Request for help with scenario; mid-late 20thC

[Smoking mirror]

And heres what My conversion lookslike. You may notice that there is only ocean and Coast. I'm thinking of having sea lanes, made from sea (as oposed to coast or ocean) that will allow trade (the only tech available at the begining will alow trade over sea but not ocean).
If submarines are restricted to coast and sea, then the A>I will only move them in the sea lanes, thus blocking trade with enemy civs.
So for example if there are two sea lanes from America to britain, one up north Via greenland iceland and one in the mid atlantic and the German (or russian or whatever) places his submarine somewhere on both thse sea lanes Britian will be unable to recieve Trade. This needs to be tested however, I would like it best if Subs did not have to be resricted to sea lanes, I wonder if the A.I is inteligent enough to block the sea lanes otherwise.

As you can see I'm thinking of making the map huge rather than large; This gives plenty of land but I'm not sure whether the trade off on playability will be worth it.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Heres the new file;

 

[Procifica]

Map looks excellent, Smoking Mirror. Iceland though for some reason seems like its too far north, relative to Greenland.

I hope the terrain on there isn't the final terrain.

 

[Smoking mirror]

No the terrain on the map is only tundra, plains and grassland. The utility I used doesn't like my graphics program much, I can make plains and grassland work but iff I try anything else the whole map gets covered in jungle.

Ive just used the plains and tundra to help me locate the hills, deserts and mountains.
The map is generated from a Satelite image so it should be spot on. One unfortunate thing about the utility is that it does a kind of reshuffle of the squares slightly, so that although overall the map is acurate, it will need some touching up around the coast and islands.

 

[Yoda Power]

which one od the maps shall i do?

 

[Yoda Power]

I just presumed i should make the big one.

What do you feel should be the plain/tundra border? I made Scandinavia just as a test, so we could agree what kind a layout you want for the terrain, i also made a hill in the Telemark, to represent that there is cities there, how do you feel abou that?

 

[Smoking mirror]

That looks great, I got a bit bored earlier on and started to modify the map my self but progress has been very slow, its probably best if you carry on the map. I can post what I've done if you would find it at all usefull, however I've only placed tundra mountains hills and plains, not forests or rivers etc... and there is still a lot of work to be done;

 

[Smoking mirror]

I want the map to be low value in many places, just as it is in real life, so the middle east for instance will be mostly hills. And most of scandinavia and siberia should be low yield when it comes to food.

I'm thinking that hills, plains and grassland will yield little to no shields if not mined, and mines will be representitive of industry rather than mining. Of course the A.I is bound to try to maximise food at the expense of Production, but thats waht it always does, it will be balanced by the bonus it gets to trade and science through the use of this tactic.

I'm want to use a Satelite generated topograpic map for deciding the terrain of the map. Heres the one I'm using, Find the interactive topographic and visual satlite map here

And hers a preview of the type of image you can get. Ive been thinking that;
Green= flat land, plains grassland and desert.
yellow=hills and plains.
red=mountains and hills.

As you can see africa and the middle east are very hilly/mountainous. Turkey is basicly a lump of hills. You can zoom in quite close, and what you see is very different from what often apears on Civilization maps. Greenland is almost all mountainous, rather than a flat area of tundra.

 

[Smoking mirror]

The satelite viewer is quite good for getting an idea of Terrain and vegetation coverage, as you cna get quite close in. Here is spain at near to the highest magnification;

 

[black_rose]

It's looking good so far. Two things though:

I hope you realize that from large to huge means an land area increase of 65%. Since it adds 180 x 40 and 140 x 40 rather than only 40 x 40. You probably knew this but I'm just making sure.

Have you already thought of what terrain grafics you are going to use? I'm asking since you anounced some swamp grafics (very usefull for a lot of people and my scenario). Maybe the PTW european terrain? I know you cover a lot more than just Europe but it's a nice terrain set overall (Esp. for some dark times).

Anyway good luck!

 

[Yoda Power]

ok i will use the satelite to deside terrain. Shall i place Swamp/Jungle? Oh and please post the things you have done, that might give me more ideas. In places where you want hills, Turkey is an ex. I will place partly hills, partly plains, because that is the "real" terrain. Same thing for Arabia, just replace plains with desert. Dont you thnik thats a good idea?

 

[Smoking mirror]

Yep, I was thinking about that this morning. Its a shame that the combat bonus for hills cant be restricted to when a unit is attacking from a lower level. When two units are attacking each other on a plateu they should fight equaly as the land is flat, even if it is high up.

I'm going to reduce the combat bonus for being on a hill somewhat anyway, as in modern warfare, being high up is not as much of an advantage as in ancient or medieval combat (where attacking or defending down hill is much easier than attacking up hill) and in some cases (especialy in tanks) being up high is actualy a disadvantage (in ranged combat its best to stick to valleys and trenches.

