From Austerlitz to Waterloo

[isenchine]

Civ4 BtS 3.19 From Austerlitz to Waterloo : Mod with 3 Scenarios by isenchine.

Additional Credits:
GeneralMatt: additional/flavour units (Light & Heavy Cavalry, Warlord, Guards, Infantry and Cannons)
Bakuel: Russian worker

Platyping: Platy Builder, Text Reader (CTRL-F12: displays the help text in a scrollable screen. Useful when encountering a huge army!)

Custom dll: only Mod Comp is "Lead from Behind" by UncutDragon + some adjustments (AI can't disband units, Pillage own routes, Range Attack, Immortal Culture, etc.)

Note: if you want to play the Mod on a Mac, just delete the custom dll and eventually the file UncutDragon_GlobalDefines.xml

Multi-Player: yes

Download at CFC Database

Description:
This is a small Mod based on Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his neighbours,
with 3 different playable Scenarios:

1) Europe 1805 (standard scenario with 18 Civs)

2) Napoleon's invasion of Russia or The Patriotic War of 1812 (French Vs. Russians)

3) The Waterloo Campaign (French Vs. British and Prussians)

Score is the total number of your military units left.

1st scenario: Europe 1805: enlarged map of Europe, 6,351 plots; 205 Cities; 1,300 Units.

2nd scenario: Napoleon's invasion of Russia or The Patriotic War of 1812
French (1 city: Warsaw; 670 units) Vs. Russia (15 cities; 420 units)
Map of a part of Russia: 6,132 plots (84 * 73).

3rd scenario: The Waterloo Campaign
The Duchess of Richmond will hold a ball in Brussels in the evening of 15 June 1815. The Duke of Wellington and all high-ranked officers of his army are invited. She just hopes that Napoleon Bonaparte will not cross the border too soon...

The Waterloo Campaign (15 June - 8 July 1815) was fought between the French Army of the North led by Napoleon Bonaparte himself and two of the Seventh Coalition armies, a British-German-Dutch army commanded by the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian army commanded by Prince Blücher.

The war became inevitable when the European Great Powers refused to recognise Napoleon as Emperor of the French on his return from exile on the Island of Elba. Rather than wait for the Coalition to invade France, Napoleon decided to attack his enemies and hope to defeat them in detail before they could launch their combined and coordinated invasion. He chose to launch his first attack against the two Coalition armies cantoned in modern day Belgium, then part of the Netherlands but until the year before part of the First French Empire.

Hostilities started on 15 June when the French attacked the Prussian outposts at the river Sambre, placing their forces at the juncture between the cantonment areas of Wellington's Army (to the west) and Blücher's army to the east. On 16 June the French prevailed with Marshal Ney commanding the left wing of the French army holding Wellington at the Battle of Quatre Bras and Napoleon defeating Blücher at the Battle of Ligny. On 17 June, Napoleon left Grouchy with the right wing of the French army to pursue the Prussians while he took the reserves and command of the left wing of the army to pursue Wellington towards Brussels.

On the night of 17 June, the Anglo-allied army turned and prepared for battle, about 1 mile (1.6 km) south of the village of Waterloo. The next day the Battle of Waterloo proved to be the decisive battle of the campaign...

Welcome to the Battlefield of Europe!

Characteristics of the Waterloo Campaign scenario:
Map: centre of Belgium (and a small portion of France in the area of Maubeuge)
Number of plots: 2,898
Number of units: 2,898 (1,115 French, 738 British-German-Dutch, 1,045 Prussian)
French forces versus the Coalition: 62.5%
3 armies playable (British and Prussians are a Team).
Resources, improvements, roads, rivers, hamlets, villages and towns on map but Cities (or Settlers): none!
Turns foreseen: 205
You can only achieve a Time Victory (as the Conquest Victory requires you to have at least one city).

Versions:
Version 1 uploaded on 8 July 2015 (including Waterloo 1815 scenario)
Version 2 uploaded on 14 July 2015 (including "Lead from Behind" dll mod comp)
Version 3 uploaded on 12 November 2015 (including Russia 1812 scenario)
Version 4 uploaded on 2 December 2015 (including Europe 1805 scenario)
Version 4.1 uploaded on 18 December 2015
Version 4.2 uploaded on 22 December 2015


Installation:
Note that the Mod is still named "Waterloo" as per the initial release and despite the additions.
Unzip in BtS/Mods folder (Charlemagne, etc). Load BtS, then the Mod or double-click directly on one of the three .CivBeyondSwordWBSave files (Europe1805, Russia1812, Waterloo1815) in the PrivateMaps folder.

 

[isenchine]

200 years ago, on 15 July 1815, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to Royal Navy Captain Frederick Lewis Maitland aboard the HMS Bellerophon, effectively ending the Napoleonic Wars.

Version 2 released yesterday, with the addition of "Lead from Behind" Mod Component by UncutDragon and the review of the 2,898 unit names.

 

[Tigranes]

I am very impressed with this scenario. Level of detail and historical accuracy, not to mention tremendous amount of work this scenario required is astonishing!

But I have two things to mention:

(a) human player has too many units to manage, re scaling every detachment by factor of 5 would great add to playability of this scenario.

(b) AI tends to spread his units over the vast map, instead of moving in stacks, which greatly favors human player. Something has to be done about it.

 

[isenchine]

Thank you, Tigranes, I appreciate your words. I did put a lot of work into this!...

(a) number of units: I hope you will understand that I cannot be asked to reduce the number of units. It's my baby! Besides, I played it three times (as Napoleon, Blücher and Wellington) and I managed to defeat every other enemy unit before the end of the time limit (the more difficult being playing with the French of course). This scenario is only one huge battle so the number of units is the only important factor. I really wanted to have this: battles which are not an endless assault on cities but two or three armies meeting on the field, as it happened in the Waterloo campaign.

(b) AI: unfortunately, you are right. You can set up an incredible order of battle with tons of units and the AI will mess it up in just a few turns. The Prussian army stationed in the east, for example, will not rally to the battlefield and just move around in the same area. I'm afraid I can't do a thing about it. But you know one solution to it: replace the AI by human players!

Is the map too big? I wanted to have on separate tiles famous names of battle sites like Mont-St-Jean, La Haye Sainte, La Belle Alliance, Hougoumont, Plancenoit... (plus I wanted to have Quatre-Bras and Ligny battles). I thought of having a smaller map, but this is supposed to take place within four to five days (*) so the map is appropriate and the armies were more or less where they are on the map at the beginning of the hostilities. Edit: except that Blücher's 4th army was rather near Liège on 15 June 1815, which would have implied a 50% increase in map size. Units correspond to the map plots exactly. Reducing one implies reducing the other: a LOT of work.

(*) The calendar per week is just an artifice and it should rather be seen as hours.

 

[Tigranes]

In multiplayer humans can group all the 1000 units in one stack and reduce fun into attacking stack on stack. Python needed to prevent stacks more than 20 units.

 

[Michkov]

I tend to agree with Tigranes on the unit count, you could half the amount and still get the same gameplay feel.

Further I'd raise the view distance for all units by 1 at least. At the scale the mod runs standard 1 tile distances feels like your units are blind.

 

[isenchine]

@ Tigranes: that could happen if humans want to act as robots.

I know a dll code that restricts the number of units on a tile (20, 1 or 100 - can even vary depending on the terrain) but it gives 'infinite loops' when the AI can't move its units. Plus preventing stacks of more than 20 units would imply that I review completely the disposition of troops at the onset!

Could it be a 'House rule' of the game?

@ Michkov: as you know, the view is BtS mechanism. I think it is adequate. 131 units have the sentry promotion. I thought of giving spies to everybody but it doesn't feel right with the 'Complete Kills' option.

 

[Keinpferd]

Hi isenchine,

would your scenario be playable without the customized DLL (for Mac-compatibilty)? Or is that "Lead from behind" a too important part of the game?

Looks very ambitious and nice, so congratulations anyway.

 

[isenchine]

Hello Keinpferd,

Thank you!

As explained in the OP, if you want to play the Mod on a Mac, just delete the custom dll and eventually the file UncutDragon_GlobalDefines.xml.

The "Lead from behind" component changes the selection of a unit in a stack defending against an attacker. The best unit is not automatically the first defender and so it preserves as much as possible the life of your most valuable units. In a Scenario with 182 Great Generals on the battlefield, it has its importance, but it is not imperative to play with it!

 

[isenchine]

2nd scenario: Napoleon's invasion of Russia or The Patriotic War of 1812 (link to Wikipedia article)

Download: see 1st post.

Here, the French (actually an all-european army) have 1 city as a base: Warsaw. The army is made up of 670 units.

Russians have 15 cities and 420 units.

Map of a part of Russia: 6,132 plots (84 * 73).

It is a weekly calendar. Winter starts the first week of October and lasts until the end of March. It bites more cruelly unprepared troops than Russians...

Enjoy (or despair...)!

 

[Tigranes]

Wow, one epic after another ! Where will this lead us?

 

[isenchine]

Where will this lead us? The end happened before the beginning!...

The 3rd and last instalment is due on 2 December 2015. Have a look at the Civilopedia and imagine a crowded map of Europe after the battle of Austerlitz in 1805...

 

[Tigranes]

210th anniversary! I thought Belgians hated Bonaparte . But why do you insist on crowded? Regular Napoleonic scenario with events would be nice. 100+ units each, 100 cities max, large map and Egypt on the map. Strategy games are not very good simulators of tactical battles.

 

[isenchine]

Belgium had mixed feelings about him. Napoleon was a great administrator. Also, revolutions already happened in Brabant and in Liege in the years 1789-1790, echoing the French one.

210th anniversary indeed but as I said, the battle will be over, it's just a convenient starting point to have the Confederation of the Rhine instead of 35 german Civs!

Europe 1805 will be a regular mod (no Python events foreseen). Yes, Egypt will be on the map, but in 1805 it was again a sort of vassal of the Ottomans, after the French and British interruptions.

The map you already know it as I took the one from WWI mod (with modifications - like Sicily being an island, cities replaced etc.). Crowded because I might have exaggerated with the cities (213 against 165)! "Only" 1320 units and less after one turn because the AI is disbanding units! It looks like I can't imagine Napoleonic wars without a huge amount of units...

The difference here is that there will be 18 Civs + barbarians and the map is bigger, so it's not so much. One day, I might move it to a bigger map, without changing the numbers.

 

[Tigranes]

The map you already know it as I took the one from WWI mod (with modifications - like Sicily being an island, cities replaced etc.). Crowded because I might have exaggerated with the cities (213 against 165)! "Only" 1320 units and less after one turn because the AI is disbanding units! It looks like I can't imagine Napoleonic wars without a huge amount of units...

The difference here is that there will be 18 Civs + barbarians and the map is bigger, so it's not so much. One day, I might move it to a bigger map, without changing the numbers.

kiwitt who did Modern Earth with 1100 cities and 6000 units found a neat way to prevent AI from disbanding: almost every unit on the map has lvl 3 promotions. It worked.

 

[isenchine]

Interesting.

But not very realistic in Napoleon times when young people were recruited every year to go to war. I'll first have a look at the dll code to see if I can do something there.

PS: looked at the code and yes, the AI is less likely to disband units if they have a higher level. But I found a better method for scenarios by simply using the GlobalDefine AI_CAN_DISBAND_UNITS. Now to compile a dll...

 

[isenchine]

2 December 2015:

210 years ago, the Battle of Austerlitz saw French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte decisively defeat a joint Russo-Austrian force, on 2 December 1805.

And this, one year after Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French, at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on 2 December 1804.

And this, 47 (48) years before Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte becomes Emperor of the French as Napoleon III, on 2 December 1852 (but that's another story...).

3rd and final scenario of this Napoleon series: Europe 1805, after the battle of Trafalgar (which affirmed the total supremacy of Great Britain on the seas) and after the battle of Austerlitz (which confirmed the strategic power of France on land).

For the sake of the scenario, France is still at war with Austria, Prussia and Russia. And of course with Great Britain (permanent war with them). With a shortcut, the Holy Roman Empire is already dissolved, the ex-Holy Roman Emperor Franz II proclaimed himself Emperor of Austria (as Franz I) and some 35 German free cities or states have been merged by Napoleon into the Confederation of the Rhine, client state of the French Empire (as is the Batavian Republic).

Other Civs: GB, Prussia, Russia, Austria, Papal States, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Norway (in personal union with Denmark), Sweden, Naples/Sicily.

Plus the Ottomans and two vassal states: Egypt and the combined provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia.

Plus ... USA fighting the Barbary Wars!

Enlarged map of Europe: 6,351 plots (87 * 73)
205 Cities
1,300 Units

DOWNLOAD: see first post

Enjoy or Despair!

 

[skyfire]

Started playing the 1805 map; Nice, great work. Maybe artillery is a bit too strong. And so far the ai isn't using ranged attack.

 

[isenchine]

Thanks!

I've been reading so many reports of generals dying or being severely wounded by cannon fire...

This being said, I already reduced "iAirCombat" from 10 to 6. Maybe going further down to 5 (half of iCombat). Or rather getting some damage for cannons each time. For that, I intend to explore the dll - with a specific thread by vincentz in the SDK section in mind.

This would also cover the AI use (note that currently the AI is using range attack, but only under certain conditions).

 

[Tigranes]

Impressive trilogy! The 1805 scenario has manageable amount of units and allows for many strategic possibilities as French. Even to return to Egypt!

I cannot help but offer few remarks, however.

On Epic speed one needs 300 culture to get first border expansion , not 100. Map looks like patches of culture around cities at the beginning. Why not give every city 300 .

I have a feeling that London is too close to continent , and being a port is vulnerable to amphibious assault. Why not move London 1 tile West, and replace London tile with a Fort, so English ships can go in and out for safe healing.

What's up with Salons and Universities? Why the latter need so many Libraries? To slow down tech rate?

Rhine confederation has very long name in selection stage and the resulting screen covers everything else. Perhaps one could shorten their name...