The Gaia War

[The Omega]

The Gaia War​

December 21, 2012

There had been no warning for the events of that day. Astronomers had for years reported nothing but boring, black space around the Earth. It was as though the meteorite had just suddenly appeared in orbit, leaving only a scant few minutes for word to spread before impact.
As the meteorite hurtled through the atmosphere, fragments broke off, creating a rain of fire spread for miles beyond the main impact site.
The actual damage caused by the impact was surprisingly small, however. Impossibly small, according to some. The main meteorite only destroyed a small, mostly uninhabited island. The smaller fragments, whilst more widespread, mostly hit the outskirts of cities, killing far fewer than would have been expected. Even the aftereffects were strangely muted; the apocalyptic visions of the widespread destruction caused by such a scenario never came to be. There was no gigantic cloud of dust blocking out the sun, nor were there earthquakes, or floods, or any of the events that should have followed such a cataclysm. It was as if the laws of physics had, for some unfathomable reason, chosen to spare the human race.
But while the impact itself would not destroy the world, it would cause the most bloody and destructive period in history, and the ascension of mankind into something greater....

The Gaia War is a scenario which began over a year ago, when I decided to make a civ3 scenario based on the nations created by me and two of my friends on Facebook's Nation app. While originally conceived as a simple, short project, which I wasn't even certain would have any custom graphics, the scope of the project grew increasingly larger as I worked on it.

The setting is the fictitious Erebian Peninsula which, in case you just decided to skim over the opening quote, was struck by a meteorite shower on December 21, 2012. The meteorites were made of a previously unknown substance, labeled Gaia, and their impact sparks a massive war between the major powers on the peninsula.

The locked alliances and nations are:

The Triumvirate of the Strong
Standard Evil^tm Alliance; the civs in this alliance are the ones based off the Facebook Nations. They start out at war with EVERYONE.

Omegia (Gee, I wonder whose nation this is?)
Militaristic, Industrious, Commercial
Led by Emperor Sean, Omegia is a rather benevolent dictatorship (benevolent in the sense that no one in command cares enough about the citizenry to actively oppress them). Their units are in generally stronger, but more expensive, than most other civilizations. They get more Gaia-based wonders and units than anyone else. Omegia has a strong industrial base, which makes up for its relative small size when compared to the massive nations around it.

Erebia
Militaristic, Industrious, Agricultural
Led by Dark Lord Daniel. When I say that they are a Satanic Empire, it is in no way an exaggeration; the nation is built around a Satanic cult. The ability to sacrifice enemy workers, xenophobic government, forced production, happiness generated from blood games.... They proudly hold the title of Most Evil Nation in the scenario. Erebia's units are some of the weakest in the game, but they have hordes of them. The general strategy with Erebia is to charge forward until their foes run out of bullets. Erebia is a large nation, but outside of its core, many of its cities are underdeveloped. Once those cities are built up, it becomes a major force to be reckoned with.

Pwnzoria
Industrious, Seafaring
Led by Grand Duke Alek. The most uber l33t nation to ever appear in Civilization, they're unit lines are rather.... Unique? Out of the three Triumvirate nations, they are the weakest militarily. For the first half of the tech tree, their buildable units are rather weak, and they rely on autoproduced ones to beef up their army. However, they have a very powerful navy, which due to the focus on naval combat they'll be having, makes up for the weakness on the ground. Their capital, Pwnzopolis, starts out as the best city in the scenario, and has the capacity to become even better. However, their other cities are very underdeveloped, even more so than Erebia's, and will take time to build up.

The Righteous Coalition
The good guys of the scenario. They start out at war with the Triumvirate of the Strong.

Iustitia
Militaristic, Industrious, Commercial
Led by President Kari. Militantly democratic, and perfectly willing to use force to spread FREEDOM and JUSTICE to the world. They start out as the largest and most powerful civilization. Their units are strong and cheap, and they start out with a powerful industrial base in many of their cities. But if they allow the Triumvirate too much time to build up and research, they'll start to find themselves facing some difficulty.

