[SCENARIO] World War I

Hey Trip, two little questions... Why doesn´t Russia retire from the war when the Comunist revolution happen? Moreover, there even isn´t a message of it happening... The other thing is that the Eiffel Tower is MIA! :) It would be nice to have it, as well as other obsolete wonders, just for the view...

Great Scenario again!
 
Just a couple of issues further to what other people have said/asked.
I'd be in favour of giving destroyers the ability to 'sweep' mines and lay them - I'm pretty shocking at the game design/programming side of the CIV-experience, so feel free to shoot me down like a Fokker E.III if you guys think that's silly/impossible. Trenches would also be a good idea, mainly 'cause I really miss the CIV3 versions (as well as the muddy shell-holes from artillery bombardment).
I'd be cautious about introducing 'events' in which the capture of Paris by the Germans or the Russian revolution (which I haven't actually reached, if it is in the scenario) knock France or Russia out of the game automatically. Firstly, remember there were two Russian revolutions in 1917, and the Kerensky regime which took power in the first one was even keener than the Tsar to continue the war. Lenin's Bolsheviks also let the war continue until early 1918 (partly out of disgust at the terms being offered by Germany, but also out of a misguided hope that the revolution would soon spread to the west). In the French case, the French government had already fled to Bordeaux in September 1914, and so the fall of Paris would largely have been symbolic for Germany, unless (and this is the main issue) its fall had coincided with the decimation of the French armies in the field.
Also, for kittenOFchaos, it is fascinating that Lord Fisher actually advocated a 'lighting-strike' amphibious landing in northern Germany at the outbreak of war, but that he was largely confounded by the reasons that MarcusSaurono mentioned - after all, British Admiral Jellicoe was the only man who could lose the war in a day, if he let the British fleet be weakened.
 
Elhoim said:
The other thing is that the Eiffel Tower is MIA! :) It would be nice to have it, as well as other obsolete wonders, just for the view...

I was working on this scenario in the world builder and I added the Eiffel Tower to Paris. I also added religion.

I'm changing some of them to include Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestantism, and another called Communism which while obviously not really a religion will spread like one and play a role in revolutions etc.



I'm working on a St. Peter's/Vatican model that I will eventually place in Rome as the special wonder for the Holy City of the Catholics.
 
there are a lot of barbarians...just keep coming and coming i killed over 200 basic infantry of barbs?!?:( in my last game crazy i cant build improvments even if i wanted to, the barbs just keep coming... :( it is hard to micro manage cities when i am figthing fronts elsewhere but like every turn like 7-8 barbs appear next to my cities..this is sort of realistic of revolts but dang that is a whole bunch of them... other then that excellent scenario:D

thanks dom pedro i knew i forgot to mention something, religions... i added them too
 
I made Jerusalem the Holy City of Judaism and Islam but not of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy even though Jerusalem is obviously very important to them. I would have done so if you could have gradients of holiness ;)

But I wanted Rome to be of particular importance to Catholics. Protestantism has no Holy City really... I'm contemplating making Berlin the holy city of Protestantism (because Wittenberg obviously isn't on the map and I think Berlin is the closest city represented on this map *correct me if I'm wrong*) but even then... it's still not really a holy city... I guess I just won't give them one. The Holy City for Eastern Orthodoxy is Constantinople (giving added incentive for Russia and Greece to hand the Ottomans their butts).
 
dom pedro but when you are playing you cant have a state religion, unless im wrong i just sort of noticed but i did see otehr ai with state religion though!:eek:

however it does show the religions in the city but as human player i could not bmake state religion...but i did see some AI make state religion... i might be wrong or maybe i didi something...:confused:
 
Why not make London the holy city for the Protestants. Its the closest thing to the base for the Church of England, and its better suited than Berlin.
 
Spartan117 said:
dom pedro but when you are playing you cant have a state religion, unless im wrong i just sort of noticed but i did see otehr ai with state religion though!:eek:

however it does show the religions in the city but as human player i could not bmake state religion...but i did see some AI make state religion... i might be wrong or maybe i didi something...:confused:

Maybe the religion was not popular enough to switch to it? I really don't know as I've not tried to set the state religions for any of the players yet. Right now I'm working on getting the AI to do what I want.



