SCENARIO: The United States Civil War

[tcwonder3]

OK guys. Corrected our problem with the crashes at Conscription Go into the bic file in the editor and go to Civilization Advances. Where the new Techs are in the box Civilpedia Entry Type "TECH_Nationalism" to direct the process to an icon to use. You need to do that for each new tech. I used Metallurgy for Adv. Rif., Replac. Parts for Reliable Rep. Rif, Military Trad. for Total War, Sanitation for Med. Text, and SteamPower for itself. What it will need after these are all produced, I'm not sure. Set ERA for Steam, Uber Tech and Conscription as NONE. Now you can draft a citizen in each town (or however the settings for that are). This should get us playing past 3100BC to keep playtesting for a while.

 

[tcwonder3]

New day . . .new issue. Can play Union. 1st 3 turns. Encountered Jeff Davis, got map of territory, told them to get out of my territory or declare war. They declared war then the game crashed to desktop.

 

[tcwonder3]

Has everyone quit here? If there is another thread working on this, please let me know.

 

[AAGamer]

tcwonder3

I honestly dont know.. I think trip is working on other things.. Myself I have been house/land hunting.. At this point this scenario is unplayable and needs a lot of work..

You are limited, as you have mentioned, to not searching techs and other mod ending problems.. Over the weekend I'll make an attempt to look into some just keep posting. Try pming trip he is online A LOT and has too many projects going on. I was considering asking him if I could take it over? Maybe share it--- I dont want to offend him however he does a lot for the community. Well let me know put Trip hasnt been online since the first of August.

Mark

 

[wanderer6552]

Thanx for the tip, TC ... will try it after I've whipped them thar Johnny Rebs' arses.

How? ... OK, I cheated just a little ... made sure North & South both had several iron & coal linked to trade network (so RR can be built), gave each of them Steam Power, Advanced Rifling & Reliable Rep. Rifle as free techs, forgot about other techs by setting minimum tech turns to 100 (to hopefully stop AI from discovering Conscription & thus maybe causing game crash) so that both sides could just go at it ... oh, also made it possible to build workers (to help build RR, etc.) to whom I gave moves of 2 while keeping Trip's 2 road movement mod.

Result? ... so far so good - no crashes, lotsa action & my eyes no longer go funny trying to trawl thru all those lines of code looking for discrepancies.

See ya later - I hear the long roll calling.

BTW - haven't been able to raise 'CivFanatics' at all for the last 3/4 days altho no trouble reaching 'Apolyton' ... anyone else have trouble getting thru?

Cheers

 

[Jon Shafer]

I think I have everything fixed. In my absence I've gotten as much work done on it as I could. I was working on the '.SAV scenarios', and I had the Union one nearly done a couple days ago when I loaded it into the CMT to do some stuff. Lucky me, the thing corrupted the file (which I had no backup of), which sickened me so much I haven't worked on it in the past couple days. I'll finish those .SAV ones for each side today for the 1.05 release (which I REALLY hope to get done today).

Don't worry, I'm still alive, just bound and gagged in the back of someone's closet.

 

[tcwonder3]

I have been using the last version and been hard at it guys. I have eliminated ALL crashes. I have successfully moved the Tech tree for the Science advisor so that it shows a connected arrow-flow and added the use of a Corps, Army and Spy unit. I created and put in the unit_32.pcx icons for the HMSfrigate being used from IronFrigate and Bandit (Confederate Raider) and added the Small Wonders of Military Academy (to increase leader appearance like the Heroic Epic) and make the Corps unit possible, the War Department(for Armies), and the Pinkerton Secret Service (Spies - i.e."invisible explorer", very expensive!) and spy placement ability from wonder. I have been looking into graphics replacement for the wonder. Many of these things have required Civilpedia and Civilicon additions to graphics-flow. This appears to be adequate only to get a playable game through historical 1862, though and look forward to Trip's newer version. I have found that you need 2 versions to play Union AND Reb, because the scenario settings in the new editor limit the choosable human player options to 1.
This is more fun than working on the WW2 scenario that I was involved in (I have faded out of it!) I live for Civil War history - being a history teacher and gamer and descendant of veterans from both sides (KY)

