SMAN's The World at War

sman1975

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The World at War: Global Conflict in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

The World at War (WAW) is a comprehensive modification to Civ V (BNW) that adds a much deeper playing experience to the second half of the game. Usually when I play Civ V, I'm often taken aback at how quickly the last few Eras fly by. There is little time to experience what should be the most varied and interesting aspects of civilization building and military conquest. What should be the most interesting part of the game is often the quickest part of the game. WaW seeks to change this by greatly expanding the gaming possibilities of the latter part of the game.

The goal is to provide a significant expansion to existing game systems, but not to completely re-work the way the game normally plays. WAW is not a “replacement game.” It is trying very hard NOT to be. The goal is to expand the gaming experience “vertically not horizontally” – meaning, it expands content by adding more to the types of things that are already in the game (Technologies, Units, Buildings, Wonders), but not add new things or drastically change the way any of these existing systems behave.


This post is the collaboration space for the entire family of "World at War" (WaW) mods. Please feel free to leave any and all comments, bug-reports, suggestions, all-around complaints, etc. concerning WaW.

Thanks!!!


Main World at War (WAW) Mod:

Direct Download: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/smans-the-world-at-war.27142/

Steam Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1562440077



Unique Units Companion Mod:

Direct Download: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/smans-world-at-war-unique-units-companion-mod.27143/

Steam Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1562535329
 
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After playing the game in a few dozens of turns, I think you will have to play this as it was designed and intended to. Pretty much another alternative core for Civ5. You simply have to choose one between those core mods. Like choosing what to eat, nothing could go wrong.

Spoiler :


I mean no harm giving my opinion. Pretty much balance is the issue here. Will state the pros and cons. PEACE! :smoke:

Spoiler :

PROS
1.) Call to arms! Warmongers out there! Feel the WW 1 and 2 at its finest.
2.) Good for those who always play in vanilla or had experience with FW........
3.) Awesome addition of techs and units. Makes you want to role play as Hitler.
4.) Would recommend to play this mod with the fullest intention of the creator. DO NOT compare or approach the game like how you'll play the other two alternative core mods.
5.) Works best I think with World War scenarios, as the game is centered on war heavy units.

CONS
I guess ONLY one cons here.....
Spoiler :

Not recommended for those who have tried VP and/or JFDLC otherwise these cons are utter insignificant. OR choosing to have another alternative game play experience. As these will be the top criticism for those who tasted VP and/or JFDLC because these issues were fixed and balanced by those two;

- Suffers the same massive balance problem with vanilla.
- Mandatory bee-lining of techs with science buildings.
- Policies are underwhelming and lacks variety. Piety is utter useless. Pretty much mandatory Industrialization-Rationalism.
- While I'm a 99.999% warmonger player, vanilla OP civs are more OP than ever now.
- AIs are highly exploitable. Feeding frenzy.
- One sided approach, WAR WAR WAR! Pretty much promoting total war, as intended.




 
Thanks, @ofmiciv5! These comments are actually quite helpful. Shows that most of the intent of the mod is fairly established. It was never meant to play well with the other "big" mods, and getting it there may be, to borrow a phrase, a bridge too far.

Also, the "conflict" (i.e. "World at War") aspect of the mod demonstrates the point I was trying to bring out. In any world's history that resembles our own (the sine qua non of any Civ game), civs would see a colonial period when certain civs establish a technical superiority over other civs. And over time, those colonial competition, along with the atrophy of those colonial structures would migrate into a seething resentment that would propel large sections of the world to trip into existential warfare.

This mod seeks to clearly demonstrate the "guns or butter" debate. True, there is a military streamline in the tech tree you simply must follow if you want to survive. And you can ignore it, as well - but at your own parallel. The Czechs in the 1920's knew this - that's why they put sooooo much emphasis in developing effective tank designs. Remember the best tanks rolling eastward into Poland in 1939 were Czech designed, and most of them Czech built...

Or you could follow the USA approach of dealing with a massive social welfare experiment, ignoring your military all the time. The Japanese were most appreciative. Well, at least for 6 months or so....

So, for the most part, your comments are pointing to me being fairly happy with the status of the mod at this point of release (rough BETA, 12 hours after publishing... :lol: ).

I was most concerned about "balance" (mostly in the tech, building, and unit "costs." My goal was to originally make tech expensive (slower), buildings about "normal" and units cheaper. Running into the hard "Beaker limit" in the tech tree kind of killed that, so I had to make adjustments that kind of hurt the slower tech approach.

