After 5 months of Editing, MY FINAL MOD

[Zouave]

If anyone is curious as to what I consider a good mod, here it is.

It is far more historically accurate than the nonsense in the game mod. And there have been numerous unit changes, and tweaks to resources, Wonders, improvements, etc.

Useless units have been replaced with those that make more sense and have a purpose.

Knights go to 5.2.2. And that makes it more necessary to bring up cheap pikemen with them to hold ground. It is ridiculous to give them the same defense factor as rifle-armed cavalry.

Longbowmen become 4.3.1 at higher cost and are English UU's.
Everyone else gets crossbowen. War elephants go to 4.1.2 and are cheaper; they also can no longer airlift. Crossbowmen I have at 4 shields, but dropping it down to 3 might be just as good; try it. Hard to be sure on that one.

Shock troops are added as offensive infantry. They first appeared historically in 1917 against the Italians. Rommell was there. (the Caporetto offensive).

Explorers become Partisans.

MOW come a little earlier, and have ZOC and blitz.

Tanks do not have blitz - historical. Panzers do.

Musket infantry is added reflecting the improved, bayonet-armed musketmen on the Napoleonic period.

Horse cannon with a '2' movement value have been added to reflect mobile units of Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick the great, and Napoleon.

Many changes to naval units. most notably the absurdity of frigates firing cannonballs just 500 yards past the coastline and destroying improvements is ended. There is no way to get privateers (useless) and subs to be able to attack MERCHANT shipping - their true historically purpose, which is unknown to Firaxis.

Useless F-15 replaced by minutemen - sort of a fast musketeer.

The Manhattan Project replaced by an Internet Wonder. I will never use nukes unless we have a Quick Response option to a First Strike. To not have it is absurd. So if you want to throw ICBM's all over the place as you like the graphics, look elsewhere.

Many other things. Check them out..

This is the latest mod as of 5/18.

 

[Joben]

Sounds like interesting well thought out changes.

I will check it out when i get done with some LWC games i have going.

 

[Zouave]

Let me amend something.

It never crashes for me. But then I have all the "right" files in the Arts/units folders, even for the renamed units.

When - and if - crashing occurs it is often the result of once you reach a time period, when a new or renamed unit comes online and is available, you have to have the appropriate files in Arts/units - in each individual units folder, and they all need sound and art files of some unit, and proper .ini file.

I'm not sure how this works. But if anyone knows please post it. This could apply to crashing problems with other mods, too.

Each folder, even when zipped likely is too big to be attached (over 500,000) so that's not an option here. But I can attach the .ini files; those, combined with art and sound files for a like unit, should prevent crashing. Works for me.




BTW, the mod comes with no map, just the Civ 3 map options.

 

[Zouave]

Here are the five .ini files for the renamed units in one folder. Use these in the unit folders with the art and sound from another unit of your choice: Shock Troops might get Infantry; Crossbowmen would use archers.

All this prevents crashing; works for me.

 

[God]

Zouave: I like your ideas on the units. I agree that the knight defense is too high.

Instead of making the attack of knights higher, won't it be more accurate to make a sabre wielding cavalry, like a dragoon, to be around the late Middle age, early industrial (the early 1800's w/ Napoleon cavalry). I think the rifle wielding cavalry should come a bit later.

 

[Zouave]

Yes, but to do that I would have to hack into the game to add additional units, instead of replacing useless ones with those that have a purpose and are historically accurate.

Doing that is a possible future option. I would be concerned about crashing in such an instance as sometimes happened to me with the LWC mod where extra units were added.

Plutarck's LWC has MANY extra units (too many??). I merely changed what we have without the hacking. . . and it never crashes for me.

How many units is too many, BTW? If we had a scenario builder we could break down a era in a small period of time - remember Zeppellins and Poison Gas units in the Civ WW I scenario? But we can't do that with Civ 3.

I wish I could add a Military Engineer unit who could reduce enemy fortifications/walls if left adjacent to the enemy fior two turns (in a tile with regular units).

I wish I could make catapults MORE effective against town defenses, and maybe LESS effective against enemy units in the field - historically accurate. Hell, catapults (we can add the even better trebuchet unit) were not generally lugged around after being built in a city; they were built on the scene of a siege.

I wish I could do a lot more with naval units and trade.

We need Military Leaders to give a combat bonus to every unit in a stack and maybe a blitz option of sorts.

Yea, there's a lot of things that could have been done, but require hacking, and thus the risk of crashing.