TO ALL:

I've been working on the AI attack strategy I discussed earlier.

So far, I've only worked on it for the Germans. Basically, every game year between the first ten weeks and twenty-six weeks, the Germans will launch a "campaign".

Five or six turns before the campaign begins, all newly-created units are sent to what I have dubbed "the corral" which is a staging area for the troops to gather before the campaign begins. It's a 4X4 box of plots positioned on the border between France and Germany. All units are sent to this front except for units either A) fighting Russia, or B) in a city where it is the last unit (so the city is not left undefended).

The units are then held in the Corral fortified (which simulates the trench warfare I think). Once the fix or six turns have passed, the campaign begins. All units within the Corral are ordered towards a randomly chosen city near the border. So the player (whether it's human or AI) will find a dozen or more units suddenly barreling down on one of their cities.

Just so the player doesn't get the rhythm of it, the turn in which the units start mobilizing for the campaign is randomized within certain parameters, and the length of time between mobilization and attack is randomized within certain parameters as well.

Basically, what I also want to try to do is give the AI an overall strategy. Think of it like the Schlieffen Plan. Each one of these overall strategies will have a set of criteria so that the AI will be forced to follow the plan.

For example, let's say that Britain has several plans for winning the war.

  1. Cut off German supply of Oil and invade Ottoman possessions in Middle East.
  2. Decimate German forces on the coast of Germany and attempt an amphibious invasion.
  3. Come up through Italy and attack Austria-Hungary and cut into the German underbelly.
  4. Attack via Greece
  5. Attack via France

I just threw this together just now... so let's not get into the practicality of these options. We can hash all that out later.

Ok, so first things first, some of these are dependent upon certain Allies. Are either Greece or Italy in the war? No? Move on. If yes, keep them as an option. Is Middle East still Ottoman? No? Move on. Do the British still control Egypt? No? Move on. Is France still in the war? No? Move on. You get the idea...

So then the game randomly chooses one of the remaining available options. Let's say the Ottomans still control the Middle East and that's the option picked. So now the Corral is set for Egypt near the Suez Canal. At the same time, we force the AI to start loading transports and then sending them to Egypt. That's probably going to take a lot longer than German troops moving to the Western front, so we might start the preparations in winter for a spring offensive sometime after the twelfth week of the next year. Then we also force the AI to gather ships near Egypt.

When the campaign begins, the AI will be forced to march its units up through the Sinai and make an attack on Jerusalem. Then there would be a second component to this plan wherein the AI would send the fleet farther north to bombard Turkish coastal cities... maybe land some troops as a diversion from the real attack. The AI is dumb... so the more viable strategies made available to it, the better. Essentially, we have to force the AI to do what we would do if we were that civilization. This would obviously never work in a regular game, but in a scenario where the geography is set, it would be considerably easier.

The selections the AI makes are randomized with certain criteria, which makes it harder for the player to anticipate the next move. Now while the player will realize the patterns if he/she plays long enough and enough times, there are some ways here to keep the player on his/her toes. As I said before disinformation should be a factor.

I want to have briefings as well as "newspapers" that are available for the player to read. Sometimes they'll have accurate information and sometimes they won't. Only scouting Corral area will determine what strategy the AI is using, and even then, sometimes they launch different campaigns from the same staging area. So your intelligence people and the news media might say Rheims! But really the enemy is going for Ypres. And if the enemy is going for Ypres, that means the next stop is Calais in an attempt to cut off the British from the mainland.

Of course, logistics will factor into this as well. I would like to make it so that England has access to all resources from Coal to Bananas, but that most of said resources are being shipped in from across the Empire. So we create a merchant fleet... ships that are automated to head for London or some port city. If they make it to the port city, then Britain gets that resource for that turn. If they don't (i.e. if they're sunk by U-boats) Britain doesn't have that resource for that turn... or the next turn rather I suppose.

The AI won't understand logistics, but it doesn't have to. All of that has been taken care of by the designer. It just needs to follow the commands it's been given.
 
MarcusSaurono said:
Why not make London the holy city for the Protestants. Its the closest thing to the base for the Church of England, and its better suited than Berlin.

