[SCENARIO] World War I

Terrific scenario!

I'm playing with the Ottoman Turks on Emperor and I didn't know there were scripted events so those Gallipoli invasions took me by surprise. I love it! ;) I was able to protect my city and kill the invaders but just barely. I was able to capture the Caucasus from the Russians and immediately befriended Lenin and the Bolsheviks once the Russian Revolution started. Greece and Romania declared war and my troops slowly but surely took over those nations as well as the Russian city of Odessa. My troops down in the south quelled the Arab Revolts and managed to capture Egypt after an intense fight with the British. After the rebels took over Nicosia from the Brits I captured that too.

Meanwhile Germany was getting decimated by the combined forces of Russia, UK, France, and US and it was around 1918... hehe good timing. The Axis made peace with Tsarist Russia who were then free to fight the Commies. I managed to turn the tide by re-capturing all the six German cities the Americans and French took. My troops in North Africa are slowly making it across the desert (Brits landed in Lybia and attacked my forces!) and Austria-Hungary are on the gates of Rome. It seems we may win but it's not a sure thing. France still has as much power as myself and Tsarist Russia is a juggernaut and after he kills Lenin he's coming for us. It's now 1921 and the Western Allies are still in it. I made a Permanent Alliance with Bulgaria.

I used quite a bit of draft in this game to get attack troops and to protect from amphibious invasions since I didn't build much of a navy. Naval mines work well.

I like that even the minor nations follow the events and declare war on proper dates but diplomacy is open and you can make your own destiny so to speak. I also like that the AI seems aggressive and does attack in numbers.


I have only a few questions:

1) Why lower the terrain defensive bonuses i.e. Hills only 15% and Forest only 25%. To simulate the stalemate shouldn't these bonuses be high if anything? Maybe the regular 25% and 50%.

2) I took all the Romanian cities and their civ was still alive for 30 turns. Did someone have to kill all their units? Greece died right when I took their last city.

3) Is Austria-Hungary too strong? For most of the game they were stronger than Germany. Maybe it's just the RNG in this particular game.


Anyways love the scenario! :goodjob:
 
Dankok8, thank you very much for this epic report. Also, you're the first one to mention the Gallipoli events! ;)

About your questions:

1) it's more a general design than a specific WWI one. Defending troops are generally too strong on hills/woods. I think that Tigranes even mentioned that with the incessant bombarding of terrain, many forests were much depleted during WWI.

2) yes, you have to kill all units. This is a necessary design because the USA and the Soviets have no cities at the start of the scenario. In the meantime, I've seen in scenarios that they were killing all units of a Civ when they had lost their last city. I could add that in a subsequent release for all other Civs.

3) Perhaps it is but I think that Austria-Hungary is simply not attacked enough in the early stage of the scenario. Germany gets all the heat. It is also different if Italy is controlled by a human player.

Thanks again! :)
 
Dankok8, thank you very much for this epic report. Also, you're the first one to mention the Gallipoli events! ;)

About your questions:

1) it's more a general design than a specific WWI one. Defending troops are generally too strong on hills/woods. I think that Tigranes even mentioned that with the incessant bombarding of terrain, many forests were much depleted during WWI.

2) yes, you have to kill all units. This is a necessary design because the USA and the Soviets have no cities at the start of the scenario. In the meantime, I've seen in scenarios that they were killing all units of a Civ when they had lost their last city. I could add that in a subsequent release for all other Civs.

3) Perhaps it is but I think that Austria-Hungary is simply not attacked enough in the early stage of the scenario. Germany gets all the heat. It is also different if Italy is controlled by a human player.

Thanks again! :)


1) Ok that sounds reasonable. I mean after looking at the power graph Germany did lose a huge chunk of its army in the first two turns of the game on those French defenses. Why fix it if it ain't broke... Gameplay balance takes precedence over historical accuracy after all. It would be no fun not being able to take any city because the defense is too high even if it's historically accurate.

Have you thought about adding trenches?

2) Yea I suspected that. Don't change it.

3) Most human players will try Germany anyways so I guess the current setup makes for a great game from that perspective.
 
About trenches:

Forts are more or less representing trenches. Soldiers have the option to build them in the field.

I'm quoting myself earlier on:
Trenches are difficult to represent in game. It's not so much the graphics but rather the units in it - or rather not in it - as half-seen units would be a huge task to undertake, including dll changes (don't count on me). Plus at the start of the war (this scenario), there were no trenches...

And from our conclusions in this thread, trenches are not really needed! The AI and the human player are interested in attacking cities. With roads and railroads (I reduced the velocity of railroads but even then), considering that one turn is supposed to be one month, your army can legitimately go from one city to the other as needed. There isn't really a no-man's land here.

In Civ4, big battles are not enough fought in the field as it used to be in reality. I know that from an immersion point of view, trenches are lacking here. But I don't think that they are missing from a gameplay perspective.
 
About trenches:

Forts are more or less representing trenches. Soldiers have the option to build them in the field.

I'm quoting myself earlier on:


And from our conclusions in this thread, trenches are not really needed! The AI and the human player are interested in attacking cities. With roads and railroads (I reduced the velocity of railroads but even then), considering that one turn is supposed to be one month, your army can legitimately go from one city to the other as needed. There isn't really a no-man's land here.