 

[tcwonder3]

Oh - yeah CMT has not been working right since Gramphos tried to adjust for 1.29. It won't save compressed files if the Scenario editor has the BIC compression option selected. I haven't been able to work around this or find the problem while trying to adjust the scenario as I've been play-testing. Instead I've had to repeatedly restart from day 1 with adjustments to try things.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by tcwonder3
Oh - yeah CMT has not been working right since Gramphos tried to adjust for 1.29. It won't save compressed files if the Scenario editor has the BIC compression option selected. I haven't been able to work around this or find the problem while trying to adjust the scenario as I've been play-testing. Instead I've had to repeatedly restart from day 1 with adjustments to try things.

I'd love a real ACW scenario. The one in Civ 2 was lame especially in regards to blockade running and Federal amphibious invasions.

But the question remains - what if Grant finally takes Petersburg... and it promptly flips back to the Rebs? Army of Potomac disappears! Maybe the same thing can happen to Sherman in Atlanta.

How do you plan to deal with such craziness?? Is there some tool that can kill crazy Culture Flipping at least in "historical" scenarios?

What about Diplomacy? Are the North and South suddenly going to make peace with the North leaving the South in existence?? This could never be.

 

[nojobnoodlez]

hey again

tcwonder - thx for the fix, im at about 1000bc right now kicking some union butt. have researched most everything except that medical textbooks. just took manhattan and am working on baltimore and new york.

just some problematic AI issues so far, not sure if there is anything that can be done about it either.

apart from their initial strong navy, the union doesn't seem to build any more ships. in fact, they don't seem to build anything other than mass skirmishers (hundreds) and a much smaller amount of infantry (have seen 0 cannons and calvary at this point). will need to make some changes to unit values i think so that the pc will use all of them.

zouave - i have just been destroying all the union cities (except a few near richmond - washington, princeton, hazard). the ones i captured, i reduced to size 1 beforehand, and still throughout the whole game that 1 citizen has been resisting, even with temples and colosseums and 2+ units in the city. but they never revolted or reverted back. the pc also seems to just destroy cities to get workers.

the north has requested peace from me on 2 occasions so far, but they never have any income to spare so i deny them.

the pc seems to place way too high of an importance on worker units. it will send a dozen units deep into my territory to get 1 or 2 workers. most of the time i can finish him off before he gets to them, but if he just attacked a border city or two instead, he could have easily destroyed them. this happened on many occassions. probably 1/2 of all the fighting that has occured has been over my worker units. once im finished, i will try giving worker units a 1 or 2 defense so hopefully they cant be captured and the pc will lose them as objectives.

the pc doesn't seem to effectively utilize pillage (apart from naval bombardments). even when they attacked my land the only tiles they would pillage would be tiles near their borders. instead of say the railroad/irrigation/mined tiles around the cities, they only seemed to target tiles with a road improvement.

the pc would frequently let me pillage hundreds of tiles (even ones right next to cities) before sending in units to stop them. i think i have destroyed 3/4 all their tile improvements with only a dozen or so units (the pc only killed 3-4 of those). id suggest some fortresses be placed near the cities, throughout the map, so that maybe he will place a unit in there if you enter his territory.

the map is a little messed up (why are the east and west connected?) in that you can go from texas to maine.

on the good side, the pc attacked most of the cities up and down the confed/union border, although once i took washington (their captial moved to Boston) their offensive probings all but stopped apart from going after my worker units!

anyways...things are getting a little slow in this current game, but will keep going. still needs some balancing in my opinion, but overall you did a pretty good job trip. at least its something new to experiment with.

 

[WarlordMatt]

Trip gets an A++++++++++++++++ for this great scenario! I haven't downloaded it yet, but I will, soon....

BTW, post more screenshots, and please post one of Michigan (where I live).