Bhyu
Scientific, Commercial
Led by Prime Minister Yamato. As the junior partner of the Righteous Coalition, they don't get all the kewl things Iustitia does, but they are still one of the more powerful civs at the start of the game. Bhyu starts out with a relatively small military, and most of their units are less than impressive. But their tanks are the second best in the scenario, and aren't wheeled (a major advantage, as most of the fighting will take place in hills/mountains)

The Gaia Federation
The underdogs of the scenario. Small in size, militarily weak, surrounded by enemies, and at war with both the Triumvirate of the Strong and The Crusaders, the Gaia Federation nations' best chance is to turtle up, research to the end of the tech tree, and go for a victory point win. Both nations in the alliance have the advantage of starting with a slight tech lead, and have a powerful navy to defend themselves with.

Schripia
Commercial Seafaring
Led by Chairman Smithy. They're the corporate nation, which for once isn't evil or secretly making zombies/SkyNet. They start with only two cities, however their capital has a very strong industry, and they have decent to good units, giving them the ability to expand.

Arigos League
Agricultural, Seafaring
Led by Prince Arigo XI. While they start with more cities than their Schripian allies, they're actually in a worse position. Less industry, weaker units, and the fact that AI Pwnzoria seems to send over an invasion force every other turn, they're biggest advantage is their powerful navy, and the fact that they control the only victory point in the game. If they can hold on until reaching the end of the tech tree, they can go for a victory point win.

The Crusaders
There's only one nation in the Crusaders, but they had to be in their own alliance to set up the wars. They're at war with the Triumvirate of the Strong and the Gaia Federation.

Chrio
Militaristic, Expansionist, Religious
Led by Pope Parker III. They are a militant Christian theocracy (which could be considered justifiable, as there is a genuine Satanic nation bent on killing them all not far away). Like the Erebians, they can sacrifice enemy workers for culture (sending people to the Inquisition). Chrio starts out away from the main fighting, but has the strongest (and most expensive) units in the scenario, making them a powerful force once they organize their armies and get them over to the frontlines. Chrio has the fewest number of Gaia based units/buildings.


Victory conditions are Conquest and Victory Points. The only way to gain victory points is to get to the end of the tech tree, where you can build a small wonder which will autoproduce "Victory Piece" units every 2 turns. If you can bring 10 Victory pieces to the victory point on the main crater, you will be declared the winner.

I should also point at that this is very much a war game; some playtests had stacks of nearly 100 units battling destroying each other, and then having their losses replenished a few turns later. The defender has the advantage for most the game, and it will take a serious, heavily supported attack to advance any distance at all (Unless you start getting creative with the helicopters and the amphibious landings)


Download Instructions: Click on the link below, and extract the files to your Conquests\Scenarios folder (See, that wasn't so hard, was it?)

Dowload

Version 1.1 Patch

Link to the OFFICIAL Story (Ongoing)

 

[The Omega]

Screenshots

Spoiler NationSelect :

Spoiler Civilopedia :

Spoiler Tech Tree :

Spoiler Omegian Start :

Spoiler Fighting on the Front Lines :

 

[Arexander]

It's finally here!

Screenshots
[...]

Spoiler Omegian Start :

[...]

Broken tags fixed.

 

[The Omega]

Thanks for catching that. Now all the images work.

 

[Arexander]

Just 25 more minutes.....

I've got the whole vacation to play this.

 

[mythusmage]

The Omega,

I ran into a problem. Your scenario file has the same name as the scenario file in Taube87's Gaia mod. Makes installing the two in the same folder pretty much impossible. Could you rename the file?

Update: Then I learned of a missing file.

Chose country, level of difficulty, etc., etc.; only to have the game quit because "InquisitorRunFoot1.wav" is missing. Nope, nowhere to be found. Is a patch available?

