Finnish Civilization Preview

[Drift]

Inspired by my Kekkonen leaderhead, I decided to extend it into a full Finnish Civ. There is one Finnish civ done by paaltio, but it’s for Vanilla Civ3 and isn’t compatible with PTW and Conquests.

This thread exists to gather opinions and criticism before I release the civ. Naturally, a Finnish civ is at its best only marginally interesting for most people here, but I just want to do this ‘right’.

Basic Information:

Leader: President Kekkonen (leaderhead preview )
Traits: Agricultural and Industrious (still tentative)
UU: Jaeger (6.10.2), costs 90, ignores movement penalty on forest and marsh tiles. Replaces Infantry.
Aggressiveness: 2
Builds often: Def. land units, Production, Science, Trade
Colors: blue & light blue

- Traits are one of the big questions. They will be combination of two of these: industrial, scientific, commercial, agricultural. Even with the recent discussion about the matter, opinions are welcome.
- Jaeger is the second big question. Too powerful? Wrong stats? It uses PTW’s Russian Infantry and I edited new pediaicons for it out of Infantry's pedia stuff.

City names:

Helsinki
Turku
Tampere
Viipuri
Hameenlinna
Porvoo
Oulu
Kuopio
Naantali
Rauma
Vaasa
Pori
Lappeenranta
Savonlinna
Tammisaari
Lahti
Hamina
Pietarsaari
Sortavala
Uusikaupunki
Rovaniemi
Kokkola
Jyvaskyla
Raahe
Tornio
Joensuu

I used both age and current importance as factors when arranging these in order. If you spot glaring errors or cities that are missing, please say so.

Military leaders:

C.G.E Mannerheim
Adolf Ehrnrooth
Johan August Sandels
Ruben Lagus
Jaakko Ilkka
Hjalmar Siilasvuo


Scientific leaders:

Georg Henrik von Wright
Artturi Ilmari Virtanen
Arvo Ylppo
Rolf Nevanlinna


So in a nutshell: Which traits? Is Jaeger OK? Something wrong with the other posted information?

Thank you.

 

[Gogf]

Hmm... It will be fun to play as the Fins, and crush the Swedes! Let's throw historical accuacy to the wind, shall we? Well, this will be great, can't wait!

 

[Mobilize]

Ooh nice, the Jaeger sounds like a pretty good (and fair) UU. I like the leaderhead, well done. Perhaps you can come up with a tad bit longer city list, I'm a big colonizer. Can't wait!

 

[holmstr]

Hey this is a nice idea.Well for some opinions.Finns should be scientific (maybe we weren't in early ages but we have been under russian rule and they are scientific), we do have Nokia .The other one is more off a dilemma between agricultural and commersial (we are not industrial, we drink to much and we are lazy ).Commersial could be 'couse we have done alot off trading with other countries to survive, on the other hand we we're nomads a very long time and agricultural but then again every civ has been that.So I would go for commersial.
Oh and that UU, it's fine.I don't think it's over powered 'couse there are many units that can out do it.Can it be a unit with snowpattern and skies?I haven't got the Conquest yet but Scientific leaders??What are they?

 

[Wolfwood]

This sounds like fun!

I don't think that we are a lazy people - after all, we paid our war reparations after the WW2 in a rush of industrialism that could not have been expected from a country that had suffered as much as we had during the war. Thus, one of our traits could be industrious.

I think we could also pull it off as a scientific civilization, considering the high quality of our space technology, mobile technology, internet usage and digitalisation compared to, for example, some Southern European countries.

The Jaeger is fitting for our UU as well, considering its importance in the last war - a strategy that was based mostly on crosscountry travel, hit-and-run tactics and ambushes as the Russians travelled along the open roads to invade Finland. I cannot comment on the offence/defence numbers, though, since I have no idea of the strength of the other units in the game context (I don't know how they relate to vanilla Civ3 that I play).

Kekkonen as the leader is a must - the was certainly the strongest of our leaders, although he strayed a bit far from traditional democracy in his style. Still, Koivisto might be a bit more charismatic for a peaceful, democratic leader.