 

[tcwonder3]

nojobnoodlez(what a monicker!) can I call you "no"? The AI has been a problem with Civ 3 since release. One thing we had hoped to get was some way to adapt it with the 1.29f patch. But, no can do says Firaxis. That was the primary reason, I think, for Trip setting up the Union as the human (aggression controlled) player. We'll experiment with setting them against each other as much as possible with dislike levels, etc.. Maybe I'll zip up my adaptions and send it to you if you contact me privately for an address. I dont' want to post something in someone else's thread.

 

[Noldodan]

I just read sela1s1son's post and felt so bummed! I LIVE in Lancaster, PA and was on a trip this whole weekend. DOH!

 

[bnmac3]

The best mod I have played, wow its really fun! thanks. How did you get the diplomacy to where they are always at war?

 

[nojobnoodlez]

warlordmatt - here's 10 screencaps (sorry no Michigan yet). each one is around 300k so be patient. note that there are some changes to Trip's map (extended railroad to Manssas since it was a railroad junction, added some forts in the South, etc.) and the DYP mod is installed so it may not look exactly like your version will.

http://www.digitalcollective.com/civ3.asp

tcwonder - i have been making alot of changes as well. and once this first run through is completed, will be making alot more in an effort to get the AI to run a little more efficiently.

some of the changes so far:
Union starts with a fort garrisoned with a cannon and infantry at Charleston (allow the CSA to declare war on first turn and representing Fort Sumter)
CSA has 2 extra infantry and 2 artillery at Charleston

2 forts south of New Orleans (represents Fort Jackson and Fort St. Phillip) on both sides of the river. Each has 1 artillery in it. Removed the artillery in that southernmost city.

1 fort near Dyersburg along the Mississippi

Added 1 ironclad on the Mississippi (the CSA did have ironclads around New Orleans), removed the 1 Confederate Warship that was there.

Added courthouse to Appamattox.

Railroad from Richmond to Manasas.

Skirmishers - Turned off Invisibility, gave them Radar and All Terrain as Roads (mistake)


plan to do:
Going to eliminate population cost on all ships and artillery units to try and get the pc to build them. will try experimenting with shield cost and movement on cavalry, infantry, and skirmishers.

Add more ships to Union fleet. Add some artillery to Union army.

Considering adding some barbarians in the west to represent indigenous tribes which both sides conducted battle with during this time period (albeit in Oklahoma and the Dakotas). Worried the PC will make them an objective though. But may be some much needed gold.

Add worker defense so the pc will not target them

Add some forts (maybe with artillery if i cant get the pc to build them) to the north to curb southern pillaging and to the south along the Missippi and coastline.

Fix the map so that east/west is not connected.

Make Raiders available on both sides, change them to mounted units with 1 higher movement than Calvary. 6.2.5. These will be the Invisible units. Worried the pc will mass produce these instead, thus the low defense.

Maybe add some new units: Zouaves (7.9.2), Sharpshooters (3(9).3.2), Picketline (3(3).5.3) w/ Blitz, Garrison w/ Artillery (1(9).6.0) - Immobile and to be placed in forts and cities)

Add Blitz to Skirmishers. Turn off All Terrian As Roads.

Figure out a way to get more leaders...I haven't had any yet.

Reduce corruption or add some sort of small wonder (ala Forbidden Palace)

Maybe adding cotton as a strategic resource to produce Infantry units.

Will probably make ironclads available from the start.

Speaking of ironclads...check this tidbit from today's news:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=542&ncid=514&e=9&u=/ap/uss_monitor

 

[tcwonder3]

Lot of similarities with what I've adjusted, too. I didn't think about the Ft. Sumter factor, good one. I haven't gone into adding forts yet. Plan to put in Ft. Pickens near Pensacola, Ft. Tortugas is on the isle by S. Florida. I might try rivering the Tennessee to the sand-bars west of Chattanooga, too. Do you have graphics for your new units? Don't agree with the Zouaves, though, there were only enough of them in the war to merit 1 unit on this game. You need to relocate the Fredricksburg and Manassas Junction sites to better display the signifigance of Fredricksburg in the march to Richmond. Eliminating the population cost for material-units is good. I've done that already and it works well. The corps and army units are working out well for me, too. I haven't been able to generate a single leader unit through battle, though. Even with the wonder I created (Military Academy) that is supposed to increase the percentages. Thinking about putting in a creatable leader that somehow requires combat success to simulate historical results. Not there yet.
Gee, Matt you aren't from Kalamazoo by chance?

