Flakless

[Erebras]

This is an earlier incarnation of CivSpecific mod. All download files on this thread have been removed.
This mod has been fairly well playtested by me, so you shouldn't get any FILE NOT FOUND GAME WILL NOW EXIT messages. The mod basically changes the graphics for the units so that they change from one era to the next (for example, the workers in the middle ages wear straw hats, very useful in realizing your neighbor has entered a new age). As the name of the mod implies, in Industrial and Modern Times you won't be overrun with German antiaircraft guns; their function has been taken over by the Civil Defense city improvement. Mobile SAM units remain the same. Taking a cue from the default game's Viking berserker, most civs that never used longbowmen will now receive their unique units around the time they would normally receive Longbowman units (this necessitated them having increased stats). The Chivalry advance no longer gives everyone Knights; many civs get a more appropriate light cavalry (similar to Ansar Warriors and Chinese Riders). Also, a civ's default, non-Golden-Age units reflect its culture group (for example, European & American civs get Longship instead of the Mediterranean civs' Galley). Where possible, I took advantage of the Napoleonic and Medieval Japan and World War II units that come in the default installation of the game.
NOTE: Post #22, below, has detailed instructions of where to put the contents of these files. I do not have an installer or executable file for this scenario. Everything is merely compressed and uploaded.
[April 23, 2013: The Units folder has been removed from this post. The units can be found on the CivSpecific Mod thread.]

 

[Erebras]

...the following persons without whose submissions this mod would not be possible:

FW-190 (Industrial Age Bomber) Wyrmshadow
Iroquois Brave Kinboat
Bombard (Medieval Cannon) Aaglo
Huascar (used for Transport) Wyrmshadow
Cataphract (Knight equiv.) Sandris
Crossbowman (Longbowman equiv.) Kinboat, CamJH, utahjazz7, Plotinus, Sandris
Macedonian Elephant utahjazz7
Sopwith Triplane (Industrial Age Fighter) Wyrmshadow
Partisan (Industrial Age Guerilla) utahjazz7
Immortals (with spear) Nemesis Rex
Fantasy Swordsman (Medieval Infantry) themanuneed
Tecpacuauhtli (Medieval Infantry equiv.) utahjazz7
Macedonian Phalanx (not sure this was used) Kinboat, CamJH, utahjazz7, Plotinus
Grizzly Warrior (Pikeman equiv.) Kinboat
Eqyptian Pikeman Kinboat
Mesoamerican Spearman Kinboat
Generic Spearman Virote_Considon, Kinboat, OdintheKing, utahjazz7, Plotinus, Steph, Moenir
Steam Frigate (Industrial Age Frigate) Wyrmshadow (I believe; please correct if inaccurate)
Achilles (Swordsman equiv.) Kinboat
Mark IV (Industrial Age Tank) Wyrmshadow

 

[Erebras]

Keep in mind the following changes which may be critical to your strategy:
* No Expansionistic tribes. I find it too unbalancing to have a civ be able to meet friendly barbarians giving them free techs every time they hit a goody hut.
* Spanish Conquistadors do not treat all terrain as roads. They create Explorers when they prevail in battle.
* Chasqui scouts are weak for their era. They receive Radar as some compensation.
* Iroquois unique unit is now the Brave, a foot unit similar to the default Jaguar Warrior.
* American unique unit is the Marine. Other civs train Naval Infantry. (Arguably, the Golden Age for the United States was not the 1970s and 1980s, the era of the F-150 jet fighter, which as a unique unit is rather underpowered and late in coming.)
* TOW Infantry shows up later, with the Satellites advance. Rocketry was developed during WWII, and tube-launched missiles were not present at the Battle of the Bulge or in Stalingrad.
* Values have drastically changed. A Roman Legionary is now similar to the default Immortals. A Greek Hoplite is now similar to the default Carthaginian mercenary. Persian Immortals units are not swordsmen, but have an extra hit point, and a Swiss Mercenary is like the default Roman Legionary; both of these units defend and attack equally well.
* New Unit: a civ with access to Ivory but not Iron can make Elephants which function as a default Swordsman but with less defense and with an extra hit point (which, by the way, is the new value for Gallic Swordsman, as well).
* New Unit: with Military Tradition, if a civ has access to Horses but not Saltpeter, the advance is still valuable in that it allows a fast mounted unit similar to the light cavalry the Chivalry advance grants, and the civ doesn't need Iron to train them.
* Scouts are no longer sitting ducks. They have a -2 hit point penalty and cannot fortify, but they have a fighting chance against unfriendly barbarians they stumble upon.
* Explorers have increased utility. They can build colonies and build outposts. I doubt the AI can take advantage of this, but when was the last time you saw a computer-controlled Explorer?
* The new uses of the graphics can be confusing, but there is rhyme and reason. An ancient era Swordsman will be unarmored, whereas an armored swordsman will be Medieval Infantry or its unique unit equivalent (such as the Japanese samurai or Viking berserker), and the default Explorer graphic is used for Medieval Infantry still running around in the Industrial Age (in case you were wondering, Flakless explorers wear fancy hats and carry a spyglass; they don't have plumed helmets and rapiers).

