Yugoslav Breakup Scenario - Continuation Thread

[gapetit]

Hello Hans99, I am very happy that you are recovered and that you have come back with such strength. Here I include the modifications that I made to your original version that was in process in case they are useful to you. I am looking forward to seeing the end of the scenario, because it is tremendously ambitious and has a chance that someone with your talent will undoubtedly turn it into a Civ-2 classic. Thank you and regards

 

[Hans99]

@gapetit
Thank you very much for your modifications, i already included several bits in my work now. I especially like the refugees unit.


@Prof. Garfield
Thank you for the information concerning limitations of still 7 civs. Also thank you for your work concerning the "canbuildSettings" in the Lua System.
I am already studying it. I think i must use the "canbuildsetting" in this scenario then, as i see no other option in preventing the other side from producing
the wrong units in the wrong cities ( Bosnian 5th Corps units that were only inherent to the city Bihac come to my mind for example ).

Concerning the font types and sizes, well i will reach out to TheNamelessOne then. Another point that comes to my mind concerning fonts is, that i
read somewhere that it uses a system font (Times New Roman ?) and that you could tweak it if you renamed another font with the font that is by default
used by Test of Time.


Does somebody know the standard font used in ToT (Font Identification yielded somethin between Baskerville and Mirador Font ) ?


Concerning the time of the year, is it possible to make the change of the Terrain1.bmp & Terrain2.bmp via lua scripting ?


Another Thing i noticed: Giving a freigt ship (Domain 2) the Caravan role (7) still doesn not allow this ship to open a trade route if you move
it to the city of anoher civ. I guess this also is a case for further scripting.


@Patine
Don't worry, i rummaged through ten years worth of units in this forum the last days and saved them on my hard drive.

================================================================

Concerning further thoughts on the Project:

The Upping of the city limit is a real gift. I can now include major NATO/Neighbouring states cities in the scenario. Albania is
really interesting here, as it will allow me to include the infamous albanian civil war of 1997 in the project. A strong reaction from
Austria is also possible now in hindsight of the slovenia campaign (A sucessful serb commander can now strike deep into austria
and capture cities there).


Btw, is there any austrian unit with the classie pea dot camouflage pattern ?


I still have around 50 unit slots available, and i must admit, i have no idea what to do with them. Any suggestions are welcome.

Tweaked some stats and did a test run to see how possible it is for a able serb commander to reconquer the secession states, and after
the test i can say: Yes, it is possible, but not easy and you need a little bit of luck and you must achieve a capture of all main obectives in
2 turns aka 4 months, before UN starts to intervene in state affairs.

What still makes me a little bit problems is how rigid i want to force the player into events, as i must admit i really liked the approach of the classic
yugoslav scenario of Francois Baire, which gave you a lot of freedom in your choices. I think diving deeper into lua concerning the "If" "then"
functions will help me here. I think i will give the player a somewhat rigid frame for certain events till 1995, or make it harder for him to deviate from
the historical course, but after then give the player a lot more of freedom to do his bidding, as the last goal is, as we all know, to establish
a yugoslav moon base

Still, any suggestions are welcome.

I thank all of you for your time.

 

[axx]

Looking forward to playing the scenario!

Whatever your course towards defining events is, here's something to ponder upon:
- A deep drive of reinforced Bosnian army into R. Srpska in 1995 towards Banja Luka (this was a real possibility and I believe it was stopped by Izetbegovic, much to the dismay of their army HQ),
- The signing of Z-4 plan which would incorporate Krajina republic back into Croatia (how would this fare on events in Bosnian theatre?)
- After Vukovar fell in '91, a strong push of Serbian forces towards Slavonia

 

[JPetroski]

Concerning the time of the year, is it possible to make the change of the Terrain1.bmp & Terrain2.bmp via lua scripting ?

I don't know if you can do it with other art files yet, but it is possible to swap out the terrain files mid-game so you don't have to use a batch file. This was achieved in Caesar which you can download in the data base (Caesar's Gallic Wars).

What still makes me a little bit problems is how rigid i want to force the player into events, as i must admit i really liked the approach of the classic
yugoslav scenario of Francois Baire, which gave you a lot of freedom in your choices. I think diving deeper into lua concerning the "If" "then"
functions will help me here. I think i will give the player a somewhat rigid frame for certain events till 1995, or make it harder for him to deviate from
the historical course, but after then give the player a lot more of freedom to do his bidding, as the last goal is, as we all know, to establish
a yugoslav moon base

In Cold War (which you can find a DL link in the playtest thread, I believe) I implemented choices for the player in a few spots. Namely, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Basically, a menu box pops up with a few different options, the selection of each having different consequences. In Cold War, I had to show both sides making choices. In a MP game, each human simply gets their own box. In a SP game, I assigned a different probability to different AI choices (I leaned heavily in favor of the historic outcome, but it is possible to have ahistoric situations develop). I use this same probability system in Hinge of Fate to determine the location of the D-Day landings so that the player never truly knows if they're going to strike where they did historically.

