[SCENARIO] World War I

[Tigranes]

Yes, there are scripted events in this edition. BUt no random events for some reason, and no religions.

 

[Tigranes]

Oh no! I just realized -- British start with 2 Dreadnoughts?

I think I know what you did -- you have used universal scaling factor

For each class we need to come up with its own factor. Here is logic:

If any civ had at least 1 dreadnought it has to be represented. Russia had 2, British 24, so if you give Russia 1, Britain has to get 12 ships. So British were 12 times stronger in real life, and are in game. And so forth...

 

[isenchine]

Yes, 2 against 24 means 0. 0 is the minimum, not 2.

Portugal had 3 Destroyers, Great-Britain 225, so according to you Portugal should have 1 and Great-Britain 75? No way!

And please, don't me.

I made up my mind, I'm not interested in playing PBEM, MP is unhealthy for my blood pressure.

 

[Tigranes]

Yes, 2 against 24 means 0. 0 is the minimum, not 2.

Portugal had 3 Destroyers, Great-Britain 225, so according to you Portugal should have 1 and Great-Britain 75? No way!

And please, don't me.

I made up my mind, I'm not interested in playing PBEM, MP is unhealthy for my blood pressure.

According to me

Factor of 8 can be applied for DDs numbers, which leaves 35 DD for British, or 30 for the map.

All I advocate is optimal balance between reality and gameplay. If Portugal had any DD -- it gets minimum, which is 1, no matter what fraction you get after applying the scaling factor. Zero is not a minimum, it would indicate, for example, that Portugal had no Dreadnoughts whatsoever.

I never meant any disrespect with my silly Grand Fleet cannot start with 2 Dreadnoughts! The reason it ended up like that was you applying factor of 12(?) both for DDs and BBs. simply means No, no, you can't do it, my friend, things would not make sense then. Grand Fleet cannot start with 2 Dreadnoughts! English apples need to be compared with German apples, not English blueberries

 

[isenchine]

You focus too much on dreadnoughts. Including pre-dreadnoughts, cruisers, destroyers and submarines, Great-Britain had supposedly 480 ships. I took 80% of it. Reason: not all of the British fleet was in the North Sea when they had such a huge empire. Secondly, don't forget that the British fleet is reinforced twice from Python events.

That number I divided it by 15, leaving 26 ships on the map against 17 for Germany, 10 for Russia. Even Portugal ends up with one destroyer.

About your Russian dreadnoughts, from Wikipedia:

In June 1909, the Imperial Russian Navy began construction of four Gangut
class dreadnoughts for the Baltic Fleet, and in October 1911, three more Imperatritsa
Mariya class dreadnoughts for the Black Sea were laid down. Of seven ships, only one
was completed within four years of being laid down, and the Gangut ships
were "obsolescent and outclassed" upon commissioning. Taking lessons from Tsushima,
and influenced by Cuniberti, they ended up more closely resembling slower versions of
Fisher's battlecruisers than Dreadnought, and they proved badly flawed due to their
smaller guns and thinner armor when compared with contemporary dreadnoughts.

From a game play perspective, don't forget that with 12 dreadnoughts you could easily wipe out entirely the defenders of Bremen or of any coastal city in 1 or 2 turns and then enter the city with just 1 infantry to claim it. Not very historical if you ask me.

If you want more, you still have Blood & Iron or In the Trenches. Dacubz even made a 'lighter' version of his scenario...

 

[nokmirt]

You focus too much on dreadnoughts. Including pre-dreadnoughts, cruisers, destroyers and submarines, Great-Britain had supposedly 480 ships. I took 80% of it. Reason: not all of the British fleet was in the North Sea when they had such a huge empire. Secondly, don't forget that the British fleet is reinforced twice from Python events.

That number I divided it by 15, leaving 26 ships on the map against 17 for Germany, 10 for Russia. Even Portugal ends up with one destroyer.

About your Russian dreadnoughts, from Wikipedia:

In June 1909, the Imperial Russian Navy began construction of four Gangut
class dreadnoughts for the Baltic Fleet, and in October 1911, three more Imperatritsa
Mariya class dreadnoughts for the Black Sea were laid down. Of seven ships, only one
was completed within four years of being laid down, and the Gangut ships
were "obsolescent and outclassed" upon commissioning. Taking lessons from Tsushima,
and influenced by Cuniberti, they ended up more closely resembling slower versions of
Fisher's battlecruisers than Dreadnought, and they proved badly flawed due to their
smaller guns and thinner armor when compared with contemporary dreadnoughts.

