The Great War

[CellKu]

Which flags are still missing? In a previous post you mentioned Austria. If Austria is the only one missing, do you think you could take the flag from the Napoleon conquest as an interim flag until the correct one is made? (Or is it a copyright problem with Fireaxis?)
What about a vic point for Tannenberg and Muehlhausen (close to Strassburg)? Have you thought about it? If yes, then sorry for bringing it up again.

CellKu

 

[clibinarius]

Well, I liked this scenario, but the victory points...after selectively beating down the Russians and killing enough British ships, I won on TURN 8...

My suggestion? Victory Points by City Location only, or get rid of them entirely...the point of the scenario is who could end the war diplomatically or who can take over the most territory; you can win in a stalemate by simply exploiting AI weaknesses in poorly placed troops, especially on the eastern front.

Also Primie Minister got mad at me for planting a spy. You might want to check that spelling; of course, I played on past victory, and its very good; but it needs the victory point win taken out, or placed at like 1,500,000 or something...it looks like it should be long and drawn out...

It looks like the Germans can not build new submarines in this scenario...I can't figure out the reasoning for this though...also, German tanks are completely useless compared to the cheaper and more powerful Kaiserjager...a way of balancing this would be advanced tanks as a prerequesette for kaiserschlacht. The Kaiserjager definition is also gramattically incorrect (Equipped with is an incomplete sentence).

Also, I'd make Advanced Tactics dependant on Biplane or Zepplins, because you need some planes sufficient to air transport for significant numbers...though paratroopers aren't really historically accurate to this scenario, since I do not believe they were used in this war...I might be wrong about that though.

 

[CellKu]

Do you still have that ban on certain units? I found a Belgian infantry by WINTER. Since I am not sure how you think about it I give you the link:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=80689

CellKu

 

[clibinarius]

Thinking how to make the Russian Revolution occur when the Germans build a wonder...perhaps the wonder could create Bolsheviks which would be used on the eastern front something, that the Russians return to their cities if the AI plays, like treasures in conquest. In turn, the Russians returning them lose money...is this possible?

 

[clibinarius]

Actually, it wouldn't be too historically inaccurate to put the Bolsheviks in Siberia in prisons...perhaps you give them two prisons, both building a wonder that would be done by 1917 that gives them a free Revolutionary, which would be a cheap and powerful reds-only unit in a locked alliance with the Germans...drawback? The Russians would be almost unplayable to the human; It wouldn't be too historically inaccurate as Germany did stake a claim on many western Russian territories during the Revolution, which is why the Soviet Union initially did not include too much territory until long after the war.

The ideal government then for the Russians would be a Despotism of sorts with War Weariness set at Republic, and a wonder in Poland that is universal sufferage. When the Germans advance in the East, Russia quickly falls into War Weariness; this is not at all too historically inaccurate, which makes it very important for the Russians to not mess up.

 

[Adler17]

In Russia there was indeed for the first time universal sufferage but the Kerenski time was much too chaotic to call them a democracy. Indeed I think the Germans had the first "real" democracy in 1919.
Also either Germany should get an oil resource or the Uboats should have no oil as resource. Indeed Germany has some oil but this is far too less to support the entire nation...

Adler

 

[clibinarius]

What I meant by universal sufferage is a wonder like that in Poland which makes people from becoming war weary, and if that is snatched, it would make the Russians very unhappy.

 

[Sarevok]

I want authentic flags, and it would be a copyright issue. I am awaiting the signal from SpincruS.

Because Rocoteh left and he was pretty much interpreting my 'foreign policy' because he was deeply involved and had lots of fights with others, There are no units restrictions because of the maker.

Cibinarius, That VP solution is a good one. It will be added.

The bolshevik's cant be represented in civ3, but russia uses their reinforcement buildings earlier than other civs.

Wart weariness was removed from all governments bTW.

 

[Carl_0914]

guys!!! have play test reports!!!! remember my post about problems in unit movement, commands, fortification, etc? well, at my first game, it happened after iv won a victory point victory but then iv decided to continue the game.... again, was annoyed with the game movement malfunction ive decided to start another game, this time as the germans, after some turns again iv won by VP and after that the unit commands starts to malfunction again.... in this case i infer that this problems happens after a VP winning.... dont know if this had happened to other players... hope you guys could look at this.... or yet just increase VP or just take it off from the game rules..... im waiting for the 1.3!!!!! m xcited!!!! long live railguns!!!!! its too useful!!!

 

[Carl_0914]

i've managed to see cellku's belgian infantry and i think its ok what do you think rocoteh and sarevok? :0

 

[Sarevok]

Its just me now Carl, Rocoteh left.

Railguns are also real expensive

i dont really understand your post too much, what exactly needs changing?

 

[Carl_0914]

ok ill elaborate it, i made a post last time about commands malfunctioning in the game, i thought it was my pc but after iv started a game agin iv experienced the malfunction after again winning a VPV and decided to continue playing...... prob like problem in unit fortfying after making a move, or problem attacking.... or in the cycling of units.....it seems that units dont want to make a move.....dunno.... maybe youll just have to increase the VP..... this only happens in my game after achieving a VPV and decided to continue playing..... im sad for rocoteh......