One thing you have to realize that's not toooo obvious, at least not yet - the entire WaW "Family" was supposed to rotate around the scenarios. They are supposed to be the stars of the shows. Of course, they make tons of changes, even to the WaW mods themselves, to help focus a game on about 50-100 turns. And I tell ya, from playing the WW1 scenario in testing, I think it's going to be a gas when it's finally ready to inflict on the public. Really captures the "epic" scope of the war. I'm sure the WW2 scenario could be even more epic, with a better variety of units/tech choices.

So, if some of the features, design considerations, etc., seem a bit odd, part of that may be how it relates to how the scenarios are being cobbled together.

Appreciate the feed back - it is most informative.
 
Congrats on the release! Although I'm mostly a passive player, still had plenty of fun with this.

A few gripes I've come to as I played with the mod more regarding La Belle Epoque. I feel that currently there really isn't much incentive for training Imperial Rifleman. To train Imperials, you need the War College national wonder in the city. However, the War College and Imperial Rifleman are unlocked by techs on the same column: this makes it difficult to get one tech to build the War College, and then acquire the other and start training Imperials before they go obsolete at Replaceable Parts. I usually ignored Topography -- the tech that unlocks the War College -- in my playthroughs, acquiring Replaceable Parts before researching Topography later.

This is all compounded by the fact that the normal Rifleman can be upgraded to Imperials, also does not obsolete until Replaceable Parts, and is cheaper to build. Even if you do build the War College, you're better off training Riflemen and upgrading them to Imperials (unless you're tight on gold, of course).

A solution to this I feel would be to move the War College back to Military Theory so you have time to build it before researching Imperials. Furthermore, I think some sort of incentive should be provided for building Imperials over Riflemen: maybe add some extra promotion to the unit when they're trained via Lua, or change the Rifleman's upgrade path to GWI? Just some thoughts I had regarding the unit.



Also, just noticed this: the policies contain information on buildings that aren't in the game: there is no Olive Press, Public Baths, Stronghold, etc. There are Botanical Gardens for unlocking Exploration, though. I'm not sure if this is just an unfinished aspect of the mod or not.
 
Thanks, @marius - have to say, most of the reported issues are leaning to design issues rather than errors. This is amazing considering the broad scope of the mods - and largely attributable to your effective testing! :)

I've started a list, simply copying/pasting comments into a Word document with all the suggestions/reports received so far - up to 2.5 pages. Once I get the scenario to BETA, I'll look at updating the base WAW mod. From the looks of the reports, I need to pay more attention to the relationships of techs to each other and as prereqs to units. Your input about Imperial Riflemen is on point. I originally envisioned those units as the turn of the century, over-the-top, ceremonial peacocks that were best suited for parades and not the battlefields. There weren't supposed to be too many of them, and the start of the Great War showed how useless they were in actual combat. I suppose that's why I wanted them tied to the War College/one city in the empire - to limit their numbers. However, in playtesting, I noticed I was simply producing Riflemen, then cheaply upgrading them to IR's, thereby completely bypassing the restrictions.... :crazyeye: It got to the point, I was considering changing the Rifleman upgrade back to GW Infantry - and still may.

I mean, they're good looking unit models, and many civs have a customized version in the Unique Units mod - which provides an even wider variety/historical flavor to the game. Just looks "cooler" to me... So, I'm caught between wanting to provide more accuracy (historically) or more asthetics....

So, what do you suggest to address this: move the WC earlier on the timeline, or change the Rifleman upgrade to GW Inf? Which of those choices make more sense from a player's perspective?

Good catch on the policy keys. It's on my (ever growing) list....
 
@marius - yes, that makes the most sense, historically speaking. Will move the War College sooner, as you suggested though, and not obsolete the Rifelman until GWInf. That way a civ can produce either Rifle or Imperial Rifle, if they choose.

Almost done with the scenario. It's much more stable, and more or less works! :crazyeye: Actually, I've been testing playing the Serbs. And man, it's quite the challenge to stay alive against a relentless AH assault. As it happened historically. The western front in france is quite the bloodbath, as well. The movement directives and reinforcement functions are working quite well. Hope to have it done today, with one last regression test tomorrow morning, then hopefully get the "package" (consisting of screenshots and the Steam narrative document) put together in the afternoon.

The scenarios are really the centerpiece for the mod family I was trying to build, and I think this first one is a good start. It's constructed in a way that changing the Eras will hopefully be relatively simple, and less time-consuming. The WW2 scenario is next...
 
Unit Namer seems to have broken for naval units. This runtime error gets thrown whenever you train a naval unit:
"WAWUnitNamerScript.lua:137: attempt to concatenate field '?' (a nil value)"
 
@marius - for all civs or only a specific one? Do you know which ship type it was?