In Civ4, big battles are not enough fought in the field as it used to be in reality. I know that from an immersion point of view, trenches are lacking here. But I don't think that they are missing from a gameplay perspective.

Yes forts can work and I was gonna mention that those can function as trenches. Simply rename "Fort" to "Trench" and attach a different graphic perhaps. Much simpler than designing a new concept from scratch.

Anyways the mod works well and even the AI seems to attack freely unlike many other mods with ranged bombardment where the AI is paralyzed.
 
Where does one get this patch 1.61?



# World War I
# Civilization 4 (c) 2005 Firaxis Games

# Created by - Jon 'Trip' Shafer

NOTE: Updated for BTS by isenchine here.

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At its time, World War I (1914-1918), or the Great War as it was then called, was the most destructive conflict the world had ever seen. Millions of lives were lost and billions of dollars of damage was done during the four-year conflagration. Its effects would change the shape of the world forever, as old empires were destroyed and new ones arose.

The battles took place primarily in Europe, between the "Central Powers" of Germany and Austria-Hungary, later joined by the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, and the "Triple Entente" or "Allied Powers" of Russia, France, the United Kingdom and later Italy and the United States.

This scenario begins in August of 1914 with the opening shots firing and the outcome of the struggle very much in doubt. Can you tip the scales and change the fate of the world?

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Ahhhh yes, the big one. Whenever you ask people what scenarios they want for Civ the top two most requested are always the same - the World Wars. In the end I chose WWI because a few other guys were working on a WWII in North Africa scenario and trying to encompass an entire theater like Europe or the Pacific is an incredibly complex and time-consuming undertaking. I have no doubt such a number of great WWII scenarios with a grand scope will be made but the variety of nations, the specific events that took place and the incredibly wide variety of technology makes it a daunting foe.

World War I on the other hand suffers from fewer of these issues - almost all of the major participants and the only major theater can be easily depicted on a single map, using special rules to account for the USA. Technology, while advancing steadily forward didn't make the massive leaps and bounds as in WWII. And the joining of the war by all belligerents is much simpler to model. WWII requires the conquest of Poland, northern Europe, France, the Balkans, North Africa and great battles in the USSR and against Britain - getting everything to come together in a realistic and fun manner is difficult to choreograph. With WWI the major nations are already fighting with the minor ones coming in later in a way that can be easily modelled.

WWII aside, WWI is an interesting conflict on its own merits. As a history student 19th century Europe has been my primary focus and WWI essentially marks the conclusion to this period. And certainly, it's just plain fun for those who enjoy military history and strategy to see if they can do better than Hindenburg and Ludendorff, or to avoid the collapse Russia suffered. This has been my largest project so far, and it's also the one I'm most proud of. I had been planning on making this scenario for quite some time and I'm pleased with the way it has turned out. There are always things a designer would like to do better (there's no such things as a perfect production, they say) but it's good to reach a point where you're glad to show people the final outcome and have them enjoy playing.

Of course, this is just the beginning. The number of people who will work on WWI scenarios and scenarios in general will snowball in the coming years. I hope to be right there continuing to produce more cutting-edge content. We'll see what my next project is...

'Til lata
- Jon

Thanks to Chris Sulzbach for his Unit models, Dorian Newcomb for unit animation, Justin Thomas for unit icons, Nolan for her leader flags, Rhye for his unit flags, the guys here at Firaxis and Take 2 for testing and everyone out there for playing.

--------------------------

(The above taken from the included readme)

To install simply extract the attached .zip file into Civ 4's \Mods\ folder or your \CustomAssets\Mods\ folder.

Be wary, this is a big map with lots of units, so prepare for it to be a bit slow if you don't have a new computer.

Have fun. :)

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Oh, and if anyone was wondering where the mysterious Mark V Tank, Biplane and WWI Infantry came from, this is what they're for. ;)

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You must have patch 1.61 installed to play!

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v1 Removed after 3,962 Downloads

Fixes with v2:

- Increased point Victory requirement from 575 to 900
- Increased number of turns from 60 to 72 (one extra year)
- Reduced tech costs by 40%
- Greatly reduced chance of Revolution and subsequent spawning of Rebels once in Revolution
- Increased number of buildings in cities for a number of civs
- Civs units now use correct voices (not all Latin)
- Germany's color is now Grey instead of Black (should fix the issue where Germany's flag showing up as the Barbarians instead)
- Barbarians renamed "Rebels"
- Removed a few Basic Infantry units France had lying around and replaced them with the French equivalents
 
That's most likely a leftover form the copypaste of the old readme. Patch 1.61 is one of the Civ4 patches, as indicated by the version number. Warlords patches have v2.xx and BTS v3.xx. Since I take it you want to play the mod in BTS you dont need the 1.61 patch as the addons update the game beyond v1.61 when they are installed. Else type "Civ4 patch 1.61 download" into your search engine of choice, there should be plenty of places where the patch is stored.
 
I downloaded the scenario, but I can't rate, why? However I think it's good. It's not perfect because of the lack of pedia voices and leaderheads' imagines.
 
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