 

[clibinarius]

I was thinking weaknesses about Russia, Austria and Turkey, and I have a suggestion-rather than have the cities in the empire consist of Russians, create a "Neutral" group so, let's say when you conquer Warsaw, you won't have to deal with 16 resisters...also these units can not be drafted in such areas. It'd be a real weakness to these powers.

 

[Sarevok]

Unfortunately, you cannot do that in the game structure... It isnt possible.

My suggestion Carl is to not play after winning.

 

[Carl_0914]

sarevok,
i hope you wouldnt stop improving TGW.... its the only scenario that ive been busy playing this months together with the TOE. im sad for TOE. its nearly perfected..... thow i was really hoping for its historical version....

 

[Sarevok]

TGW WILL continue to be improved. There is much to improve for it still and I enjoy this scenario myself.

 

[Carl_0914]

ok.... it just sad to stop playing after 15 turns? but i would just like to suggest that VP would be increased (large amount) for us to play the game fully, or just leave the ruling to conquering territories or democratic way.... in the game ive conquered belgium and the russian city of lodz and was about to set my eye to france but ive won very early....... railguns are so great!!!!

 

[Carl_0914]

what will be new for 1.3 and when do we expect it to release? im excited.....

 

[Sarevok]

I already said in about 3 days. Features are yet unknown.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Whow, what an incredible work this must have been...
Great job, no question.
WW1 was clearly my favorite Scenario in Civ2, so I’m really pleased to finally see this (I know the ‘other’ WW1 scenario, but that is a bit too small for my taste).
I had a quite close look at TGW, and since I consider myself a better tester than player :sigh: this automatically leads to A LOT of comments – please don’t feel criticized at all, I wouldn’t make any suggestions if I wouldn’t consider this to be worth the hazzle.

Map:

• Oil: The oil in Saudi-Arabia and Kuwait wasn’t known yet; during WW1, the largest oil deposits were considered to be around Kirkuk and mainly Baku (where no Oil at all is so far)
• Uranium??? Ok, it was known, but why is it in here?
• Germany starts with 5(!) Rubber – heck, we had absolutely no Rubber by that time, we had to invent synthetic Rubber to be able to continue the war! Why not simply removing it from all of the basic units, and only require it for ‘Specials’ like Marines?
• Riyadh is on a Hill range (at least, AFAIK).
• VP locations: IMHO, the Western Allies should win by locations around Spring 1919, even if they do nothing else – the Sea blockade would have caused the Central Powers to collapse then. This forces the Central Powers to succeed fast, pretty much like Japan in the Conquest.
• City sizes seem pretty odd: Naples is 9, Kuwait 12? Was there even a city there 1914? Frankfurt is 15 and starves, while Cologne and Munich are 14 and 13 only? Even today, Frankfurt is about the size of Nuremberg only; Kiel is size 12 – it has less than 200 000 today, size 4 would fit better. Berlin never reached the size of London or Paris. Murmansk is by far too large; during WW1, Archangelsk was still the most important Russian Harbor in the North. Venice is no huge city (was bigger in earlier centuries). Athens? Had about 10 000 inhabitants in the 1850s, I guess it may have reached the 300 000 in the early 20th century, but Smyrna was definitely bigger...and so on.

Concepts:

• Plague: What about implementing the Spanish Flue Epidemia in late 1918?
• Civ Traits: No traits is obviously intentionally, nevertheless I think they would make the Scenario more realistic:
  Germany, Britain (Serbia?): MIL
  France, Britain, (and some of the Neutrals): AGR (they did not suffer from starvation)
  Britain, (Dutch): SEA
  France, Britain, Germany: SCI (no era advances for them, so no unbalancing free Techs)
  France, Britain: COM
  France, Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungaria: IND
  Several other Civs like Russia and the Ottoman Empire should still have no traits.
  This will result in some Civs getting quite a boost, but IMHO it’s simply depicting reality
• Albania: I simply love the idea of Marla’s TGW, with Albania in Anarchy
• Greece was not at War with the Central Powers for most of the time (I agree with Italy starting at war, but not Greece)

Improvements and Wonders:

• Barracks: What about completely removing them? You already set the Experience levels to a nice 2/3/5/7; while I see how you can train “Veterans” with the unmodded time scale simply by having a certain city improvement, this definitely won’t work within a “Weeks”...same way, units won’t ‘heal’ in that time.
  However, certain Small and Great Wonders like the Mil Ac can have the ‘Veteran Ground Units’ flag.
• Airports: Since no units (except MkIV?) can be airlifted, calling them ‘Aircraft Factory’ or something in that line would fit better
• All the ‘Reinforcement Wonders’ except Russia: Should be coastal improvements.
• American War Entry/ Reinforcements: Do I see that correctly, everyone can built them? If yes, fine; if no, why? In any way, it’s by far too cheap at 500sp – Cologne pulls 235spt during the initial GA, no city should be able to build that wonder in less than 20 turns!
• ‘Russian Hordes’ sounds pretty derrogative...’Siberian Reinforements’?
• Universal Suffrage in Amsterdam? Why that?
• Ancient Wonders still working?