It's a design choice, and everyone has to make the scenario to their own vision, but let's just say I'm more keen to play a scenario twice that isn't scripted than one that is.

 

[Hans99]

So, albania is included on the map now, introduced units for the albanian civil war in 1997.

Some more crucial cities were added to the yugoslav theater, especially cities in the Vojvodina.

Montenengro units added.

Fiddling with rules.



@axx
1995, I guess you think about operation oluja ? I will incorporate that.

The implementation of the Z4 plan would give some interesting possibilities i see.




@JPetroski
Thank you for the tip concerning the change of the terrain files. I wll check out the caesar scenario.

I already have seen some of your choice makers from "Hinge of Fate", i will check them out. I will also take a look at "Cold War"


One thing i am thinking about at the moment concerning kosovo:
Now kosovo cities belong to the serb civilization. UcK Units begin to appear around 1993 and from then on the
event generated Kosovo war starts towards 1998.

In the yugoslav scenario of Francois Baire Kosovo was a independent nation and there was no albania
except kukes, border town, from which albania could smuggle units to kosovo. Had a great fun there always being
the underdog who in the end rose up after a reall hard struggle.

My point is, should i make Kosovo part of albania already ? How do i prevent mixing of albania and uck
units in yugoslav territory ? Opinion is approved.



Thank you all for your input.

 

[Patine]

So, albania is included on the map now, introduced units for the albanian civil war in 1997.

Some more crucial cities were added to the yugoslav theater, especially cities in the Vojvodina.

Montenengro units added.

Fiddling with rules.



@axx
1995, I guess you think about operation oluja ? I will incorporate that.

The implementation of the Z4 plan would give some interesting possibilities i see.




@JPetroski
Thank you for the tip concerning the change of the terrain files. I wll check out the caesar scenario.

I already have seen some of your choice makers from "Hinge of Fate", i will check them out. I will also take a look at "Cold War"


One thing i am thinking about at the moment concerning kosovo:
Now kosovo cities belong to the serb civilization. UcK Units begin to appear around 1993 and from then on the
event generated Kosovo war starts towards 1998.

In the yugoslav scenario of Francois Baire Kosovo was a independent nation and there was no albania
except kukes, border town, from which albania could smuggle units to kosovo. Had a great fun there always being
the underdog who in the end rose up after a reall hard struggle.

My point is, should i make Kosovo part of albania already ? How do i prevent mixing of albania and uck
units in yugoslav territory ? Opinion is approved.


Thank you all for your input.

Perhaps start with Kosovar cities under Serb control, then use LUA events to make certain cities, "much easier," to capture (by deleting key defense units or such), or even converting, to UcK under certain broad circumstances once 1998 rolls around.

 

[axx]

Specifically I meant the offensive of Bosniak army (Oluja was Croatian offensive).

For Kosovo my suggestion is initially (1993) make a small concentration of Ser army in the province with smaller UCK formations appearing sporadically.
Then towards 1998 when heavier arming of rebels began design those formations to start appearing more regularly and in larger numbers.
I don't see a reason to start mixing Albania with Kosovo, even today they are separate countries (even culturally there are noticeable differences between Albanians in both countries). In fact I don't see a reason to make an Albanian 'civ' at all, they were a non-factor in those years and were only important in allowing recruitment and free movement of UCK withing their borders. Frankly I would just design events where on Kosovo/Albanian border UCK troops would start appearing and crossing into Kosovo. The Yu army's defense of that border was imperative throughout the actual war.

 

[Hans99]

@axx
Ah Operation Sana, yeah, that was the strike that was halted before it reached Banja Luka.

@axx & Patine
I think i will leave the cities in Kosovo under serb control and make increasing UCK insurgency. Also i have seen lua events can change the city ownership. This will come in handy.
Concerning the non inclusion of albania in the whole conflict i am ambivalent, as i tend to give the player more freedom in his choices. I am still in the finding phase here.

I replayed the old scenario from Francois Baire (Gapetits updated Graphics) the last two days with TOTPP and had much fun being kosov or bosnia again, and forcing the
other parties to attack the serbian faction and opeing trade routs with NATO etc...

By the Way, my CIVCITY, CIVTWEAK, CIVSPRITE AND SPRITEGEN do not work anymore, i get an Index Error #9, whatever that means, and the x64 error,
strange, ten years ago i had the same operating system (Wiondows 7 X64 Ultimate) and it worked ?!? Any Ideas ?