 

[The Omega]

The Omega,

I ran into a problem. Your scenario file has the same name as the scenario file in Taube87's Gaia mod. Makes installing the two in the same folder pretty much impossible. Could you rename the file?

Update: Then I learned of a missing file.

Chose country, level of difficulty, etc., etc.; only to have the game quit because "InquisitorRunFoot1.wav" is missing. Nope, nowhere to be found. Is a patch available?

Can you post a picture of the error, or tell me the full filename that's missing? I've double checked most of the units, and as far as I can tell, you shouldn't need that file at all.

 

[mythusmage]

Can you post a picture of the error, or tell me the full filename that's missing? I've double checked most of the units, and as far as I can tell, you shouldn't need that file at all.

See thumbnail below.

Apparently the biq disagrees with you. Don't you hate it when your own scenario contradicts you?

Then again, it may be the Mac OS being fussy again.

Update: Guess what I just found? Among other locations it can be found in Civ III Complete/Conquests Game Data/Art/Units/Inquisitor. At least, if you have a Mac. folder names (so I've heard) appear to be different in Windows. So I'll be duplicating the file and moving the copy to the Gaia (Omega War) folder.

(You know, the more I run into things like this, the more I wonder if maybe Firaxis should take Civ III away from Aspyr and award the Mac porting contract for Civ III to another company.)

 

[The Omega]

Glad you found the problem; I've only tested this on Windows, so I don't know of any errors that would occur on Macs.

Still think it's strange that the game was looking for that file; I've triple checked the folder, and the Modern Inquisitor unit shouldn't be looking for that at all. Bloody computers....

 

[Samez]

Hi, I tested your mod for a few turns:
The first game I started as Bhyu where I had a lot of trouble with income. Even with boosting the infrastructure and with it the population I had hard times to do any research in the early game.
Later on decided to try something different as the turns became quite slow. (Are all cities on the map with airport, ie trade is possible with all od them?)
The next game i played as Schripia which is quite fun. The Omeganians made the first turns quite hard as they had a lot of bombers early in the game. They also were able to sink most of my navy. At the moment I was able to build the gaia fighting vehicle and pumping out one bomber per turn in my capital I decided to go offesive and captured some isles in th east.

 

[The Omega]

For research, keep in mind that the minimum time for techs is 6 turns. Usually you can lower the science slider a bit and still keep it at 6 turns per tech.
Yes, most cities have airports. It does slow down turn times a bit, but hopefully not too much (then again, most of the playtesting I did for this scenario was on my spiffy new laptop, so I haven't had much problem with compy speed)
Hope to hear more from your Schripia game; I've always found them fun to play as.

 

[mythusmage]

Moving a copy of the file into the scenario folder solved my previous problem, but then another one popped up, see the thumbnail below. Since you designed and wrote the scenario on a Windows machine I think I'm save saying that you followed Windows procedure when it came to locating certain files. Which is not how the Mac does it. This means there are probably a number of files I'll need to duplicate and relocate in order to port this scenario to the Mac. Would it be possible to get a list of those off-scenario (to coin a term) files Gaia calls for?

 

[The Omega]

That would be a lot of files, and since I wasn't the person who made the unit files, it would take looking through each individual unit folder to find any that go out of the scen folder....

 

[Bluemofia]

I played as the Omegians, and won at week 26 of 2014. I pretty much let Erebia and the other two democratic peoples fight it out while I consolidated my power down in the southern areas by destroying the Gaia research teams. Conquered Schripia first by obliterating their navy with my navy, then massive bombardment followed by a large tank and radar artillery invasion. Then moved against the Argos, with roughly the same thing, except now with air support.