 

[Carthago]

TC & No

Ever thought of having the skirms defend lower & making them a lil cheaper?

Also if you dont wanna post your files in this thread, is there another place where can I see your modifications b/c they sound like they make the scen a lil more interesting?

 

[Vivojack]

Originally posted by nojobnoodlez
Figure out a way to get more leaders...I haven't had any yet.

nojobnoodlez - I don't think you will get any leaders because Trip has eliminated the leader unit. If you create a unit called leader and check the leader flag (just look in an unmodified scenario file at the leader unit and copy it exactly in the civil war scenario bic) and you should get leaders again. I made this change but have yet to have a chance to test it.

I also have been modifying the scenario and in an effort to reduce coastal bombardment I added an immobile "coastal battery" unit. Worked like a charm, actually too good , I need to go back and downgrade it. I wanted to make it so the Union "owns" the ocean and can blockade without being able to destroy the coastal improvements and bombard coastal cities at will. These units should be very expensive to discourage the AI from building more.

I also added a confederacy government (couldn't resist) which requires the confederacy tech. I gave confederacy tech to the rebs as a starting tech and made it super expensive so the Union would not research it. I also made it a shunned government for the Union, although I don't think that really makes any difference to the AI. Basically it is democracy with a some city supported units to reflect the South's "will to fight."

It would also be nice to figure out a way to make the AI more aggressive. Maybe increase the game level and figure out a different way to prevent horrible money problems? I can't think of any other way to make the AI "better" regardless of what side they play. Thoughts?

I would be very interested in seeing other people modifications to the scenario if we can get Trip's permission to post them.

Originally posted by tcwonder3
Corrected our problem with the crashes at Conscription Go into the bic file in the editor and go to Civilization Advances. Where the new Techs are in the box Civilpedia Entry Type "TECH_Nationalism" to direct the process to an icon to use.

tcwonder3 - BTW, thanks for the civilopedia fix. It worked like a charm, no problem researching anything.

Vivo

 

[Aravorn]

Trip

Where is version 1.05? I tried your link at the beginning of the Forum but still got version 1.04.

Great scenario, hopefully we can get all the bugs worked out.

conmcb25

 

[tcwonder3]

If anyone adds any small wonders like I did, (i.e. Military Academy, Pinkerton Agency, etc.) you are going to get crashes when you finally build it. The good thing is that the new patch tells you where the WonderSplash occurs (number at the end of the error message). As you playtest, keep autosave on. When the crash occurs, go to the Civilicon file and to the Wonder Splash section. The resident ones start at #30, but the errors will be in the numbers below. I have them at 20 to 25. Just copy the one for an appropriate existing one (i.e. Pentagon for War Department)and place it as the error message missing #. Then reload the last Autosave game and hit Shift+Enter to test. This is a playtesting tool and method put in by Firaxis that works well for scenario creation. If you add more than 30 (surprising if you do) you will have to start replacing the ones from #30 on up.
Vivo- I added the leader units back in because in the first run throughs I was getting Elite units with the asterisk indicating had generated a leader. Since adding the unit back, I have not gotten a single generation of a leader. I think I'm missing something. You don't necessarily need to add extra coastal artillary, just make the "Coastal Fortress" improvement unbuildable, strong, and place in the scenario bic. They attack all units adjacet to them on a random scale. Somewhere we can adjust these. Besides, blockade only works in the game if the ships are directly adjacent to the city and cover ALL the sea tiles. There were NO coastal fortresses built by either side during the course of the war due to costs and time, so building one should not be possible anyway.