It would have been nice if Firaxis had consulted me on some of the idiotic military values and concepts they threw together (I have an MA in Military History, if anyone cares). Elephants that can airlift and have a defense factor the same as pikemen??? Ludicrous. Why can't Leaders airlift?? Longbowmen with a '1' defense when they contiunously stopped cold the best French knights at Poitiers, Crecy, and Agincourt?? Gimme a break.

So there's a lot I wish we could do. But the mod I put together should at least not be irritating to those of us who know the basics about warfare.

 

[Quentin]

I thought knights had that high defense because of heavy armour? Longbowman I believe are a sort of "offensive defense". They don't actually sit there until people charge at them like infantry units do. I think that is the reason for the low defense. The elephants should have high defense. Those are big and tough creatures we are talking about. I've seen elephants being airlifted before on TV.
What do you mean by the privateer and sub thing? The way I see it you are saying that privateers and subs are merchant ships. Privateers and subs are not. Its true. Its true.

I agree with you that leaders have to be able to airlift and that artillery units should work better on buildings.
I thought they were able to build catapults right there because they had camps? Someone could probably simulate that by settling next to the target city.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by Quentin
I thought knights had that high defense because of heavy armour? Longbowman I believe are a sort of "offensive defense". They don't actually sit there until people charge at them like infantry units do. I think that is the reason for the low defense. The elephants should have high defense. Those are big and tough creatures we are talking about. I've seen elephants being airlifted before on TV.
What do you mean by the privateer and sub thing? The way I see it you are saying that privateers and subs are merchant ships. Privateers and subs are not. Its true. Its true.

I agree with you that leaders have to be able to airlift and that artillery units should work better on buildings.
I thought they were able to build catapults right there because they had camps? Someone could probably simulate that by settling next to the target city.

Knights only real advantage was their large horses and the impetus of the charge. Yes, they could fight on foot if needed, but that really was the province of men-at-arms, a unit missing from Civ 3. Armor had its uses, but it was heavy, hot, and slowed you down seriously. The only time you'd want it is if on a horse charging.

IF cavalry with rifles gets a '3' on defense, knights get less. They, and their cousin the Crusader (see my avatar), did not have such a high defense value in Civ 2. The heavy armor also made them somewhat immobile fighting defensively (which would be on foot).

Longbowmen did sit right there with nothing but sharpened stakes in the ground in front of them at a 45 degree angle for protection as they waited for such as the French knights at Agincourt. The charging French were cut to bits by the steel-tipped arrows. Worked for them.

Read some history. I won't even debate elephants on defense. They were never even used for it; like horse troops, they were unsuited to hold ground: their only strength was in charging offensively. Actually, elephants weren't that good on offense either against trained troops who knew how to handle them, as Alexander proved. They were also prone to run amok and kill their own forces when injured or terrified (spears in the eye, or fire, did the trick). So forget elephants, especially on defense. Even a '1' may be too high.

Privateers and subs were historically designed to ATTACK MERCANT SHIPPING, not warships. The Americans used hundreds of privateers in the American Revolution; they sank so many British merchant vessels Lloyd's of London's insurance rates skyrocketed and the remaining ship owners couldn't afford the rates. This forced them to make peace, along with Yorktown. The German subs almost won two world wars using subs to attack merchant ships. BUT, in Civ 3 there is NO WAY to attack merchant shipping; you can't even effect it by having dozens of subs or privateers on your rival's trade routes. Firaxis knows nothing about the true purpose of navies.

Yes catapults, and later trebuchets (also not in the game), or other "engines" of war, were usually built on the site of a siege or fortification - they were not built in cities and then pushed all around the map - that is becasue they were far too heavy and the roads, such as they were, too few and too pitiful. Also, catapults were of little use in open field battles against a moving enemy; they were anti-fortification bombardment units, not anti-personnel.

 

[eighty]

Zouave: I am downloading your mod to try it. Sounds very good. Unfortunately I do not have the time to do these things myself yet. Soon, though soon. I apprectiate the obvious effort you have put in.

This is a bit irrelevant, but have you ever read any Harry Harrison? He does some good alternate history novels. Parallel evolution of dinosaurs and humans, Civil War w/time travel and AK47's, and Vikings rising to rival Christendom. Interesting concepts that could be applied to games.....

BTW the reason I mentioned him is that he has done a lot of research before writing his books (unlike Firaxis) and presents his theoretical concepts with plenty of support.