From a game play perspective, don't forget that with 12 dreadnoughts you could easily wipe out entirely the defenders of Bremen or of any coastal city in 1 or 2 turns and then enter the city with just 1 infantry to claim it. Not very historical if you ask me.

If you want more, you still have Blood & Iron or In the Trenches. Dacubz even made a 'lighter' version of his scenario...

isenchine thank you for updating this to BTS. It is one of the classic scenarios for CiIV.

 

[isenchine]

Thanks Nokmirt. I sent you a PM some months ago when I realised that you made "The Great War" out of the initial scenario by Jon Shafer.

When I worked on this conversion, I was not aware about it. Otherwise I might have wanted to start from it directly, it would have given me an even better base!

 

[BurfordBob]

I am playing as germany with open borders to neutral and artificial intelligence sweden. Swedish ships keep attacking and destroying my mines!

 

[isenchine]

Yes, it's a known issue, mines are not really working properly.

They have hidden nationality (as they should) but it means a piracy flag and they are attacked by everyone.

Also, they should be invisible: but in BtS, it means that an enemy ship passing on a same tile would not be hurt by the mine.

Better build ships... (I have no solution for this at the moment, sorry).

 

[wotan321]

I find the mines helpful. Playing as Germany, I need to preserve my offshore resources, and with my piddling navy, the mines lure in enemy ships, soften them up a bit, and allow what little navy I have to whittle them down a ship at a time.

 

[isenchine]

Yes, that's the idea... except when Sweden kills all your mines just for training their battleships!

 

[Tigranes]

What if we make mines normal nationality with stealth of submarine and zero MP?

 

[isenchine]

Stealth is just another category for Invisible: a British destroyer, for example, would pass on a tile with German naval mines without noticing them and without being hurt.

Mines have zero MP already ... until it increases through a promotion, refrigeration, first circumnavigation... This doesn't necessarily apply to this mod (but it does now in my private mod! )

Hidden nationality only hides the flag, what really matters here is the "always hostile" tag: that's why Sweden is attacking them. Normally, that's more or less how it is supposed to be: a naval mine hurts any ship not aware of their presence. The problem is that any AI ship will see them and attack them as enemy units, not just encounter them by accident.

If I would take out the "always hostile" tag, naval mines would only hurt enemy ships.

 

[Tigranes]

Yes
It is a better compromise than dealing with neutrals...

 

[isenchine]

Then, the change is in the Assets/XML/Units/CIV4UnitInfos.xml file,

line 14550 (WWI_UNIT_NAVAL_MINE):

<bAlwaysHostile>0</bAlwaysHostile>

(0 replacing 1).

Or unrar the file attached and replace the previous one (it can be done in the middle of an existing game as long as you close Civ4, replace the file and reload your game).

Edit: download file now updated in the Database.

 

[Tigranes]

Please join . If you never played PBEM but you want to try winning against smart humans vs stupid AI you are especially welcome! I will walk you through all the technicalities.

 

[isenchine]

Excellent! I wish you success in monitoring this game and fun to all players.

I will follow this PBEM game with high anxiety as it will be an important test for playability and bug/weirdness chasing.

I suppose you will get enough participation so I'm not proposing to play it myself. I'm still reluctant to do so. As I said, I will follow it and note every interesting comment for a possible update. I can also intervene if there are some technical questions.

 

[Tigranes]

Can you please comment on how one wins with the score victory? Target score is 1000 and there was no way to disconnect it.

 

[isenchine]

It's an unfinished job. As now, it is solely based on the population. It is meant to be high and difficult to be reached.

Currently, it uses no additional codes, just changes in the parameters, which you can find in the GlobalDefines.xml file:

Spoiler :

	<Define>
		<DefineName>SCORE_POPULATION_FACTOR</DefineName>
		<!--Score you get if you have the 'maximum' population possible on the current map: was 5000-->
		<iDefineIntVal>3432</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>SCORE_LAND_FACTOR</DefineName>
		<!--Score you get if you have all the land on the current map: was 2000-->
		<iDefineIntVal>0</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>SCORE_WONDER_FACTOR</DefineName>
		<!--Score you get if you have all the wonders: was 1000-->
		<iDefineIntVal>0</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>SCORE_TECH_FACTOR</DefineName>
		<!--Score you get if you have all the techs: was 2000 -->
		<iDefineIntVal>0</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>

To disable it, you just have to change "TargetScore=0" in the WBSave file.

 

[Tigranes]

Can you comment please why do you think that Russian Infantry must be stronger than Austrian one? My sense of history tells me both Infantries fared about the same.