After I had 6 transports worth of troops, I decided to put full out on laser artillery and bombers, and shipped them to the front, cause Erebia was suffering significant casualties, and the Iustitians were creeping forwards slowly. Then after my laser artillery ran out of targets to shoot, and my bombers to eliminate them with follow up bombing runs, I started to creep forwards by sending workers to build roads up, and then moving the laser artillery forwards and reducing the defensive positions to 1 health, and then bomber wave them.

Like at around 2013, near week 45 or so, I succeeded in punching a hole through the defensive lines with the above tactic. Then Erebia dropped all of its advances towards random sections of the defenses, and started to pour in through the hole I made, but were always routed before they can make significant progress. Eventually, I blasted away enough of the defenses out, and my airforce was large enough to operate pretty much unhindered; I had as much bombers as they had fighters total, and mine are all concentrated at that spot. Then I captured the first fortification city, just as I started to get Gaided at the beginning of 2014.

Then I moved forwards towards the second city, and upgraded all of my aircraft into advanced aircraft. (TIE phantoms and TIE bombers) Now my aircraft are strong enough to shoot down their jets, or at least stand a decent chance at doing so. (7 defense vs 8 attack) Then I stole land and sea domination from everyone.

Meanwhile, in the south, I started to take the Chrio's islands for two purposes: 1 to isolate the mainland, and 2, so I can upgrade my forces down there. I did basic tactics really; conquer the city, then I airlifted in a Gaided or two in and used them to help conquer more islands while pretty much using my army to quell resistance. I would snake my way up the islands all the way back up to the mainland.

So I then took the second border city, and then tore the remaining defenses open, and shredded them with a few more Gaided, and then loaded them up into armies. Then I loitered around for a little bit, collecting troops, bombing roads, causing general havok and destruction, before I captured the first non-fortified city on week 13 of 2014 with a Gaided army after I laser artilleried the defenders to pieces. (used 8 or 9) Since I had a pile of 50 laser artillery, I kept going forwards, having the workers move in and build up roads in the process. In one turn, I conquered a good 6 or 7 cities, making judicial use of the Armageddon tanks and Stormtroopers to hold cities, while my Gaided armies and Gaided move in and kill the few remaining defenders that are redlined from the laser tanks. Pause for 2 turns, to collect more stormtroopers and Armageddon tanks, cause I hardly have any, and repeat, now blasting past Greenwater, which Erebia finally took. I then waited another turn, and cut deep into Iustitia's territory, and took their largest cities. At this point, they had nothing left to throw at me, so they just sat there and got lasered by laser artillery and shot in the face by Gaided. Bhyu on the other hand, now was being rather annoying with their 3 movement Yagami tanks and 4 movement Freedom mechs, but because I build parallel runs of rails through the conquered territories, Erebia was able to move in and destroy them before I could myself, which lets me use my bombers to blow up random units here and there that I don't want to waste laser tanks bombarding.

I then doubled back and captured the Expeditionary force and pretty much eliminated the Crusader's airforce (a good 30 fighters destroyed I counted). I then had the Emperor himself (now ascended) take the last major city for the Iustitians. 70 attack is awesome against redlined units.

Soon after, I reached the dividing line between Bhyu and Iustitia, which Erebia then took 2 cities. This went back and forth with Bhyu and Iustitia, but then I bitzkrieged through the north part, and cut all the way to the capital, and doubled back to the border, leaving 1 city left, which Erebia took along with the other 2 that were being contested. Iustitia was eliminated from the continent. Bhyu then counterattacked (badly), but managed to steal a couple of my workers. (which they disbanded) I then blew up the attackers with bombers, and took 2 more cities to consolidate my empire, and so I would have enough laser tanks to bombard their capital to kill all units in it with Gaided armies (I had several now; somewhere in the order of 6).

Next turn saw the conquest of their capital, killing of all their units out of reach of my Gaided and Armageddon tanks via bombers, and then taking all of their other cities on the mainland, just as my forces from the capturing of Chrio's islands reached the mainland. This also gave me enough laser tanks to finish blitzkrieging them, cause I already suffered extremely high casualties of 2 whole armies trying to take one of their cities.