 

[Quinzy]

Some nice subtle changes. Have you any screenshots?

 

[Erebras]

Thanks, Quinzy. The changes are subtle, but in my mind necessary for the enjoyment of the game. I couldn't stomach Gallic warriors running around like galloping horses, or Shaka's impis being treated like cavemen with sharp sticks, and with those flakcannons not requiring any resources (which is odd for an obviously motorized unit) they became the default garrison unit for the AI. As for a screenshot, what do you suggest? I've not changed the terrain set or the techtree. I suppose I could create a lineup of the flavor units for each culture group, but they're already pretty familiar to the community.

 

[timerover51]

Some thoughts and comments on your interesting ideas.

Keep in mind the following changes which may be critical to your strategy:

* No Expansionistic tribes. I find it too unbalancing to have a civ be able to meet friendly barbarians giving them free techs every time they hit a goody hut.

I can see your point. However, on some of the maps I play on, with added and nastier Barbarians, my Scout and Explorer survival rate is extremely low.

* Spanish Conquistadors do not treat all terrain as roads. They create Explorers when they prevail in battle.

Having spent a fair amount of time studying the early Spanish Conquistadors, what strikes me the most is not the speed at which they traveled, which was pretty slow at times, but their incredible endurance. I boost their hit points a bunch, and reduce their speed.

* American unique unit is the Marine. Other civs train Naval Infantry. (Arguably, the Golden Age for the United States was not the 1970s and 1980s, the era of the F-150 jet fighter, which as a unique unit is rather underpowered and late in coming.)

An excellent idea, as the US Marine Corps is quite a unique service today. No country that has not been heavily influenced by the US, such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, has anything comparable.

* TOW Infantry shows up later, with the Satellites advance. Rocketry was developed during WWII, and tube-launched missiles were not present at the Battle of the Bulge or in Stalingrad.

Again, an excellent idea. I dropped having the Guerilla upgrade to TOW infantry, and lean towards requiring Miniaturization as the required Advance for production.

* Values have drastically changed. A Roman Legionary is now similar to the default Immortals. A Greek Hoplite is now similar to the default Carthaginian mercenary. Persian Immortals units are not swordsmen, but have an extra hit point, and a Swiss Mercenary is like the default Roman Legionary; both of these units defend and attack equally well.

I will need to look at this and see what you have done. The Persian Immortals were actually Spearman, not Swordsman, and I have never been happy with the Carthaginian Mercenary as the Carthage unit. I much prefer the War Elephant for them.

* New Unit: a civ with access to Ivory but not Iron can make Elephants which function as a default Swordsman but with less defense and with an extra hit point (which, by the way, is the new value for Gallic Swordsman, as well).
* New Unit: with Military Tradition, if a civ has access to Horses but not Saltpeter, the advance is still valuable in that it allows a fast mounted unit similar to the light cavalry the Chivalry advance grants, and the civ doesn't need Iron to train them.

A couple of nice ideas. I have done something similar with the Guerilla, by making it a moderately powered infantry unit that does not require any resource for production. I am debating making it available with Nationalism, as your first really large-scale occurrence of Guerilla warfare was in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, as a result of Spanish Nationalism.

* Explorers have increased utility. They can build colonies and build outposts. I doubt the AI can take advantage of this, but when was the last time you saw a computer-controlled Explorer?

Quite an interesting idea. I am using a similar idea in a board game that I am working on, where the Explorer, upon successfully influencing a Martian city, turns into an Embassy. If he fails, a die roll determines his fate.

With respect to the Flak unit that serves as the title of your scenario, I have that auto-produced by the Civil Defense building, and vary between giving it some offense and defense ability or treating it as an immobile AA gun with no ability aside from Air Defense.

I like your idea of using the Longship for European countries and America over the Galley, as those are the countries that have to deal with the North Atlantic Ocean.

Overall, it looks quite interesting.

 

[Quinzy]

A simple compilation of changes, like pedia entries of stat changes, tech changes, etc, or a lineup of changed units.

