July 1914 : On the Eve of the Great War

[Marla_Singer]

Hello Everyone ! Happy New Year again !

I've just finished to edit the tech tree !!
It's the first time I'm editing such a thing so it took me a lot of time actually... Well anyway, before uploading the new version with the new tech tree, I have also to add other changes. Obviously, many things has still to be changed !

Here's a screenshot of the Industrial Age Tech Tree :
It's the same with less technoligies since I've put some of them in the Great War tech tree.

 

[Marla_Singer]

And now here's a screenshot of the Great War Tech Tree :
I'm sorry if it's hard to read the names of technologies... actually, I didn't succeed to upload a good image of less than a 100k

 

[Marla_Singer]

Originally posted by sims2789
BTW, if you go into the "Terrain" section of the editor, and find Coasts, you can set Coasts to allow cities, thereby putting Venice on water. It would, however, be impossible to build more cities on the water, unless you allowed a boat to build cities.

Hey Sims ! That's a great idea !!

Message Edited : Sorry Sims, I've just quickly tried and it seemed land units couldn't reach it... which means not only that Venice couldn't defend itself... but even worse, it couldn't be taken by anyone... Do you know if there's a way to see land units still going in it ?

 

[The Last Conformist]

In SMAC marines could attack maritime bases directly offshore from land. You might want to try and see if Marines can attack it.

 

[Gogf]

Well, it still can't defend itself. Too bad though, it was a great idea.

 

[Chieftess]

Marla, you can use the file upload. Just read the links in my sig.

 

[Gogf]

Marla, if you would PM me the version wth custome techs, I can put in the American support, etc. to see if it will work/disbalance the game. I can also put in the tech "American Friendship" on the tech tree, rather than just having England and France have it, and it be invisible. I'm pretty much done with the buildings, so I'll be able to put them in. Just PM me the biq, and anything else you need for the tech tree. Thanks.

 

[TheLastKnight]

A few things I don't like:
a.) Too high density of cities. Don't you think that this is a bit overkill? Realism or not, it should still be a civ game with reasonable city placement.

b.) Why make infantry Unit that display several soldiers? This is completely a-typical for Civ and therefore grahpically very disturbing ( I for one have replaced your infantry with the standard one - which is in my opinion a great unit anyway)

c.) You should really work on the leader heads... I'd recommend replacing them through flags or something alike. It's really stupid to have a female face in place of Francis Joseph. And even with Wilhelm II, I'd prefer a flag instead of Bismarck's face...simply because of correctness I would say.

d.) Civilopedia contains french entries. Can't be difficult to fix can it?

e.) I would rethink Infantry values. Remember that WWI was a very very defensive war and no one dared to attack without conducting massive artillery strikes beforehand.

Other than that I congratulate you on a very comprehensive scenario with a great map as its base.
GW!

 

[Gogf]

Yes, World War One was a very defensive war. Of course, all of the soldiers were entrenched in trenches. A barricaded trench on a grassland offers a 110% defensive bonus, so a 9 defense infantry becomes an 18.9 defense infantry. Quite hard to take out by attacking with infantry, before bombarbment beforehand. Now, the AI doesn't build fortifications on the scale that would be historically accurate, so it doesn't really work out. Also, even if it did, the AI is not smart enough to use artillery bombardment effective, so it would make the scenario too easy for any human. The infantry is a multi-figure unit because it makes you feel more like a butcher when you send five (I think) men to their death at a time then one man, and WWI was a war of attrition. This way, there is a small bit of moral backfire for launching an un artillery/plane supported offensive. The civilopedia will be fairly easy to fix: we just don't include one in the next version. I don't believe we added any entries, did we? This way it will revert to your original (English or French) civilopedia.

 

[TheLastKnight]

Good point on AI, agreed. As for civilopedia, I think it's more of a mix: there are some english entries and some french ones in the techt tree, strange.

Leaves me 2 questions:
What about leader heads/flags? Any progress on that? I think we could easily collect some and implement them.

I just noticed that Italy is at war with Germany and Austria at the start of the scenario. This is historically inaccurate since Italy actually flipped sides from the three Central Powers to the Entente in 1916.
The solution would be to make a locked alliance only between Russia-France-England and Germany-Austria-Turkey, while allying Italy to the middle powers losely.
The question is how the infamous Italian backstab can be simulated correctly.

 

[Gogf]

No, because if Italy goes to the side of the Central powers, it will never leave, and if it declares pecae, and get's out of an MPP (which is unlikely), then the still won't declare war on the central powers.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Having Italy free to go with either side is kind of traditional in WWI simulations. It's really the best solution, at least when one doesn't have any events scripting abilities.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Having Italy free to go with either side is kind of traditional in WWI simulations. It's really the best solution, at least when one doesn't have any events scripting abilities.

Italy had no interests at all of doing the war in the side of the Triple Alliance. They didn't have any serious claimed territories in France. On the other side, Italy was claiming Trentino and Trieste from Austria for long years. Those regions were actually peopled by italians. Italian independantists coming from there were actually feared by the Habsburg family because they were using Terror to rally that part of Italy to the rest of the country.

When the war occured in 1914. Italy didn't actively participated to it. It stayed as neutral as it could and finally decided to join the side of the Entente in May 1915 (8 months after the beginning of the conflict). Afterwards, one of the main WW1 battlefront occured on the North East of Italy between Ausria and Italy. That's the famous battlefront on which Ernest Hemingway has been badly wounded. After the war and thanks to the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy got what they claimed before : the italian provinces of former Austria-Hungary (all except the Dalmatian Coasts).

All these reasons really make me think considering Italy as neutral isn't the best solution actually. The country had all its interests with the Entente and the former reasons why it joined the Alliance in the 1880's were totally outdated at that time.

 

[FiskePinna]

What is wrong?

 

[Gogf]

Wow, I didn't know we had a legionary... Did you add any units? I'm not really sure, but I'll try to find the error.

 

[FiskePinna]

Originally posted by Gogf
Wow, I didn't know we had a legionary... Did you add any units? I'm not really sure, but I'll try to find the error.

Of course there are many other units in the unit-folder than the ww1 units. But I can't understand why the progam is asking for that file, there are no legionaries in the scenario.

 

[Gogf]

That's what I meant.

 

[TheLastKnight]

Originally posted by Marla_Singer
Italy had no interests at all of doing the war in the side of the Triple Alliance. They didn't have any serious claimed territories in France. On the other side, Italy was claiming Trentino and Trieste from Austria for long years. Those regions were actually peopled by italians. Italian independantists coming from there were actually feared by the Habsburg family because they were using Terror to rally that part of Italy to the rest of the country.

That's not entirely correct. Bozen (Bolzano) had a 97 % German speaking majority until 1910. Italy had no right to claim it and the fact that this region was granted to them against Roosevelt's 14-point solution is one of the many sad and unfair decisions in history.

Onto the gameplay issue: It's really said that Firaxis has failed to include scripting abilities in the editor . Isn't there any possibility to go around this leftout?

 

[Marla_Singer]

FiskePinna : That's a weird bug : Actually, I see no reason to see such a thing occuring. Have you modified Civilization folder stuff ? Well, I don't see what I can do for you, you can still download the latest version and see if it still doesn't work. Also, maybe you could erase the "legionary" lines in the PediaIcons.txt file. I don't know that's just guess.

TheLastKnight : Well yeah you're right. I've a bit simplified the story to make it shorter. The most important to me was that there was italian regions occupied by the Austrians and no italian regions occupied by the french.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Ok, I've just uploaded an upgraded version on the webpage.

Latest Changes :

• There are now two Edited Tech Trees that should make the scenario evolution clearer and more accurate.
• Now the scenario uses two-week turns instead of one-month turns. The scenario starts on the 30th week of 1914 (the week of the August 1st... when Germany invaded Luxembourg and entered in Belgium).
• Three German cities have disappeared : Koblenz, Liegnitz and Erfurt. I made that so that other cities around could developp better.
• Gas shells needed aluminium to be produced when aluminium isn't available during the scenario ! That has been fixed. Gas shells need nothing anymore to be produced
• Now the machine gunners cost as much as the artillery.
• There's now dreadknoughts and pre-dreadknoughts boat. And even a dreadknought technology !

Hope these changes go in the right direction. Please feel free to tell me what you think about it. I would really be pleased to know you advice since I'm not sure if all these changes are good enough.