Yes, the base for the Church of England. Which only applies to the Anglican denomination. It has no bearing on Lutherans or Calvinists.

I think I'm just going to leave them without a Holy City.
 
Dom Pedro II, you're right about the Church of England, but the different sects don't have a city. So, London is probably the best choice if one has to be set.

Also, extra strategies would need to be added for defense. If the English attack out of Egypt and the Ottomans have no choice to move against them, but instead are forced to throw all of their troops against Russia, its a stupid choice. So, counterattacks need to be added in as strategies, with the likeliness of its selection based on troop loses or city loses.
 
Well, I just downloaded and played the scenario, it's pretty interesting. I was annoyed by the score-victory though, it seems like a strange and abrupt way to end the war, and comes right in the middle of all of your military campaigning.

I played first as France, and the score victory came right as the American reinforcements came, and so I never got to see them do anything. I also found the research rate to be waaay too slow. Even for the rich Entante, there was no way to get tanks within 60 turns, let alone deploy them. I think making the tech-costs about 50-60% of normal would do nicely.

I then played as Germany, and was amazed at the massive buildup on the western front. As France, I had been able to hold my own and even capture Cologne fairly early on, but as Germany I completely steamrolled. I guess it is because the AI is allergic to poorly defended cities (even non-vulnerable ones), and so dispersed the western front. Anyways, I ran into the score issue again, on Turn 17, just after I had taken Pinsk, and was assaulting Marseille, Nantes, and St. Petersburg. I guess that if I had broken France, and bit off a goodly portion of Russia, I had basicly "won" as Germany, but it also meant that I was still 6 turns away from biplanes, and never actually got to mount my amphibious assault of Britain. I had sunk all their navy, destroyed their oil and nets, and was blockading all their ports, but I still hadn't sunk my dagger into London. Maybe it was that I was playing on Noble level, but I'm a good enough general that a higher difficulty level would only mean a slower rate of conquest. My only limiting factor was the movement rate of my artillery as they prepared cities for conquest. Really I guess this was an issue with utterly inept AIs more than anything else.

Another question I had was why France starts out with 4 Basic Infantry, when the rest of its army is French Basic Infantry?
 
I think making the tech-costs about 50-60% of normal would do nicely.

I found that about 20-30% is better...
 
A wierd thing happened to me while I was playing as Germany. My army was advancing on Caen in France, and where just outside the city. The next turn, I see that the tile my units were on now has a barbarian on it, and all of my units have been moved to the surrounding tiles. It was quite annoying, but just some random annoyance.
 
Hans Lemurson said:
Another question I had was why France starts out with 4 Basic Infantry, when the rest of its army is French Basic Infantry?

:lol:

Yeah, I wondered about that too, probably just one of those little errors that crept in.
 
Okay, due to popular demand I found some time to make a number of necessary fixes, like decreasing the cost of techs and reducing the number of Rebels you have to fight off. You can get full details on what I changed (as well as the new download) in the first post.

I didn't bother to do stuff like rename leaders and add the Eiffel Tower though. Sorry. :p

Elhoim said:
Hey Trip, two little questions... Why doesn´t Russia retire from the war when the Comunist revolution happen? Moreover, there even isn´t a message of it happening...
As with Germany taking Paris and knocking France out, this would be a pretty big exploit for the human: a human France would defend Paris with EVERYTHING while an AI would treat it no differently. An AI Germany would probably avoid a Paris with a billion units in it while a human Germany would sacrifice everything it possibly could to capture the city. Without exercising more direct control over how the AI acts, I didn't want to throw things like this in.

I'm very interested in seeing where Dom Pedro's efforts take him. I had considered controlling the AI directly, but it's quite an undertaking and I didn't have near enough time to attempt something like that (and instead have to settle for just forcing the AI to build certain things that I want them to ;)).
 
Trip said:
As with Germany taking Paris and knocking France out, this would be a pretty big exploit for the human: a human France would defend Paris with EVERYTHING while an AI would treat it no differently. An AI Germany would probably avoid a Paris with a billion units in it while a human Germany would sacrifice everything it possibly could to capture the city. Without exercising more direct control over how the AI acts, I didn't want to throw things like this in.