Ah, and i found out the standard Font: Its New Times Roman, who would have thougt.

Best wishes all of you for the next workweek.

 

[Hans99]

The Box of Pandora is opened in the Ukraine, who would have thought...

Well, besides that a little update to progress:

Filling the 189 Units template with units. Still at it, as it allows me to implement many ideas that had to be scrapped due to the unit limitation.
For example splitting the HOS and Chetnik units in a bosnian and croat theatre unit.

Thanks to the no limit of cities i could implement even more crucial cities for the scenario.

Work continued on the Readme file, also to allow for a historical & neutral view on the war ( I hate biased articles).

A lot of reading and rereading books about the war, reviewing articles, war maps etc...

Planning to implement the Krajina Express Armoured Train, see also: https://reaperfeed.com/serbian-krajina-express/

Planning to implement the coastal batteries, especially around split.

Had a idea with suppy trucks that could drive up to a damaged unit and repair it and is dissolved afterwards, will try this.

The many iomprovements in the rules.txt thanks to the nameless one allow also for many more interesting things to do.


Best wishes all of you for the next workweek.

 

[Hans99]

Another Progress Report:

The greater number of cities is a bless. I could include some more crucial cities and also fill the blank spots in greater Serbia.

The 189 Units is also a bless. I included some crucial units for bosia for example (Patriotic League), and expand upon the later game part for after 1995.

Grabbed and modified some soundfiles from youtube videos (ZSU-75, T-34, Launcher, Praga etc... )

Free placement of custom Terrain is great. Some industrial, agricultural etc. areas received an upgrade.

The Labels to name regions on the map is also great. I placed them on the most important places (Countries, special regions, Mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, sea...).


Best wishes for this workweek to all of you.

 

[Hans99]

And another progress report:

Well, another year has gone by, but at least i am making progress.

Units.bmp with 189 units is as good as ready.

Labeling on the map was REALLY helpful. All neccessary labels are placed, just details are missing.

Events are refurbished to ToTPP standard and also up to 50% finished.

Placement of additional Cities thanks to no city limit also is ca. 70% completed .

Readme refurbishing is also ca. 60% done. There will also be a little strategic guide for the first turn for every nation.

Tech Tree revision thanks to more techs available due to ToTPP is also making good progress.

Concerning Kosovo i did as Axx suggested, and it actually develops pretty good. Kosovo
has a Serb unit named "Under Federal Control" placed in its city. The unit cannot be disbanded.
As long as the unit stays in the city Serb units will not attack the Albanian cities. Of course they still
roam around in Kosovo and annoy you. Also as long as these "Under Federal Control" units exist they
drain money, food, beakers and ressources from Kosovo and disallow the creation of own Kosovo military units
(Lua implementation pending). UçK untis will appear through events in growing numbers though and will
also come in from Albania.

Sandzak and Illirida Republic will also start to play bigger a role in the scenario.

I will upload a playable Beta soon, but Lua will not be implemented in it yet.
In Lua there is also planned to implenent the CANBUILD for the cities and some Swap of
the terrain files for displaying five seasons and changing Rules.txt. Also some specific things
for Kosovo are needed in Lua as mentioned above.

Also several video AVI Snippets and audio files concerning events will be missing in the Beta

I already played a long HotSeat version of an earlier intern Beta with my Son. He played Serbia,
i was Croatia.At first he blasted me with his military might, but after i took all of his Federal Barracks
from him i finally managed to turn the Tide. We acutally had a lot of fun. and then the UN showed up
an spoiled all the fun.

As goodie two screenshot from the actual situation in eastern Slavonia and Bukovica at the start of the game.

As final word i want to say, that i really like the possibilities Lua and ToTPP gives one, but i want to stay
close to the feeling of the original Civilization 2, which is an empire building game. So i want this scenario
actually also to be an empire building game, of course with inital military struggle, like the old Yugoslavia
scenario from Francois Baire. I do not want it to be a strict military game that forces me to "reenact" a historic
war with limited freedom ( I hated those bunkers in Herbstnebel ! Still love the scenario though ). In the old
Civ 2 FW scenario I had fun going havoc after the inital struggle, Kosovo conquering Yugoslavia, or
Bosnia uniting Yugoslavia or look how the other nations develop. So in this scenario there will be a
rough direction at the beginning with some key events, but the player will have a lot of freedom.
Also unit stats will be close to the original civ 2 Unit stats, so that you can rely on your tactical feel that you
already learned from vanilla Civ 2.

Maybe Yugoslavia will go to the moon in the end or maybe a zombie Tito will raise from the grave, who knows...