So if for normal terrain the combat bonus is 10%, then perhaps hills could give 15-20% bonus, though mountains will definately give a good advantage.
This will over all urge people to pusue an attacking strategy (as is realistic for this period).

I guess for terrain concerns those areas that on the satelite map are high but flat should be treated as platau and should be plains.

 

[Bobisback]

This looks awsome. may I ask when it will be done?

 

[Steph]

Originally posted by Smoking mirror

I'm going to reduce the combat bonus for being on a hill somewhat anyway, as in modern warfare, being high up is not as much of an advantage as in ancient or medieval combat (where attacking or defending down hill is much easier than attacking up hill) and in some cases (especialy in tanks) being up high is actualy a disadvantage (in ranged combat its best to stick to valleys and trenches.

I personnally would not change it. Ask the Russians what they think of fighting in Afghan mountains.
Given the scale, it's not a matter of peeks or valleyrs, but of mountainous / flat terrain.

 

[Procifica]

I'd go anywhere from 25 to 33% for Hills, they should still confer a good defense. Mountains at 100% I personally think is too high as well. (I've went with 33% and 50% in ACW)

 

[Smoking mirror]

Its one of those problem areas with Civ III, for tanks hills are not a good place to be (Unless you manage to use the crest of the hill to get "Hull down" from the enemy (where only the turret is visble) while for large infantry divisions it is a little better, because it allows them to fire down on to aproaching enemies (so the enemy troops and vehicles can not hide behind anything).

The type of formation that favours hills and mountains best however is partisan units, who can use the terrian for both a bonus in attack (where victory rests on being able to attack and quickly retreat, leaving the more lumbering enemy stuck trying to pursue over difficult terrain) and deffence (where they can avoid detection and thus negate the enemies nuberical superiority).

You just can't replicate this using the CIVIII engine, so the best thing I can think of is to remove it as a tactical gambit, or at least reduce its effectiveness, so the player and A.I. have to use other tactics. I want hills and mountains to provide some detection (even just from the point of view that attackers can not use their speed to its full efectiveness when negotiating difficlt terrain, and when attacking in WWII era combat, speed is your best protection).

 

[Smoking mirror]

Heres a preview of the pioneer infantry unit I'm preparing for this scenario, I had some trouble with the model but I think I'm happy with it now. These are just the basic colours, they can be changed to any other choice of colours (see the next post);

 

[Smoking mirror]

And here are some colour combinations.
I'm thinking of using the model for three different units using colour replacements.
First will be a Pioneer unit available to most civs as a moderately advanced WWII era unit. Pioneers are a combination of engineers and commandos, required to carry out tasks such as river crossings or bunker assaults under heavy enemy fire. This unit will upgrade to the combat engineer (flame thrower).

The second will be Paramilitary police. These are used by less technologicaly advanced nations such as spain and russia. They are not as powerfull as pioneers but are much cheaper. This unit will be idenifiable by its colourfull uniform (red and Blue for the russian NKVD and Nationalist blue for the Spanish Assaultos).

The third unit will be trained partisan unit, This will be an alternative to the rifle Partisan I'm including, not nececarily an upgrade, as each is suited to a particular role, the submachinegun armed partisan will be better at attacking while the longer range and improved acuracy of the rifle make it better for defence. It will have a dark uniform and a coloured Cap or beret. Once SMG equiped Partisans become available they will probably become more numerous than partisan-riflemen because the high attack value, good mobility and relativly low cost work well with the partisans hit and run attack style. However rifle armed partisans will still have a valuable use as pillagers and saboteurs and thier higher deffensive score will make them exelent rear-guards and scouts for collumns of troops moving in hostile territory.

 

[Bobisback]

They look so cool, can't wait can't wait can't wait am I getting the point across.

 

[Smoking mirror]

I think I can find a special Paramilitary police for the germans, so they won't have a unit that looks out of place.

the units will be available to the following civs;

Pioneer
American
German
Austrian
Republican spanish
Finland

Paramilitary
Nationalist spanish
Hungarian
Romanian
Czechoslovakia
Italian
Russian

SMG Partisan
Spain
Russia
Yugoslavia
Poland
Italy
Finland
Norway
France

As you can see, some nations will not be able to build any of these units. For some of them the Commando is an effective offensive infantry alternative though expensive.

Commando
Britian
France
America

All the nations will be able to build Rifle Partisan (once they have the required tech), and this will have to be enough for them, Those nations that lack effective Assault infantry will find the first era of the scenario (1936-1946 WWII era) quite testing, as they will be linited to a defensive strategy and neutral diplomatic relations.

However if these nations (sweden, belgium, turkey and the middle eastern countries) survive the first era they will have more chance to flex their miltiary musclesin the aftermath, perhaps restoring order to post war europe.