Advance submarines become available with submarine tactics.

All US subs at the start of the game have lower experience level to simulate defective torpedoes.

6.2 Destroyers (DD) - Took away transport capability. In my opinion DDs, in Civ make very effective transports, where in fact they were woefully inefficient in that role. Furthermore taking away the transport capability fixes the Civ problem with DDs not getting reduced build time in war-time mobilization. Also made them slightly cheaper and upgradeable to a new unit, the advanced destroyer. Japanese DDs start with higher experience level to simulate superior night tactics. Speed is 8.

6.3 Advanced Destroyer (DDR) - Also called a "Radar Picket" or DDR.
Advances in electronics during WW2 made possible fire control radar and improved sonar. These units have improved attack, bombard and anti-air factors. Slightly more expensive than DDs. DDs can be upgraded to DDRs. DDRs become available with Fire Control.

6.4 Destroyer Escort (DE) – Becomes available with anti-submarine warfare. They are slower, but nearly as powerful as the basic destroyer and less expensive. Speed is 6.

6.5 Transports - Reduced defense to 2 and attack factor to 0. Transport capacity is now 3 (can't carry armies with 3 units loaded). However, they are now cheaper to build and there are more of them on the map at start. NOTE: transports CANNOT be upgraded to Attack Transports.

6.5 Attack Transport (AK) - Speed 6, can carry 5 units, 4 defense factor and can bombard. AKs become available with Naval Tactics.

6.6 Light Carriers (CVL) - These units can carry 2 planes instead of 3 but are cheaper than full sized carriers. CVLs become available with Advanced Flight. Speed 7, attack 1, defense 5, air defense 1.

6.7 AA Cruisers (CL) - As fast as a destroyer but has air defense strength of 2. They are cheaper than heavy cruisers and can “see” subs. CLs become available with Fire Control. Speed 8, attack 10, defense 8, air defense 2.

6.8 Fast Battleship (USA and Commonwealth) – Speed 7 and improved air defense. Becomes available with naval tactics.

6.9 Super Battleship (Japan only) – Speed 6, improved attack, defense and air defense strength. Becomes available with naval tactics.

7.1 ASW Aircraft - The development of the Sonar Buoy made possible airborne submarine detection. This unit will allow the carrier it is based on to spot submarines. It can performing recon missions and bombard missions, but has weak defense strength so keep it away from enemy fighters.

7.2 The Long Range Fighter – This unit will dominate the skies unless there are jets around.

7.3 Allied Dive Bomber, has lethal sea bombardment.

7.4 Allied Torpedo Bomber, has lethal sea bombardment.

7.5 Japanese Dive Bomber, has lethal sea bombardment.

7.6 Japanese Torpedo Bomber, has lethal sea bombardment.

7.7 I have removed lethal sea bombard from the B17-type
bomber and the heavy bomber and given them precision
bombing instead.

8.1 Food Requirements – Now requires 3 food per citizen.

8.2 Military Academy – Removed the limitations on building the
academy.

8.3 Air bases now take 3 turns if built by a worker.

This post is reserved for design notes.

Eric_A:

Interesting mod. Excellent detail in the posts. You may wish to throw in some screen shots (tech tree is always good, and revised map areas might also be helpful). People tend to work visually, so with some extra visuals you might get some better traffic. Also consider posting on Thunderfall's weekly announcement thread, you'll definitely get some attention that way.

My first thought is that the reduced airlift coupled with the reduced naval transport movement rate will remove a lot of the speed from the game. This may impact the player fun factor, particularly the U.S. / Commonwealth as it takes a while for their industry to crank up. Its not a lot of fun to build/build/build while getting to snot kicked out of you by the Japanese side (even if it is historically accurate).

Won't this work to the Japanese player advantage? Given the current conversations regarding the advantage the Japanese side has in the vanilla WW2 in the Pacific Conquests scenario, I would think you might be making things worse, not better.

How do you plan on playtesting? (You also may want to post the mod itself so people can try it).

Misfit

-Excellent idea, but why don´t you add carrier based bombers, which were very important in the Pacific war? The C3C scenario is somewhat ridicule with all those B-17´s on carrier decks. Those bombers could be simulated by a high bombardment value and lethal naval bombardment, but with small defense value and one less hit point, so it would be very risky to use them to attack land targets.

Originally posted by Bombur
-Excellent idea, but why don´t you add carrier based bombers, which were very important in the Pacific war? The C3C scenario is somewhat ridicule with all those B-17´s on carrier decks. Those bombers could be simulated by a high bombardment value and lethal naval bombardment, but with small defense value and one less hit point, so it would be very risky to use them to attack land targets.