 

[Exel]

I would give the Jaeger an extra defence point (6.11.2) and rename it Jääkäri. OTOH, I'd raise the attack values of all infantry to 8...

About the traits: I'd give Finland agricultural and scientific. We've been an agrarian society until the end of WW2, and since then we've been very scientific (despite the small populace, we lead or are amongst the leaders in many branches of technology).

Btw, I wouldn't use Sprengtporten as one of the Great Leaders. He helped the Russians conquer Finland from Sweden after all. Of course you could say that in the long run it was a good thing for Finland, but during the war a great majority of the Finns we're against it and fought back. I'd replace him with Johan August Sandels, the most successful commander on our side in the same war. I'd also add Jaakko Ilkka, the leader of peasants in Nuijasota.

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by Mobilize
Perhaps you can come up with a tad bit longer city list, I'm a big colonizer. Can't wait!

More cities it shall be.

Originally posted by Exel
Btw, I wouldn't use Sprengtporten as one of the Great Leaders. He helped the Russians conquer Finland from Sweden after all. Of course you could say that in the long run it was a good thing for Finland, but during the war a great majority of the Finns we're against it and fought back. I'd replace him with Johan August Sandels, the most successful commander on our side in the same war. I'd also add Jaakko Ilkka, the leader of peasants in Nuijasota.

So that's why Sprengtporten was so familiar a name, it's all coming back to me now. No, he won't definitely be on the list. I was checking wikipedia for famous Finnish soldiers and jumped for a familiar name. I'll add both your suggestions.

About the traits...

Scientific: OK, if you focus on modern day Finland, but it's a little iffy. We haven't been scientific for the most part of our existance as a civilization.

Agricultural: As much as there has been arguments that Finnish have been agrarian only because they were too poor to be anything else, I feel agricultural is a trait that fits us reasonably well. If you look at the other agricultural civs, you'll notice that many of them were civs, that were able to grow food on difficult environments - Maya (arid Yucatan), Inca (Mountains), Dutch (creating land out of sea). Finland is the world's northernmost country with an agricultural sector. We have been forced to adapt to the harsh nature and have still managed to scrape our living out of this hard land. I'm leaning heavily on choosing agricultural as the second trait.

Commercial: Commercial is an easy trait to give to almost any civ as all of them have traded. However, Finnish trade has in my opinion been rather normal, sub-normal actually in ancient and medieval times. I would like to reserve commercial trait for great merchant civilizations.

Industrious: There has been much disagreement about this too. We industrialized later than rest of the Europe, our industry is smallish, our road networks and railways are sparse... And still I feel industrious describes us reasonably well. Exel brings up good points on the matter. We did industrialize fast when we got to it and working is valued highly in our society.

So, I'm inclined to drop out commercial and make agricultural the second trait. So the traits would be agricultural-industrious or agricultural-scientific.

About Jaeger...

I'm not sure if changing the name is necessary. Jääkäri would be the finnish term, but in case some foreigners play the mod, I don't want to confuse them. Also, it follows the game's naming policy where names are in their English form if a good translation exists (Cossack, Legionary, Musketeer...)

I'm glad the stats are liked. It would make an interesting unit for industrial era warfare. Hit&run tactics, pillaging and responding to threats quickly if there are no railroads around.

 

[Wolfwood]

Originally posted by Drift
And still I feel industrious describes us reasonably well. Exel brings up good points on the matter. We did industrialize fast when we got to it and working is valued highly in our society.

Both working and education are highly valued in our country. We excelled in the latest PISA study on educational quality mostly because of the value we, as a people, put on good education. As such, along with the points given above, industrious would describe us very well.

There are, of course, arguments for scientific as well, given the high tech know-how that we are so proud of. However, I believe the know-how comes mostly from our industrious, hard-working approach to technology and not, as such, from famous scientific discoveries. (well, I don't actually know the basis why some of the civilisations have been characterised as scientific in Civ - perhaps because of famous past scientific discoveries or scientists? We haven't got too many of those...)