Even more coincidentally, my 10 Gaided I have been collecting for a while and loaded up in a transport which I sent towards the Chrio mainland, finally reached it. With heavy casualties, I took out 2 armies of a Paladin and a tank, as well as a few random defenders. Then I captured the southwestern most city, and airlifted in Gaided, tanks, and storm troopers in from every city that had an airport to airlift, as I just finished conquering the mainland. And took the last Iustitia one tiled island city with a storm trooper army.

Chrio counter-attacked with 2 armies and a few other units, all of which were killed by my Gaided. The next turn saw my hunter Gaided finally coming out of the hunter facilities, which I airlifted them and moar laser tanks to the Chrio mainland, after I took one more city from them, and rebased all of my aircraft onto the islands surrounding the mainland.

The third turn begun with me shooting up the city to the southeast with laser tanks, and then Gaided rushing in and killing the defenders. Then I airstriked every city except for the capital with bombers, and killed all of the defenders in them. I then sent in hunters to take the cities recently vacated, and used their rails to bring my laser tanks in range of the capital. Saturated it with laser fire, and then charged it with hunters. Finally, I conquered the last city with another hunter walking in, and Chrio was destroyed. Oh, and Bhyu lost 2 more of their island cities to Storm troopers walking in undefended cities.

1 turn later, the last Bhyu city was captured by a stormtrooper, and I win.

I spent like 47 turns consolidating my empire, and the last 13 was where the massive fighting and blitzkriegs went on.

 

[Arexander]

I'm curious, what was the date when you started the attacks? That was one huge blitzkrieg with Omegians.

I play as Iustitians and am just collecting forces to push through the Erebian/Omegian defence line and into Erebia to liberate the oppressed people who live there.

 

[Bluemofia]

Well, attack, as in started to actively fight on the front lines, or attack, as in conquer people?

The front lines were broken through (and captured the first city) on the 1st week of 2014, and the blitzkrieg started on the 13th week (a few weeks were spent gathering forces and taking the other city at the front). Fighting on the front lines took place on like the 30th week or so, but it was really minor, more of a "I fire lasers at you and then bomb you!!" type thing.

Also, this was on regent, cause I haven't played a game of civ in forever (a good 2 years), and it's a scenario that I decided not to cheat and look through the editor to see who gets what gets when gets where. I doubt it would make a difference as AI goes, cause the production amount is huge enough to make little difference in the production speed, and there are hardly any techs to trade (1 or 2), and then tech proceeds at a fairly constant rate regardless of your research speed (most of the time mine was set on 10-30%).

 

[Arexander]

Whoa! You conquered the world in (about) 26 weeks? That's fast.

 

[The Omega]

Yeah, once they've established themselves and built up a huge stack of laser artillery, Omegia can blitz everyone. It's what I'm trying to avoid in my story right now. Where I am, it wouldn't be that hard to finish off Arigos and Schripia quickly, and in a few turns I could be through the Iustitian lines. However, that doesn't flow with the narrative very well.
And I'm playing two levels higher than Blue.

 

[Bluemofia]

No, not 26 weeks, the game starts on week 52 of 2012. I had a year of loitering around consolidating my power in the south with the Gaia league and building up forces. Actively conquering took 26 weeks.

Really, 2 levels honestly won't give the AI that big of an advantage... Prod bonus is negligible since they get so high in production anyways with all the insane production buildings.

 

[Bluemofia]

Boo...

Bhyu is slightly broken. Their advanced bombers can't rebase, and they've got no battle suit infantry, so they're quite weak militarily in addition to their insanely weak infrastructure. (on week 52 of 2014, and I still haven't fully built up the infrastructure)

Also, one of their bombers (or fighters, forgot which) needs to have the "go to" command disabled. Just a nit-picky detail, cause it's pretty minor really.