30 Years War Scenario

[Andrew_Jay]

Hey, I've just been thinking about a scenario based on the Thirty Years' War in Europe, and I've been trying some stuff out with the scenario editor.

Notice (8 June 2005) New version of map uploaded and several changes made.

MAP

Right now I've just taken the Napoleonic Map from Conquests and reassigned some of the cities (and renamed a few) in an attempt to put together something that resembles the political make-up of Europe in 1618. However, I imagine I might need a slightly bigger map, or start from scratch placing my own cities. On this one there is a huge danger that the Ottomans are far too powerful.

Any European map will do, but nothing too big, I just don't do big maps. I like the Napoleonic map because it cuts out North Africa and the Middle East which aren't needed for this scenario. At the same time, Germany seems a little squished, but I guess we have to expect things to get crowded considering how many cities and little states are in that area.

NATIONS (new changes)

-Kingdom of France
-Kingdom of Spain (Which also owns "Belgium" and southern Italy)
-Austrian Monarchy
-Kingdom of England
-Kingdom of Scotland
-Kingdom of Denmark
-Kingdom of Sweden
-Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania
-Tsardom of Muscovy
-Ottoman Empire
-Crown of Bohemia
-Saint Peter (Rome and Naples)
-Electorate of Brandenberg and Prussia
-Imperialist German States (Catholic southern German states)
-Independent German States (Northern neutral states)
-United Provinces (Netherlands)

ALLIANCES

Catholic Habsburgs:

-Austrian Monarchy
-Kingdom of Spain
-Saint Peter (included mostly to avoid the oddity of Spain or Austria going to war with it)

Protestants:

-Crown of Bohemia
-Electorate of Brandenberg and Prussia
-Kingdom of Sweden
-Kingdom of Denmark
-United Provinces

Everyone else is unaligned, which leaves France's historical intervention up in the air.

UNITS

I'm envisioning simply using the regular Civ units, there seems to already be everything I need there:

Pikeman

-general purpose attack and defence
-the mainstay of any army
-probably upgrade to Swiss Pikes
-lower versions not require resources/tech?
-maybe a sequence of Pikeman types, as in the Rise of Rome scenario where there were three grades of Legions

Musketmen/Musketeers

-good defence
-bombard (at least defensive)
-more expensive
-require saltpeter
-also perhaps a sequence of these units? (i.e. Musketmen I, Musketmen II, etc.)

Knights/Hussars

-speed, offence
-horses and iron

Canons

-expensive
-iron and saltpeter

Settlers (?)

-we may need some here to replace cities. Perhaps only allow the German states to build settlers?

I've never worked with implementing new units into scenarios before, but I also might take a look at some of the Cossacks conversions floating around, but I sort of hope that I don't need to.

GOVERNMENTS AND CIVILIZATION ADVANCES

I'm going to see what I can borrow from the Age of Discovery scenario, especially the Catholic/Protestant Monarchies, etc. Of course there will be no new-world exploration, but it'll be good to use as a start.

Speaking of exploration, I plan to use wonders/small wonders to simulate English, French, Spanish and Dutch overseas colonies. provide happiness/trade or something.

Anyway, that's it. I guess the major struggle right now is finding historical maps that can show me the location of cities (I have plenty that outline provinces and kingdoms, but not what cities to put inside them).

I'm pretty excited about this, I think it's a pretty interesting period that I haven't seen a Civ III scenario for yet. Any ideas are very welcome, and if anyone wants to just take this and run with it, go right ahead.

EDIT: New version of the map up.

Right now Germany is kind of filled with several scrappy little nations, but it is fairly balanced - nobody is in close contact with a nation that can completely over run them - Spainish troops will have to do some traveling to get to the fight. The Protestant alliance is also pretty strong in-order to face Spain, Austria and the Papacy.

The Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania could cause some trouble if it became involved since it is pretty big. I'll make sure that it is fairly poor and underdeveloped later on. Same goes for the Ottoman Empire.

Also, I believe I'll need to carve Wallachia/Transylvania/Moldova out of the Ottoman Empire, which should also weaken it some.

 

[magus77]

Great idea, can't wait for it to come out.

BTW, are you sure you spell it "Sweeden" and not "Sweden"?

 

[Gagliaudo]

Hi Adler17, good idea.
Have a nice work.
About nations: in Italy, at the time, Naples was Spanish; an important indipendent state was Duchy of Savoy (or Savoia, or Savoie), who fight between French and Spain in the so-called "war for the Monferrato", that can be considered a sectorial part of the "ThirtyYears'War".
Bye

 

[Grohan]

The scenario idea is great! I am looking forward playing it.

About Italy: Maybe you should split Italy between four powers? Spain (controls kindom of Naples and Milan), Venice (controls northern Italy and Crete. Maybe also some Greek/Croatian coastal cities), Tuscany OR Papal states (controls central Italy/Tuscany) and Savoy.
But Napoleonic Europe map is pretty small so all those states may not fit there (otherwise the map is good).

 

[Richard Cribb]

The idea is quite good and a Thirty Years War scenario is something one we really need, but considering what you wrote it is not clear to me whether you want to reenact the Thirty Years War or you simply want to create a scenario with nations from that time.
I must run now, but I will just give a couple of short comments.
About the civs: I think I would prefer Bavaria, Saxony and Hessen to Russia, Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Especially Bavaria should be included.
Forget Bohemia, make it a part of the Holy Roman Empire and the same with Italian cities.Friedland would be an interesting idea, though (Wallenstein's duchy).
About the units: No longbowmen and medieval infantery . Infantry should consist of pikemen and musketeers. A good idea could be different types of those units, also when one consider UU's.
However, it is your scenario, so if you already have done most of the work and like it that way, pay no attention to this and do what you prefer yourself.
Good luck with your project.

 

[Mongoloid Cow]

I think you need to cut out a lot of the map. You certainly won't need Scotland, and the Ottoman Empire should not be noticable (except for Venice and Austria, obviously). You shouldn't need to expand it far into Russia, or north into Scandinavia (but you would need the "general idea" that Norway and Sweden were there by extending it far enough). You would certainly need it bigger.

One idea would be to have many of the Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire united into one: Netherlands, Bohemia, small Protestant Free Cities and states, etc. and maybe Switzerland thrown in too. Brandenburg-Prussia should be it's own though. That would help with decreasing the number of useless space-taking "fodder civs", so you could add other big players such as Bavaria.

Ecclesiastical states such as Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Trent, Augsburg, Würzburg, Bamberg, etc. could be added as either a "Catholic Church" style civ (including the Papal States if that was the case), or divided between the large Catholic Civs depending on their orientation (Trent -> Austria, Cologne -> Bavaria, etc.).

 

[Andrew_Jay]

About the map/civilizations that are used - I guess it's a debate now between recreating the war itself, or simply setting up the situation that the war took place in.

I'm leaning more to re-creating the setting - including all of the major European powers even though they might not have played any real role in the fighting (Scotland, England, Russia, Ottoman Empire, etc.), in order to lend more of a "what if" possibility. I hope that the locked alliances will help drive the scenario to focus on generally what happened in the 30 Years War.

Italy will defiantely be Venice in the north, Papal States in the middle and Spain in the south, though I'll look at including Savoy.

By the way - the map is now uploaded. Don't expect much, right now it is just the cities from the Napoleonic Scenario renamed and re-assigned.

 

[Andrew_Jay]

New map up, and several changes to the nations/alliances.

 

[Bluemofia]

Maybe you should add a mercenary unit, and make it the only unit that can pillage, as to reflect that mercenaries pillaged up Germany during that time.