 

[Erebras]

Thanks for the feedback; I appreciate the comments. At the risk of admitting guilt, I need to say if there becomes a large enough public outcry, I'll upload a corrected BIQ and Text file. I failed to mention that I deleted the Portuguese so that the Carrack becomes a unit anyone can build once Navigation is researched; it's a transition unit between Caravel and Frigate/Galleon. Also, even though Joan of Arc is cool (I'd use her renamed in a fantasy scenario), in game terms she's a Great Leader, not a ruler. Therefore the leader of France is Louis, and since I haven't seen any Sun King leaderheads, I borrowed from the Netherlands, as the closest thing in game that seemed even remotely appropriate. As a result, some animations and leaderhead graphics may be confusing. Don't be alarmed; it doesn't affect gameplay in any way.

 

[Erebras]

At Quinzy's suggestion, here is the list of changes to the unit values. It loses something not seeing them in action in the game, and I fear this post will degenerate into a discussion about whether a unit's stat should be a 1 or a 2. Allow these three points: 1) To maintain balance, I tried to swap one set of stats for another rather than arbitrarily making a new set of stats up; for examples, the Roman legionary is essentially the vanilla Immortals unit, and the Greek hoplite is the vanilla Numidian Mercenary. 2) In keeping with the existing pattern, each unique unit where possible received only a +1 boost to one of the three values -- attack, defense, movement. If the unit received a -1 reduction, such as for the Gallic Swordsman, then it received another bonus to compensate (hit point in this case) 3) A rationale exists for each choice. The historical Swiss were devastating on the charge, not dug in on a mountaintop, so the attack value has increased. One Aztec warrior society was forbidden to take a step backward in the face of an enemy, so the jaguar warrior kept its mobility, but not the ability to retreat. Native American warfare was essentially guerilla warfare, so the brave is given two movement points to allow a retreat once in a while. The Civilopedia entry for the Legionary says they were more effective on the attack rather than on the defense, and historically they defeated phalanxes, so they have to be able to overcome a hoplite's defense of 3. I should stop now before I become truly guilty of degenerating this post into a discussion about values.

 

[Erebras]

Berserk (Viking; Feudalism) 5/2/1 amphibious
Brave (Iroquois; Invention) 3/1/2
Carrack (not unique; Navigation) 2/2/4 transport 3
Cataphract (not unique; Chivalry) 4/3/2
Chasqui Scout (Incan; Engineering) 2/1/2 ignores mtns and hills; radar
Conquistador (Spanish; Astronomy) 3/2/2 enslaves: Explorer
Crossbowman (not unique; Invention) 4/1/1
Elephant (not unique; Horseback Riding) 3/1/1 +1 hit point
Explorer (not unique; Astronomy) 0/0/2 treats all terrain as roads; build colony; build outpost
Gallic Swordsman (Celt; Iron Working) 3/1/1 +1 hit point
Hoplite (Greek; Bronze Working) 2/3/1
Horse Archer (not unique; Chivalry) 4/3/2 no ranged attack
Hussar (not unique; Military Tradition) 4/2/3
Immortals (Persian; Bronze Working) 2/2/1 +1 hit point
Impi (Zulu; Invention) 3/2/2
Infantry (not unique; Nationalism) 4/6/1
Jaguar Warrior (Aztec; Feudalism) 3/1/1 treat all terrain as roads
Legionary (Roman; Iron Working) 4/2/1 build road; build fortress
Longship (not unique; Map Making) 1/1/3 transports 2
Marine (American; Amphibious War ) 13/6/1 amphibious
Mounted Warrior (not unique; Chivalry) 4/2/3 no ranged attack
Naval Infantry (not unique; Amphibious War) 12/6/1 amphibious
Rifleman (not unique; Replaceable Parts) 6/10/1
Samurai (Japanese; Feudalism) 4/3/1 ERRATA: no defensive bombard (Civilopedia says)
Scout (not unique; no tech req) 0/1/2 -2 hit points cannot fortify; build outpost
Submarine (not unique; Mass Production) 8/4/4 invisible; hidden nationality
Swiss Mercenary (Dutch; Feudalism) 3/3/1
War Elephant (Indian; Feudalism) 4/3/1 +1 hit point

 

[KevinLancaster]

Looks really interesting, a mod which brings some nice historical and balancing changes to the game without being a total conversion. Hopefully with some feedback it will become similar to the old player1 patch suggestion mods.