Just a thought

 

[rg3333]

Yeah, the longbowmen may have beaten the French knights at Agincourt. But that was because as you said Zouave they fortified themselfs with the stakes, but if the longbowmen were caught without the time to prepare they probably did have the defence of 1.
So, maybe you could alter Civ 3 so the defence of the longbowmen is greaty improved when they are fortified.

 

[Zouave]

How long do you think it took the longbowmen to put those stakes in the ground?? They carried them wherever they went, and all they had to do was dig a little hole. All they needed to do was present a front of sharpened wood the horses would not impale themselves on. It didn't take long. I will say this though, the French knights there were especially stupid charging straight ahead without even trying to outflank. But knights, or Napoelon's heavy cavalry (cuirassiers) almost always were stopped by prepared musket men.

 

[Ad Hominem]

Zouave

For someone with a MA in military history you seem to make too many mistakes. The longbowmen could perform those wonderous (as the people of the era thought of them) feats, under some very particular circumstances.

You say you've read your history (and to an extend you have) but to state that the Longbowmen are a defensive unit is not only innacurate, it's absurd.

Longbowmen did massacred the creme de la creme of the French chivalry for a number of reasons:

- Poor pick of the ground on behalf of the French. When you have 3 times + the forces of your enemy, you don't fight in a narrow ground, where you cannot deploy your forces at their full extent. They should have learned something if they had read history, like the choice of Darrius (when his 500.000+ troops got creamed by Alexander's 35.000 Greeks, because he could only effectively field 80.000 of his men at the particular field he has chosen). Don't forget the swamps too. Wave after wave the French knights rode to their doom. If they had more space, they could charge in a much looser formation and in a single (or two) wave/s mown down the Brits.

- Poor leadership in general: To deal with a force like the longbowmen, one had to put into work the most effective weapon of any cavalry against infantry: Mobility. They could flank them everyday of the week and twice on Sundays. Instead, they tried a head-on approach: Charge against raining steel-tipped arrows+wooden sticks+infantry+muddy or swampy terrain... Quite unwise. If there was an intelligence factor in Civ3, the knights should have the lowest possible.

- Muddy terrain. In the two of those three battles, the muddy terrain has won 50% of the battle for the Brits. The horses, already carrying too much weight (them armors are REALLY heavy) got humpered so much by the effort to charge at full speed, they could barely gallop in the last 100 meters. Some of them gave up the effort. And a knight without a horse is barely dead weight - or shall become one sooner rather than later.

- Support. Or combined arms, if you prefer. You fail to mention it, but in all three battles the Brits had a supportive infantry force with them. Equiped the traditional way, with pikes and the likes. And also a (small) number of knights. Those troops weren't much (in quality or quantity) but they offered some precious time to the longbowmen, by nailing down the French knights for a small amount of time. Sufficient amount so the arrows would chop them down.

Take one of those factors out, and the outcome of those battles would be completely different (and the Throne of England might be French... oh, the horror ).

OTOH, you are quite right in most other comments of yours, even though you fail to adress things like the Immortals being better offenders than the legion and the hoplite (choped down by both of those in any battle they met in the "real" history) the ludicrus mobility of the cavalry compared with later units (armour etc.) the inability of bombard units to kill off an enemy etc. etc. etc.

Yes, Firaxis is quite innacurate when it comes to the military aspect of the game. But this is not a bloody wargame, this is Civilization. A level of innacuracy is - if not acceptable - expected. And forgiven, by me at least.

 

[andyo]

good job, ricco zuave - looks good to me

 

[Zouave]

I STILL gave the longbowmen a HIGHER offensive value than defensive! So I make no claims to longbowmen being SO great defensively, as reflected in their values.

You will note that with attacking knights at '5' and longbowmen at '3' the knights would usually win - unless the longbowmen had time to fortify on good terrain. So you're criticisms are wrong on that point.

BTW, don't forget Crecy and Poitiers, along with any number of other times prepared longbowmen or musketmen stopped charging knights or their equivalent right up to Waterloo.

In fact, the only time a prepared square was broken by cavalry was pure luck: Spain in the Napoleonic Wars; a charging British horseman, his mount wounded, ran panicked and staggering into a French square. Other British cavalry poured into the small gap.
(at Fuentes de Onoro, as I recall).

Yea, I know that is tricky to compare Immortals to Legionnairies.
Perhaps you could flip flop their values. Or change them all. Ancient unit values are so close together any change could be very significant. If Legionnairies were 5.4., Immortals could be 4.4. or maybe 3.4. But doing that would require changing all unit values up the line, which is possible though hard.

We also could use a Macedonian Phalanx unit of Alexander the Great; it was in fact very offensive and devastating in its age. But that would apply only for a brief period, unless we had a scenario - and we don't. Too bad.

Oh yes, at that time there was some consideration of creating a phalanx unit WITH ARCHERS inside it - a precursor to the Spanish tercio unit. It might have been devastating. But it never was created.

 

[eighty]

I have a question about pikemen in your mod, Zouave. What is the incentive to build them? They cost the same as crossbow, but have lower stats. I have a vague memory of a reference somewhere that pikes are good defenders in Civ 3 vs. mounted units, but does this actually work in the game?

My suggestion would be, if pikes are indeed no better vs. mounted than others, to make them cheaper to build under the assumption that pikes themselves are less complicated than crossbows, use less metal (no bolts to replace), and are easier to train with.

 

[Zouave]

Pikemen cost 3 shields; crossbowmen 4 - so the former are 25% cheaper.

Pikemen are available after Feudalism whicb comes before (and is cheaper than) Theology - the prerequisite for crossbowmen.

So pikemen - cheaper, earlier. Crossbowmen - a little more expensive, later. If you have so much money it doesn't matter and you already have Theology, you should go for crossbowmen.

In Civ 2 pikemen had a bonus against mounted - as they should. But not in Civ 3 - unless Firaxis gets off its butts and fixes the damn thing.

Note that the most famous Spanish unit ever was the Tercio - which combined early musketmen and pikemen together. It could thus supply firepower against an enemy while protecting the musketmen (this was before bayonets) with the pikes. Firaxis in ts ignorance wants to make "Conquistadores" the PTW UU - but they never were a unit and were just a small bunch of thugs.

As for musketmen, as you can see in this and other mods there should be two types: early with a slow firing mechanism and no bayonet; and the later type which was a bit lighter, had a more reliable flintlock (instead of a matchlock or wheelock) and did have a bayonet. That latter kind lasted from the early 18th Century to about the 1830's.

BTW, the actual appeal of crossbows instead of English longbows was that the former was relatively easy to use; the longbow took a great deal of training and experience to be effective at. Most of the guys who used it had been doing so for life.

 

[Cyclonic]

I like your some of your ideas, and will probably steal some of them shamelessly If I might chip in a suggestion:

I considered similar changes to Longbowmen, but didn't like the idea of them getting used as main defenders in cities, which should be Pikemen. Here is my preferred alternative: give all bow units a defensive bombard factor, ie a bombardment of range 0. With this they are still vulnerable when alone, but in a stack they get to fire at attackers before they can close. This rewards combined arms, giving archers a defensive function, makes some unfavoured units more interesting, and adds a real twist to tactics.

My figures are:
Archer - Bombard 2, Range 0, RoF 1
Bowman - Bombard 3, Range 0, RoF 1
Longbowman - Bombard 4, Range 0, RoF 1

Because they carried bow-armed troops, I have also added it to Chariots and War Chariots. The standard Chariot now almost verges on being useful!

I've kept an improved Man-O-War as my English UU and don't use a Crossbowman in my game (yet ). If I did, I might give the Longbowman RoF 2.


Cyclonic

 

[Zouave]

You're absolutely right, and I would have done that myself but Plutarck in his LWC mod already did. I didn't want to rip him off too much, and also figured if I added a '0' range bombard defense factor it might alter too much the basic values I already had.

TELL ME HOW IT PLAYS with those new bombard factors, balance wise.

 

[Cyclonic]

I've been using it for a while now and it plays great! The bombardment gets a hit as often as not, and sometimes it tips the balance in favour of the defense. I never used to build the bow units, but I do now. They protect an advancing army, and they can join in the attack when they get there. Your cities certainly feel safer with a cheap archer in them. The AI seems to like archers, even the default ones, so you have to deal with them quite a lot. It deepens the tactical side, and makes some weaker units, including a rather weak UU, more attractive.

I didn't know whose idea it was - I just picked up a mention of it in a thread here somewhere. I'm sure Plutarck wouldn't mind anyone using it, as long as he gets a mention in suitably reverential tones

 

[Zouave]

So you modded MY mod, not the LWC mod?

Please zip it and post it so we can check it out. Post it here or in a new thread. You can call it "Zouave's MODDED mod", or, The "Zouave-Cyclonic mod".

be sure the defense is not helped too much as the offense already has an artificial disadvantage not being able to use roads in an invasion.

I've always been respectful to Plutarck!