[BETA] Rules of Engagement : Stalingrad

[Gedemon]

​

Rules of Engagement : Stalingrad​

First thing, yes, I know, the ROE acronym wasn't used during WWII. That said, I hope that Rules of Engagement will be a serie of small scenarios based mostly on combat rules modification for civ5, hence the name and my apologies for historical inacurracy

This first scenario is roughly based around the battle of Stalingrad between October 1942 and February 1943.

Playing as the Germans, your objective will be to take and hold Stalingrad keeping your supply line open at the end of the game (30 turns).

Playing as the Russian, you must keep Stalingrad at all cost and destroy the sixth german army using your (heavy) reinforcement from operation Uranus and Little Saturn.

Victory check is not done yet ingame, but at last you have the obectives fixed now !

What's in:

- frontline updated each turn, based on units positions
- reinforcement programmed at different turns
- units may retreat when attacked by a stronger opponent
- custom date / turn (the brute way, as I wanted to keep some specific date in the timeline)
- WW2 scenario, only units from this era.
- no ressource, maintenance, happyness, research, production, just the combat engine.
- division size units : 50 HP
- scale and formation changed. You may find the scale too smal, but I wanted to put a lot of figures in each units to reflect the HP change
- city : 100 HP, no bombard.
- air range x2.5 (visual attack speed x2)
- artillery: range = 5
- AA guns: range = 3, can only defend, penalty against gun units
- worker are engineering regiment units, with defensive only (small) combat ability. They can only repair improvements and have a heavy free medic/repair promotion (+3 heal)
- no insta heal promotion
- general have free sentry promotion
- "urban area" aka city ruins, trading post, factory (especially factory, that's Stalingrad, remember ? ) give defensive bonus.
- more that I may have forgotten to list...


Installation:

available from the in game mod browser or the download database

manual installation :
- delete previous version of the mod (optional with latest patch)
- download the civ5mod files to your mod folder (..\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS).
- launch civ5, go to the mod browser and click "install mod"
- find the Rules of engagement : stalingrad line and activate the mod.
- from the mod section, go to single player and set up a game
- select the Stalingrad map
- check "load scenario", select Russian or german and click on "launch scenario"


Notes:

- don't use with another mod, it will surely messed some of the changes. But the leaders or flag mods for russian and Germany should work fine.
- you may want to lower your graphic settings, even with a nice big PC as there are a lot's of units involved here. it seems that moving from one position to another during combat may crash the game if graphics settings are to high.


Credits:

csebal, Bhruic and all other whose LUA mods have helped me to get started on this. Parts of the Extended Plot MouseOver Popup mod are used in RoE. Thank you guys


to do :

- add supply line function
- balance reinforcement, units and promotions (tank 5 moves, ...)
- balance IA use of those units (worker = support, AA = defense only)
- add new units, if not graphic at least definition (mech. inf. 4 move, rought terrain movement penality)
- remove uneeded tech and production pop-up


version history

v0.4 (Oct 17, 2010):
- fix a bug with civ5 mod installer when using special caracters in mod name

v0.3 (Oct 17, 2010):
- fix broken load/save (was removing insta heal promotion the wrong way)
- fix a bug when a land reinforcement group was not filling 7 hexes
- add retreat function
- frontline updated also at the end of the player turn, not only at the beginning
- change town defense visual effect (no more missiles)
- balance : AA-guns can only defend and get penalty against gun units

v0.2b (Oct 17, 2010) :
- fix a bug in the only cossack's unit size and formation

v0.2a (Oct 17, 2010) :
- add frontline function
- add reinforcement function

v0.1 (wasn't released) :
- add map of Stalingrad with initial units placement
- set xml and sql rule change
- merge and strip csbmod for terrain informations
- strip top panel of unused informations


Screenshoots:

 

[MaxRiga]

great idea !
in fact, I had the same scenario for civ4 ))

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171860&highlight=Stalingrad

Unfortunately, your mod doesn't work with me, I don't see it listed in "installed mods". Also, you haven't added your map. Waiting for you to fix it and looking forward to play it

 

[Gedemon]

alternativly you can use 7zip to manually extract the mod. the map is in the... well "map" folder of the mod, the entry point is set, you should see it in your map list once the mod is installed.

Yes, it's a classic scenario, even more with panzer and t-34 already ingame

I'll upload a quick fix anyway : there is a single cossack units comming late in game, and I forgot to set the scale and formation for it...

 

[Gedemon]

fix uploaded, you can (re)download it, sorry.

 

[CrazyCelt]

Screen Shots???

 

[Gedemon]

screenshots, sure, yep, here's some with the first turns of the scenario during my last test...



The 6th army ready to assault Stalingrad. This is the first turn and the frontline is not set yet...



... on second turn you can see on the minimap the frontline set by the units position at the end of turn 1. Units are though, it will take 2 turns and 3 panzer division to destroy this russian tank brigade...



... the luftwaffe is almost unchallenged at the beginning of the scenario, but that won't last.



On third turn, first reinforcements for the german side : element of the 4th panzer army are joining from the south...



... the artillery positions on the other side of the Volga will be a constant health drainer for the germans in the urban area of Stalingrad...



... and small counter-attacks will slow their progression...



... embarqued units rarely survived bombing raids, but russian aa-guns are slowly but constantly weakening luftwaffe raids.



2 of the 3 factories are germans now, but the third's still russian, and Stalingrad as not fall...



The third factory is german now, and the surrounding have been almost cleaned by the panzer divisions... But operation Uranus as just began, massive russian reinforcements are coming from the east and the north, and germans lines are stretched to the max... Will you be able to rewrite history against all odds ?