Well, while sorting through the SDK code yesterday, I discovered that the AI seems to set a higher priority for cities with wonders and Paris now has two: Versailles and the Eiffel Tower. But I also will add some script for the AI to beef up the city's defenses. I wouldn't say necessarily that taking out Paris should end the war if the human is playing as France since as the country's leader, he/she could just make the choice to keep on fighting. On the other hand, this also gives the human player an advantage.

Maybe the capital for the AI should be relocated before a city falls.. for example, if it seems likely that Paris is going to fall, that the capital will be moved to Bordeaux or something. I was thinking of maybe adding an event that would cause 1/3 of the city's population (that actually happened btw) to flee the city and relocate to other cities. However, I really don't want to weigh down processing time with a lot of extra (and probably unnecessary) code.

I'm very interested in seeing where Dom Pedro's efforts take him. I had considered controlling the AI directly, but it's quite an undertaking and I didn't have near enough time to attempt something like that (and instead have to settle for just forcing the AI to build certain things that I want them to ;)).

Well, no one faults you for a lack of time, my friend. And remember, it is still a fun scenario and will be even better with some of the minor tweaks you mentioned.
 
This scenario is great. The techs take too long to research, though. It seems impossible to research all techs. In my game I was the most advanced and still had 4 techs to research when the game ended. As salty mud said it could be a little bit longer. Also, the Americans really didn't have an affect in my game. I never even saw them. That might be because I was Austria-Hungary.
 
Justinian519 said:
This scenario is great. The techs take too long to research, though. It seems impossible to research all techs. In my game I was the most advanced and still had 4 techs to research when the game ended. As salty mud said it could be a little bit longer. Also, the Americans really didn't have an affect in my game. I never even saw them. That might be because I was Austria-Hungary.

Well, the Americans didn't have a huge impact on the real war either militarily. The war was over before the industrial might of the country really got behind it. And even then, we weren't attacked like we were with Pearl Harbor, so it was difficult to mobilize all the country's resources in the same kind of way. In fact, we were usually using British equipment.

Had the war progressed into 1919, however, I think the USA would've made a substantial military contribution. The question is whether that could've happened. Both sides were really exhausted. It would only take a nudge for either side to collapse.

The real contribution the Americans made to the war effort was the billions upon billions of dollars American bankers lent to the Allies. Without that money, Britain and France would've thrown in the towel much earlier. Consequently, they accumulated debts that would've taken decades to pay off. When the Great Depression hit, the U.S. government removed the obligation for those loans to be repaid.

So that too might be an interesting idea for the game... American dollars being funneled to Britain and France. I mean, they were giving all this money even before the U.S. entered the war. Billions of dollars that might not have ever been repaid at exorbitant interest had the Allies lost. Hmm... I wonder if that in any way affected the government's decision to come into the war... :mischief:

Maybe we could make it so that you can borrow money, but it takes away gold per turn to pay it back? And every time you do it, the amount taken increases and the amount given decreases? I mean, bankers are hardly inclined to give more money when the original money hasn't even been paid back yet. That was the problem Spanish and French kings ran into. Their creditors just refused to keep dumping money that they figured they'd never see again. Thus the interest rates went through the roof. Completely impossible to pay back after a time.
 
Hmmm... good senerio, overall.

However, and I'm sure this has been mentioned, I am slightly annoyed by the locked teams. I am playing as I speak, and by summer of 1915, I have been able to take Paris, and most of Northeastern France. Thinking the time was ripe to negotiate the Frogs out of the war, I went and offered a peace treaty. They agreed. Then I remembered it was a team game. The war was over with everyone. I was kinda pissed off, cause I hadn't even gotten an opportunity to let into the Russians yet. Oh well, I figured i would make the most of it and decided to add Denmark and The Netherlands to the German Empire.

Next turn, I apparently redeclared war on the Entente!?

My point is, there should be a way to knock countries out of the war one at a time. In the real war, they didn't all quit at once. Russia went. The Ottomans went. And so on.

Otherwise, great senario.

P.S. Since I declared peace, the only thing I got for it the next turn was having all my armies that were deep inside French territory having to cross all the distance again. :(
 
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