Click to expand...

Bombur:
Those changes would be for version 2 as version 1 does not have
any extra unit graphics. In version 1, destroyers, for example, all
look the same, wether they are basic destroyers, advanced or
destroyer escorts. The advatage of this approach is that there is
only one file to download.

So even if I did create a dive bomber it would not look any
different from a B-17 until version 2. I will need to find someone
who has experince in modifying unit graphics to help.

Originally posted by Misfit_travel
Eric_A:

Interesting mod. Excellent detail in the posts. You may wish to throw in some screen shots (tech tree is always good, and revised map areas might also be helpful). People tend to work visually, so with some extra visuals you might get some better traffic. Also consider posting on Thunderfall's weekly announcement thread, you'll definitely get some attention that way.

My first thought is that the reduced airlift coupled with the reduced naval transport movement rate will remove a lot of the speed from the game. This may impact the player fun factor, particularly the U.S. / Commonwealth as it takes a while for their industry to crank up. Its not a lot of fun to build/build/build while getting to snot kicked out of you by the Japanese side (even if it is historically accurate).

Won't this work to the Japanese player advantage? Given the current conversations regarding the advantage the Japanese side has in the vanilla WW2 in the Pacific Conquests scenario, I would think you might be making things worse, not better.

How do you plan on playtesting? (You also may want to post the mod itself so people can try it).

Misfit

Click to expand...

I plan to post some screen shots soon, mostly the parts of
the map I have modified. The tech tree is a bit of a mess
graphically at the moment. the lines all point to the wrong
spot, I was wondering how to fix that. My changes to the Guerilla
unit had some intersting side effects, you can now build riflemen,
longbowmen and midevil infantry!

As far as transports and movement, remember each turn is
only 2 weeks now, so their effective movement is over 8 tiles per
month, rather than 6 as before (10 if you have the faster
attack transports) also there are more transports at start
and they are cheaper to build. The real problem is trying to
protect them en route, which was my intention as it leads
to encounters between the covering forces and the interceptors
as happened at the Coral Sea and Midway.

The improved and cheap guerilla units and extra towns make
China a much tougher problem for Japan. The fact that they
can no longer rush marines around on fast destroyers should
also slow them down.

To mod the tech boxes, you need to create new backgrounds and embed them in the Advisor subfolder.

The easiest way for me to explain this to you is to look at ACWC3C scenario. In there will be an Advisor folder. In there will be several files. The ones you are interested in are; science_ancient, science_middle, science_industrial and science_modern. These are indexed .pcx files which you can mod. These become the tech tree backgrounds when present (as they override the standard game tech tree bars). You'll need a good graphics program to mod them. (I have a template in Photoshop which you're welcome to). They must be located in this subfolder of the scenario and must be indexed .pcx files to work.

I hope that helps.

If that winds up being a big graphics challenge for you, ship me the final scenario .biq file and I'll create them for you.

Cheers,
Misfit

Misfit:
Thanks for that info. It will come in handy when I start
version 2.

Here is a screen shot, of the Marianas, with Guam at the
bottom:

This is the Phillipines, Puerto Princess is just an airbase now
and the the city of Cebu has been added:

The alpha version should be ready by the weekend.
I am looking for people who would be willing to test
it in the single player mode. The alpha version will have
the accelerated production turned on so you can go
through the techs and build the units faster.

PM me with your email address and let me know which
civ you are going to try. There is only one file (the .biq)
for version 1 so I will email it to you. You can post any
problem reports or comments here.

Originally posted by eric_A
Bombur:
Those changes would be for version 2 as version 1 does not have
any extra unit graphics. In version 1, destroyers, for example, all
look the same, wether they are basic destroyers, advanced or
destroyer escorts. The advatage of this approach is that there is
only one file to download.

So even if I did create a dive bomber it would not look any
different from a B-17 until version 2. I will need to find someone
who has experince in modifying unit graphics to help.

Click to expand...

-But you have free dive bombers for download in this forum and also in CDG forum. I think Wyrmshadow already did a Dauntless, and Steph has downloaded a Jill, althought I don´t from were he downloaded it.

Here is the link to SBD. You must be registered to CDG to download the file. Here in the civfanatics forum we have a Stuka but no dive bombers from the Pacific front


http://www.cdgroup.org/forums/tbs/civ3/viewtopic.php?t=6664

I am registered and have downloaded the SDB file.
That will definitely go into version 2.
Do you know where I can find one for the USS Arizona?

The Alpha version is almost ready do you want to give it a test drive?

Here it is: