Napoleonic Europe

[Ambreville]

If you use two calendars this should effect the movement of all units, for example playing as Spain, it took me almost one year to sail from Barcelona to Turkey, as was 11 moves = 11 months. If you play week calendar then you will navigate only 11 weeks = 2,5 months, a more logical period for those times. Same as to the La Macha Canal, you should be able to go back and forth 4 times in a month, and not 1 month to go and month back.

The speed of units in CIV has always been artificial and not at all realistic, especially when it comes to ships. Once they are underway, sailships really only need a few days to sail from Spain to Turkey in the real world. Allowing 2.5 months is laughable!

This is a problem that surfaces in many scenarii. Take for example Age of Discover, where it takes years to cross the Atlantic. The issue here is playability. If the real ship speeds were employed in the CIV game relative to a calendar, in most cases these ships could effectively move anywhere on the map each turn. The real issue is whether ships encounter contrary winds at departure, which determines whether they leave at all. Once they leave, they can always tack to catch the right winds.

Gamewise, this is a problem. For land units, the problem isn't the same as land units have to deal with terrain and enemy areas of control (etc).

"La Macha Canal" -- do you mean the Channel? (La Manche).

 

[timlan2057]

Paasky, thanks so much for this Mod.

I was disappointed Civ 4 did not carry forward a Napoleonic Wars scenario since I loved the Civ 3 version. It captured so well the flavor of the era with the music, colorful uniforms and well-trained elite units.

You seem to have captured that as well.

I've been playing a couple games as France; thus far I've tried to stabilize my borders and make a run at Austria while taking out as many British ships as I can with well-trained Frigates.

Only bugs I see: when I do diplomacy and say farewell; the corresponding nation comes up again immediately and I see some Austrian cavalry dressed like circa 1876 US Cavalry.

Thanks again for making my Civ 4 experience much more enjoyable.

 

[Ambreville]

Only bugs I see: when I do diplomacy and say farewell; the corresponding nation comes up again immediately (...)

I used to have that problem until I discovered I was double-clicking the name of the CIV. This caused the CIV's screen to appear a second time right after I finished dealing with them. Only click once when initiating diplomacy. It should fix that problem.

 

[LaCiencia]

The speed of units in CIV has always been artificial and not at all realistic, especially when it comes to ships. Once they are underway, sailships really only need a few days to sail from Spain to Turkey in the real world. Allowing 2.5 months is laughable!

This is a problem that surfaces in many scenarii. Take for example Age of Discover, where it takes years to cross the Atlantic. The issue here is playability. If the real ship speeds were employed in the CIV game relative to a calendar, in most cases these ships could effectively move anywhere on the map each turn. The real issue is whether ships encounter contrary winds at departure, which determines whether they leave at all. Once they leave, they can always tack to catch the right winds.

Gamewise, this is a problem. For land units, the problem isn't the same as land units have to deal with terrain and enemy areas of control (etc).

"La Macha Canal" -- do you mean the Channel? (La Manche).

Yep I meant the Channel (La Manche) in spanish El Canal de La Mancha.

I agree that this is something coming up with the game playability. Anyhow, you have to agree with me that is not the same applying weeks than months, from there my comment. It's true that unit movement is not reallistic, however, my point is that should be proportional, nothing else.

The change of the movement rate I think is controllable via variables in XML files, therefore not necessary special programming skills. I will try to mess up myself and make a test.

Everything goes about the calculation between the distance of one tile proportional to the map size, and from there the rest of the calculations. The map is proportional, isn't?

I have concluded that the scenario is well balanced (maybe except for the Ottomans ) and yes the Diplomacy is a nonsense as you have mentioned, but is beyond softcore modding. This scenario is to fight, and more probably to fight against the rest of AI civs.

I have a suggestion to Paasky and it is, again, to increase food consumption in order to decrease the growing population rate. As it is a complete war scenario war weariness shouldn't be so high. The point is that no matter what, you will have to garrison, plenty of units in your cities to avoid angry faces. Close to the end, there are so many units in game that game starts to stall for the RAM consumption and the use of the virtual memory; and in a matter of fact none of these units have another function but to avoid war weariness, probably will never fight.

 

[Paasky]

No, unitspeed can't be changed depending on the gamespeed through xml.

Timlan: That's the default cavalry, which are Dragoons in this scenario.

LaCiencia: Yes, I've added the food consumption to 1, and I'll reduce war weariness to almost none. Also, GBR & FRA won't be in a locked war, but will hate each other (-100 both ways)

 

[Head Serf]

Just thought I'd tell you that I downloaded this scenario and played it over Christmas and it's a lot of fun! Keep working on it, and putting food consumption at 1 will keep the city populations from increasing too dramatically.

 

[Ambreville]

Yes, I've added the food consumption to 1, and I'll reduce war weariness to almost none. Also, GBR & FRA won't be in a locked war, but will hate each other (-100 both ways)

Huzza! This sounds like a great move.

Note to players with virtual memory-challenged computers -- kill off all TSR programs before running the scenario (anything like anti-virus and so forth). This does help. I loved running the game with units showing as lines/squares of troops. Very, very cool. But that does require gobs of memory. Set units to be displayed as single figures in the graphics options. You can squeeze out a bit more memory that way. Eventually, there are so many units in play toward the later years, game speed will drop to a slow, painful crawl.

Maybe this is anathema, but would it make sense to include an option to limit the total number of troops one nation can create both for historical/economic reasons, but also as a means to limit the game's virtual memory requirements? Just a thought. I've played up to Aug 1803 with the French and play does slow down a lot. How worse do things get several years down the road?

 

[timlan2057]

I used to have that problem until I discovered I was double-clicking the name of the CIV. This caused the CIV's screen to appear a second time right after I finished dealing with them. Only click once when initiating diplomacy. It should fix that problem.

Amb, you were right.

I was indeed double-clicking.

 

[Paasky]

What about these limits:
Militia & Recruit: 50
Line Inf: 75
Grenadier & Light: 15
Guard Inf: 10
Militia Cav & Dragoon: 30
Lancer: 50
Hussar: 40
Guard Cav: 10
6LB: 25
9LB: 30
12LB: 15
Corvette: 30
Frigate: 20
Battleship: 10
Worker: 25
Workboat: 15

Anything I've missed?
The only problem could be that you could have 2x more troops if you don't upgrade them (Line Inf I>II for example), what do you think?

I'll create a new Performance Pack with 3 optional installs: Normal Formation Sizes, White Flag fix & Double unitcost. That way the amount of units would go down as it takes 2x longer to build them, correct? Maybe I'll add the unitlimiter as a separate install into the PP as well.


EDIT: I'll just add it as a separate patch into the new Performance Pack. I'll upload the new version soon

 

[Ambreville]

What about these limits: (...)

The only problem could be that you could have 2x more troops if you don't upgrade them (Line Inf I>II for example), what do you think?

I'll create a new Performance Pack with 3 optional installs: Normal Formation Sizes, White Flag fix & Double unitcost. That way the amount of units would go down as it takes 2x longer to build them, correct? Maybe I'll add the unitlimiter as a separate install into the PP as well.

EDIT: I'll just add it as a separate patch into the new Performance Pack. I'll upload the new version soon

Wow, you sure took the suggestion seriously! Did you encounter the same issues I was mentioning in your own playest?

You might want to consider two standards -- one for major CIVs (France, Russia, England, Austria), and another for the others -- not sure where to place the Ottomans. They might need the numbers just to make up for the mediocre troops. I would have preferred a troop level directly related to the original native cities (or native population) plus a much smaller percentage of possible troop builds from non-native cities/population, but that may be too complicated to design as a CIV scenario. Fortunately, CIV4 does indicate the % of population that is native or foreign in each tile. This may be of help -- not sure about this -- you're the engineer, Paaski!

Longer build times would help. It may also simply delay the problem but not necessarily prevent it outright, especially with the week-based scenario. Eventually, with this many playable turns, I think eventually you still will end up with enormous armies, even with the longer build times. Especially as a player, if your strategy is relatively cautious, you tend not to lose that many troops in combat -- ergo, you eventually end up with lots of veterans.

Thanks, dude!

 

[LaCiencia]

No, unitspeed can't be changed depending on the gamespeed through xml.

LaCiencia: Yes, I've added the food consumption to 1, and I'll reduce war weariness to almost none. Also, GBR & FRA won't be in a locked war, but will hate each other (-100 both ways)

Unit speed: I agree, no way to do it proportional. I withdraw my comment.

Food consumption: Sounds marvelous!!!

GBR & FRA: I will try that one, let see how change the history

Unit limits: I agree with Ambreville, figures should result from the city size population, in any case actual limits are fine.

 

[Paasky]

Well poopers... I can't get the flags to work. I've tried everything possible:
with mipmaps, with alpha channel, with mipmaps & alphas, with nothing. And all of those with both white & black alpha channels, and still they simply won't work

If someone who knows how these work (AlazkanAssasin for example ), download the attached .zip & convert them to the two types of flags I need: ones which work on old gfx cards & ones which work on new cards. Please? So I can post the next patch...


Anyway, all of the performance stuff can be installed separately, or all together, or in whatever way you please, which will make testing easier.
Unfortunately I can't make the unitlimits civ-specific (they're done through the unitclasses) nor population specific. Although, I could make the units cost 5gpt each, and give free units depending on the amount of population though But, alas, that would make strong nations even stronger and weak nations even weaker, while the hard limits would give fairly equal sized armies to all.