 

[Drift]

Agricultural & Industrious looks stronger all the time in my books.

Here's a little preview of the Jaeger. Many of you know him already because he's the Russian infantry unit from PTW extras. Civilopedia icon however, is done by me (since Firaxis hasn't done pediaicons for the unit)

 

[holmstr]

Agri&Indu is sounding very true for traits but has Wolfwood asked/thought that wich civ REALLY are scientific,I would say they who have a good schoolsystem.We have always had it thou it have been under different goverments (russia,swedes).And now later on it has been backed up by a good industrie.
Still Agri&Indu sound like the best pick for finns.

The UU, you might give it a stronger attack or def but then you must take one mov away and not have it like a 2 moving unit.It still should cross any terrain like road.Like 8/10/1 all road ....thats attackis on par off a standard tank (vanilla vers).Sadly Civ don't have like in old Colonization the Ambush concept.It would fit right in there .

 

[holmstr]

Oh,I forgot another UU could be Hakkapelitas.Just for some more ideas to trow in the fire...

 

[Exel]

The one thing I have against the industrial trait is that our industry is a lot smaller than in most of Europe, in relation to the population. And our industrialization started very late (it was the war indemnities that forced us to industrialize). While it's true that the scientific trait describes mostly modern day Finland, the same argument could be used against the industrial trait for all countries that have it: after all, they have been industrial for only a small proportion of their history (excluding America). On the other hand our school system has been advanced in comparison to the rest of the world for centuries, and currently the percentage of highly educated people is one of the highest in the world.

holmstr:
Giving the unit "treat all terrain as roads" ability would make it neglect railroads, so I don't think it's a very good idea. 2 movement with ignore movement cost in forests and marsh is good imo. Although it would be nice to be able to give it movement boost in those terrains (+tundra) while limiting the movement to normal in other terrains.

I agree that Hakkapeliitta would make a nice second flavor unit, but so far no one has made gfx for it. I requested for one a while back, but I dunno if anyone is working on it.

Btw, is it possible to add a new civ without making it replace an old one?

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by Exel
Btw, is it possible to add a new civ without making it replace an old one?

Not in Conquests as it uses all 31 civ slots. I'm replacing Korea again, just like I did with the Austrians mod.

About the scientific... hmmm... I'll have to think about it. You do bring up good points.

 

[Drift]

It is done.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=70855

(I went for the Scientific & Agricultural after all. Blame Exel. )

 

[Wolfwood]

Well, Exel made some good points in defense of the scientific trait.

My argument for industrious did not, however, rely on practical industry itself (factories etc.), but on the general hard working (i.e. industrious) attitude of the Finnish people, which goes a long way to explain our good education system, scientific profess, ability to cultivate this cold land and life off it and many other things that make us what we are... In fact, the trait IS called industRIOUS, not industRIAL... I think there's been some confusion between these two terms here... :/

Still, I'm not going to go to war for this, I can always modify it for my own games...

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by Wolfwood
Still, I'm not going to go to war for this, I can always modify it for my own games...

I do understand your point of view. After all, when I started this thread, I was also leaning towards industrious and my own reasoning was exactly same as yours - industrious mentality. I don't know what turned my head, but as I kept thinking about it, scientific started to sound slightly better. Maybe I should have released multiple .biqs with Agr-Sci, Agr-Ind and Agr-Com as even I can't fully agree on any of them.

 

[holmstr]

Exel:
No, giving a unit the treat all road does not neglect the railroad.If you move on raidlroad your unit doen't use movementpoints.

 

[artemisarrow]

drift so the leader hed foor this civ isnt animated +(

im slow, lol
also is there a king unit?

 

[Exel]

Originally posted by holmstr
No, giving a unit the treat all road does not neglect the railroad.If you move on raidlroad your unit doen't use movementpoints.

Hms, okay, I might be wrong. I based my statement on my tests with air units with treat all terrain as roads flag (tried to find a way to simulate helicopters properly), and for them it makes them ignore railroads. Ground units then obviously behave differently.