 

[primordial stew]

Why can't I rebase to Stalingrad? It works to the other cities, but there is just no way to get the luftwafa into the fight! The range isn't enough for them to be useful, expect during the counterattack if that ever materializes, is turn 25 already.

Took Stalingrad on turn 4.

Arty is too powerful.

Shouldn't all that rubble provide significant defense vs bombardment?

Oh, and am out of gold on turn 29, the army is being disbanded!

A good start, looking forward to the next version!

 

[Gedemon]

Why can't I rebase to Stalingrad? It works to the other cities, but there is just no way to get the luftwafa into the fight! The range isn't enough for them to be useful, expect during the counterattack if that ever materializes, is turn 25 already.

Took Stalingrad on turn 4.

Arty is too powerful.

Shouldn't all that rubble provide significant defense vs bombardment?

Oh, and am out of gold on turn 29, the army is being disbanded!

A good start, looking forward to the next version!

maybe you forgot to check "load scenario" or something, like having another mod(s) activated. the fighter (range=20) allow theim to cover ground troops around stalingrad (the city itself is just out of range), and the bomber (range=25) should reach the east side of the volga (both from Kalach). units gold maintenance should be 0 and first wave of counterattack materialize at turn 9 or 10. and yes, all the "urban zone" around stalingrad provide a defensive bonus.

 

[Gedemon]

and thanx for feedback, to check if the mod is activated, do you have the frontline feature, the new date and turn in top panel and units scale modified ? (see screenshots above)

 

[primordial stew]

Yes, was activated, but I moved the .civ5mod file into the dir instead of the .modinfo one, so none of the cool stuff was being loaded

Any more plans for this? I'll play it for real now... but 1 thing that didn't change was the mot inf isn't different than the foot inf. How about another movement point?

Also, aren't the AA units too powerful? Perhaps make them weak (except vs air) and change them to a civilian so they can stack.


I'm wondering if the Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) scenarios could be used? Quite a different scale, but tactics are tactics whether with divisions or squads!

 

[Gedemon]

yes, more is planned

Right now I'm testing a "retreat on large defeat" function...

Then there's the supply line to implement if doable without c++ sdk...

And yes, units need some tuning. Mech. inf. with a different formation and more moves, yes, maybe with a movement penalty on rough terrain, tank with 5 moves (as Panzer), AA gun weaker against infantry and defensive only, etc...

 

[primordial stew]

Is wonderful when the whole mod is used

1 more suggestion, how about renaming the engineer/medic to be "Corp HQ"?

Is the 50 hit point (HP) a global setting? It's probably appropriate to make the regiment sized units have 20HP or so. The arty, AA, and probably Romanians too. The Romanians in that they were spread hopelessly thin..

 

[CrazyCelt]

Cool thanks for the screen shots. Looking forward to playing this mod once I finish the game I am in. Quick question, why are you using the Japan as the CIV???

 

[Gedemon]

the civs are russia and germany, unaltered colors. I use the zero as a temporary fighter remplacement for russia (with the same caracteristic as the vanilla fighter) until new units are made (I hope soon, thanx to lemmy101 and others)

 

[Gedemon]

Is wonderful when the whole mod is used

1 more suggestion, how about renaming the engineer/medic to be "Corp HQ"?

Is the 50 hit point (HP) a global setting? It's probably appropriate to make the regiment sized units have 20HP or so. The arty, AA, and probably Romanians too. The Romanians in that they were spread hopelessly thin..

I was thinking of something like "Pionier-Bataillon" for the german engineer.

The HP is global, and the strenght is per unit type, but I can set malus via promotions, like malus against armor for romanian divisions to reflect their lack of good anti-tank weapons, and malus vs infantry for AA-guns (and tank maybe ?).

the artillery is already weak against armor, I've found that a panzer with blitz can take 2 or even 3 in one turn if it can outflank the enemy !

still testing the retreat function, workd nice, but there is a bug when multiple units try to attack the same plot : they launch their attack against the old plot, even if the defensive units as retreated to a new one. I may need the source code to change that.

I may release another beta this we to test it anyway...

and thanx for comments and feedback !

 

[jaldaen]

Front-line feature? How does that work? I'm just curious. Does it have any in game effect yet? Or is it just something for the mini-map?

Thanks,
Joseph

 

[primordial stew]

Another thing you might try.. how about a DIP (die in place) promo? The "promo" gives -5 movement or so, and is set on units that will never move. The application here are the initial defenders of Stalingrad, just to make sure the AI defends the city initially!

Yes, the Romanians had mainly 37mm/50mm AT guns. OK against the sides, but worthless against a T34s frontal armor. As is (bad AI mainly) was able to squash the counter attack, esp once the Panzers get blitz! I'm not familiar with the historical strengths, but it's probably safe to set some damage on the reinforcements to limit the robustness of the relief effort.

I am killing a lot of units trying to cross the rivers. Maybe most of these plots should be set to (impassable) ice. That alone will increase the difficulty a step.

 

[Gedemon]

Front-line feature? How does that work? I'm just curious. Does it have any in game effect yet? Or is it just something for the mini-map?

Thanks,
Joseph

It as the same effect as in vanilla game : you use more mouvement point on road / railway owned by your opponent, and there is no fog of war in your territory.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

What a neat little scenario. I'm subscribing for now and waiting for the changes. Unfortunately, lack of loads and saves makes it unplayable for me, as I often like to leave a game and think about it when I'm doing other stuff. But I am looking forward to playing this.

 

[jaldaen]

Cool, so does each unit act like a city in "claiming" the territory immediately around it as it moves? If so, how'd you make the units claim the territory as they move? It seems like a very cool feature that might be fun for other types of scenarios, too.

Thanks,
Joseph