 

[Erebras]

I believe the strength of this mod isn't any earth-shaking new units or new tech advances -- I'm saving that for the sequel -- but rather it is to appeal to aesthetics: Aztec longbowmen, Babylonian knights, Chinese foot knights, and so forth can be interesting in the right scenario, but rather unbelievable much of the time. This mod groups units together by both culture group and era: American tribes have Amerindian and Mesoamerican styles of units, Mediterranean ones are Greco-Roman, European tribes are Scandinavian and Celtic, and so forth. Although not scrupulously true to form, by the time the Industrial Age comes around, most units look Renaissance-era or [American] Colonial era (and are pretty much the same; not too many ways to portray a Rifleman, you understand), and military units transition into the Modern Times by becoming WWII-era in the same way an ancient worker becomes a modern worker once a tribe leaves the Middle Ages. I've tried to preserve the original game balance so it wouldn't be totally foreign to a player. Perhaps the biggest adjustment is realizing that a unit that once belonged to one civ can now be built by several tribes and it doesn't give a Golden Age when successful in battle. Each tribe still has one unique unit, but it may be different, now.

 

[Dumanios]

For France, you could use Napoleon as a leader.

 

[timerover51]

For France, you could use Napoleon as a leader.

Or Louis the XIVth.

 

[Erebras]

To Dumanios and timerover:

Or, you could load up the mod and see how it's set up. France's unique unit is the Musketeer, a royal guard under Louis [insert Roman numeral here]. If Napoleon were the King unit, the unique unit would be Grand Battery (since he pioneered the use of massed artillery tactics) or Imperial Guardsman (as fiercely loyal, notably brave, and experienced Infantry). Mousquetaires (1620s-1770s) were defenders of neither the republic nor the Empire.

 

[T-mun]

Well, that's an interesting point: but Indian Elephants weren't anymore in use (for war) when Gandhi lived, and Lincoln has never seen a modern-day Marine... BTW I had never noticed that many of the units actually correspond to the Leader's era: Samourais for Tokugawa, Immortals for Xerxes... funny.

 

[Erebras]

Yes, themanuneed, there are a few discrepancies between the Golden Age units and the Golden Age leaders. In my next incarnation of Flakless -- currently 80% complete -- I have Asoka as the Indian leader, for the same reason Joan of Arc shouldn't be leader of France. I'm not sure about the Americans. Lincoln was president during some of the nation's darkest days, but I'm sure Sid Meier's staff chose leaders based on recognizability and fun-to-look-at-appeal more than anything else. I think the same rationale exists for why the French have musketeers as unique units; they're more fun to look at than a gendarme or grenadier.

At the heart of the matter, though, and in my personal opinion of course, a cultural icon, such as a famous general or political activist, shouldn't be a tribe's leader if they never actually ran the country as some sort of sovereign or head of state. And ideally, the leader should coincide with the Golden Age. So, for the non-Macedonian Greeks, one would use, say, Pericles. And Qin Shi Huang is already the candidate for China.

And so forth.

 

[T-mun]

Totally agree with you on that point. For the same reasons you have mentionned, they chose Mao instead of Qin Shi Huang (or Shi Huangdi like he use to be called). I too think Louis XIV would be a good choice for France, or Napoleon (I remember a LH looking like both of them).

EDIT: here's the LH I was talking about (made by Shiro).

 

[fredmeister]

This mod has been fairly well playtested by me, so you shouldn't get any FILE NOT FOUND GAME WILL NOW EXIT messages.

I'm getting the one regarding the Spearman after maybe 20 turns into a new game. Is there a solution for this problem?

Also... what are the installation instructions?

The bic file of course I need to paste into the Scenarios folder, but the Unit folders, I assumed they go into the Unit folder of my original installation of the game?

 

[Erebras]

Fredmeister, sorry about the messup with installing the scenario. Actually, all the scenario's units go in a Units folder in the Art folder within the Flakless scenario folder. I don't think you'd do any real damage putting the units in the main game's Units folder; just don't overwrite any files, because some units have the same name but different graphics. For example, in the default game Infantry is WWII era, and Rifleman is American Civil War era; in Flakless, Infantry is Napoleonic era, and Rifleman is WWII, so there is some difference. Now, I think the best thing to do is review how the folders are arranged in the Conquests folder and make sure a similar file structure exists in Flakless. For example, if you click on Conquests and get an Art folder, and a Text folder, make sure that when you click on or open Flakless, that there is an Art folder and a Text folder, and go from there. Whatever you don't have in Flakless, the scenario will default to the basic game. I believe that's why you're getting an error message with the spearman unit. It's looking for the graphic or INI file in the Flakless scenario folder, and the file it needs has been installed into the default game's folders, instead. Let me know if you continue to have problems. Copy the error message, and I or someone else on this thread or forum will give you the answer you need.