Looking at that area of the code, it's past where ships get a name, past air units, and into land units. Something not quite right....

I've made a lot of changes to the script in the scenario version - will probably have to re-engineer the main mod version when it's "perfect...."
 
For all civs and for all naval combat units. Looking into it, g_tRoleNames[iPlayerCivType][iUnitCombatRole] is nil whenever a naval unit combat role is passed through it, which causes the runtime error when you try to concatenate it.

it's past where ships get a name, past air units, and into land units
Further investigation reveals this to be what I think is an oversight. Looking at the logic shows that the if statement for naval units at line 122 and the if statement at line 134 for air units are their own separate blocks. Therefore, the else statement at line 124 will include land AND air units and the else statement at line 135 will include land AND naval units, causing the error at line 137 when given the latter. Your comments lead me to believe that you do not intend for this to be the case, but that's what's happening.
 
Will check this in a day or so. Am wrapping up the scenario tomorrow. Am done testing and it looks quite good. Still adjusting the text formats on the pop ups, but will have it “beautified” tomorrow. Probably release a day or so later.

On the main mod, from a lot of the comments it seems like lots of changes are needed on the tech tree and some prereqs on buildings and units. So, I need to figure out do I release the scenario first, then change it later after fixing the base mod? Or fix the main mod first, the fix the scenario then release it?

But will probably release the scenario first to start collecting feedback on it, in case it necessitates changes in the main mod.....
 
hey hey hey~ stop.... i just want to say this for the record before i may get flamed by G and others. haha! i read a comment about me on steam just now and you got it all wrong. i'm not one of the developers of VP but i do make my own revisions for personal use.
 
OOPS! Sorry about that - not sure why I thought that. I'll pull that message. Not enough coffee before posting... :wallbash:
 
OOPS! Sorry about that - not sure why I thought that. I'll pull that message. Not enough coffee before posting... :wallbash:
i played a full game first to feel the game. this still works on my revised EUI and now with VP it looks like this. first step, we need to clean up the tech, tie up the loose ends.

sman.png

after that, comes the balance costs of tech, units and yield. i think this is pretty much doable. can't wait!!! :)
 
I saw a post from another player who was also experimenting with VP - said it really wasn't toooooooo far off. Maybe with a bit of work we can figure out a way to check if VP is enabled, then adjust the tech tree based on that.

Yeah, I know there are issues with the prereqs on the tree and some unit prereq techs. Will be looking at cleaning that up as soon as I'm finished with the WW1 scenario. Am cleaning up the code, but it's largely done. Need to do a quick test game with each of the 13 player civs to make sure they don't look too off. Hoping to have it ready to publish in the next 1-2 days.
 
WEEEEE!!!! almost done on La Belle Epoque. slowly connecting the dots...

before
dots.png


after
dots2.png


haha! done on this era. if it weren't for gazebo's (creator of VP) ignoring my request on that pesky top panel, i won't be trying into modding. blessing in disguise.

edit: aw.... WW1 tech and units on LBE... pretty much VP balancing conflicts tWaW.
 
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Man, @ofmiciv5 - maybe VP SHOULD put you on their payroll.... :lol:

I'm in the middle of testing the scenario - am having a blast, which delays testing, unfortunately... I'll probably have everything ready to publish (BETA) tomorrow. After that, I suppose it's time to look at my "Change Notes" document, currently up to three pages. Many, if not most, seem to focus on tech tree relationships. So, while I admire what you're doing from the VP side, it looks like I'll have to add a few more prereqs to the tree to limit the bee-lining.

I suppose after the WaW tech tree is "fixed" (for now) - I need to do some research on how to add these changes you're making - LUA code that senses when VP is enabled, then runs a special set of adjustments to the tech tree (can we call it TT for short?) so it will look something like what you have in the previous post. I've seen several mods that use this approach, so I'm hoping it will be relatively straightforward. Have had several players asking about VP. Would love to be able to make them play well together. I'm a firm believer it's costing me 1 star on my rating...

One thing we'll have to keep an eye on when it comes to "balancing" - there is that 128k beaker limit. I was playing around with that a lot in testing. The real problem is large maps, marathon speed, deity handicap. If you have too many techs that cost too much science, it can cause a weird overflow issue which means techs suddenly cost 1 game turn, even at end game. Any adjustments you're making in tieing the two TT's together will have to at least look at that a bit.

OK. The Great War just started. Am off to the trenches....

upload_2018-11-15_13-21-10.png upload_2018-11-15_13-21-47.jpeg upload_2018-11-15_13-52-38.jpeg
 
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