 

[LaCiencia]

Well poopers... I can't get the flags to work. I've tried everything possible:
with mipmaps, with alpha channel, with mipmaps & alphas, with nothing. And all of those with both white & black alpha channels, and still they simply won't work

If someone who knows how these work (AlazkanAssasin for example ), download the attached .zip & convert them to the two types of flags I need: ones which work on old gfx cards & ones which work on new cards. Please? So I can post the next patch...


Anyway, all of the performance stuff can be installed separately, or all together, or in whatever way you please, which will make testing easier.
Unfortunately I can't make the unitlimits civ-specific (they're done through the unitclasses) nor population specific. Although, I could make the units cost 5gpt each, and give free units depending on the amount of population though But, alas, that would make strong nations even stronger and weak nations even weaker, while the hard limits would give fairly equal sized armies to all.

Check your mail. All flags seems to be blank.

 

[Ambreville]

(...) Anyway, all of the performance stuff can be installed separately, or all together, or in whatever way you please, which will make testing easier.
Unfortunately I can't make the unitlimits civ-specific (they're done through the unitclasses) nor population specific. Although, I could make the units cost 5gpt each, and give free units depending on the amount of population though But, alas, that would make strong nations even stronger and weak nations even weaker, while the hard limits would give fairly equal sized armies to all.

Darn. Thanks for checking into that possibility. I think we should at least stick with a flat, per-unit type limitation. Better than no limit at all! Of course, the smaller CIVs won't be able to reach that limit, but it would definitely put a cap on the game's juggernauts (Russia and France in particular).

Is there no possibility of allowing diplomacy with previously defeated CIV's? My (apparently absurd) question has to do with with making it possible revive CIVs by simply trading away some cities to them. I tried doing diplomacy with defeated CIVs but the game obviously does not allow the player to "talk" to these dead CIVs (ooooh, we're talking to the dead -- maybe we should keep this for a Halloween Scenario).

 

[Paasky]

As soon as the civ is revived you can talk to them. Try the default American Civil War scenario

Also, giving cities to a civ is completely possible, I think I could muster the python for that mi'self. From the wreck that is my WWII senario

 

[Ambreville]

As soon as the civ is revived you can talk to them. Try the default American Civil War scenario

Also, giving cities to a civ is completely possible, I think I could muster the python for that mi'self. From the wreck that is my WWII senario

So someone already has a system to revive states? Cool! Now I have to go hunt for that scenario and try.

Dang, Paaski, you just wasted a whole bunch of my time, now that I have to try out this new scenario! Look at what you're making me do. It's all your fault!

If you manage to include the state reviving option in your Napoleonic Scenario, will you be able to include some of those CIVs not available at the start of the game (Poland, Ireland, Ukraine, Baltic States, etc.) ???

 

[Paasky]

Well, there's a 18civ limit, but I know of a .dll that raises that into 21. I just have to make those 3 extra civs, but give them no cities/units. Then just have a event pop up (no idea how to do this) and ask if you want to create a new state. If you click yes, that civ is given the cities (I know how to do this), units (this too) & neccessary culture+buildings (maybe know how to do this). After that, the civ exists, no trickery neccessary.

But as we're limited to 3 additional civs, how about Poland, Ukraine & Romania (which would include more than modern Romania). Also, the game calculates everything about those civs even if they don't exist.

Btw:

Try the default American Civil War scenario

 

[Krabban]

I'm having problems getting this Mod to work. The map starts at 4000 bc and NOT in the 1800... What am I doing wrong?

 

[Ambreville]

Well, there's a 18civ limit, but I know of a .dll that raises that into 21. I just have to make those 3 extra civs, but give them no cities/units. Then just have a event pop up (no idea how to do this) and ask if you want to create a new state. If you click yes, that civ is given the cities (I know how to do this), units (this too) & neccessary culture+buildings (maybe know how to do this). After that, the civ exists, no trickery neccessary.

Why would you need a pop up event? I was thinking you could just create/revive the new state at any time during the game. Say for example, I conquer cities from Prussia, at tat point I could decide to revive "Poland". That's my decision as a player -- i.e. no pop up event.

But as we're limited to 3 additional civs, how about Poland, Ukraine & Romania (which would include more than modern Romania). Also, the game calculates everything about those civs even if they don't exist.

No Ireland??

Poland, Ireland, and Romania? (so the new states are not all in the East)

Which Civil War game was that -- the one labelled Civil War for Dummies?

 

[Ambreville]

The other thing I forgot -- if I create these new states, I want them to be locked in a permanent alliance with me!