Random minor points:

• The names for some city improvements (Aquaduct, Colosseum) seem inappropriate for the 20th century, maybe rename them (Sanitation, Theatre). Same is true for most of the Wonders. And Leader names, of course.
• Delete all unused units, like Warriors. Pretty confusing in the Pedia/editor.
• The German ‘Wall Street’ should be in Frankfurt, not Berlin.
• Cologne is at the Rhine, not the Ruhr - the ‘Ruhr Industries’ should be in Essen (Krupp!).
• Smith’s should be in Glasgow (at least, that’s what I’ve been told by a Scot in a discussion about correct Wonder locations); Copernicus in Stettin (not exactly, but closest city to Frownow), Bach’s in Dresden (Leipzig), Leo’s in Milan.
• What’s ‘Kaiserschlacht’? Never ever heard that term, not even ‘Kaiserjäger’ (I know the unit, but never understood where the name relates to). ‘Sturmtruppen’ would be better.
• There are lots of Wonder/ Tech icon graphics around; while I completely agree this is nothing to sink to much work into, I’ll try to find replacements (we should have everything needed already included in DyP).

Units:

• ‘Tear Gas’ shouldn’t have ‘Lethal Land Bombardment’ (that’s what the Pedia tells you already, but the flag is checked)
• All larger pieces of Artillery shouldn’t be captured; give them a defence of 1.
• A-H: The one issue that Austria was really good at was artillery; even Germany used Skoda siege guns. Why not upping those (or get them via a ‘Reinforcement’ SM instead of Infantry?
• Cavalry requires Saltpeter – well, there was no need for Saltpeter to make amunition by that time, that’s pretty unrealistic. Saltpeter was still pretty important as fertilizer or for large-scale chemical processes (though Fritz Haber in 1917 found a way to replace it in a pretty magical way with Nitrogen and Water), so I’d suggest to make that a requirement for some kind of city improvement, or completely remove it.
• Submarines: To depict their power better, you could set them to ‘Transport Tactical Missiles only’, and equip them with a ‘Torpedo’ unit auto-produced by a coastal city improvement (Torpedo Factory). Remove the ‘Load’ flag from the gas units therefore, and make the Torpedo a loadable, zero move Cruise Missile with ‘Lethal Sea’ and moderate Bombard stats otherwise. That way, Submarines could attack other ships without retaliation.
• Note: I read some suggestions to include land mines; don’t do that, we had them in DyP, they’ll cause crashes – they obviously need to be a zero move land unit, with some kind of land transport (Trucks). Not only will the AI fail to understand the concept of land transports, it’ll load the Mines onto ships and try to unload them to coast tiles, which will not work and crashes the game.

More complicated concepts:

• Governements: As several others already pointed out, there was no substantial difference between the German, and French/ British political system at that time. Thus Germany should receive the trade bonus as well; even Austria-Hungaria was economically developed, but only in its core (Bohemia was among the most industrialized and productive regions in the world back then). Nevertheless, there should be slight differences, so those 4 nations should each have a specific, not tradable Governement tech:
  France – Republic (Corruption level 2; it’s COM now, so that won’t hurt much, but will depict the highly centralized administration), allows construction of the french Reinforcement Small Wonder: Switching all of those to Governement-specific Small Wonders will eliminate the annyoing possibility to capture them; they should be rather cheap to build, so losing yours will allow you to built it again quickly.
  Germany – Parlamentaric Monarchy (Communal corruption, depicting the plethora of German States with their own capitals), Ruhr Industries
  Britain – Constitutional Monarchy (Corruption 1, best Gov of that time), British Reinforcements
  A-H – Double Monarchy (is that an English term?),(Corruption level 3); me thinks they should have a ‘Reinforcement Wonder’ as well, lack of soldiers was clearly not their problem
  
  Delete all other Govs except Democracy (Netherlands, Belgium,...) and Monarchy (Russia, Ottoman Empire). Make Democracy untradable too. The only Government that should be available later (new/other Tech) is Bolshevism. Hmm...what about ‘Fascism’ coming with ‘WW1 Experience’? Set ‘AI Maximum Governement Transition Time’ rather high for all levels; if someone with a ‘bad’ Gov like Russia gets Bolshevism, it will revolt ASAP (the AI will automatically, but even a human player should do so), and get ~10 turns of Anarchy. Bolshevism as a mid-game Tech (which Germany is quite likely to research faster than Russia) would also allow the nice strategy of granting Bolshevism to them via a neutral country, and using the resulting Anarchy phase to finish them off .
  Could play a little with draft rate and unit supports
• I know about the problems with War Weariness, but consider TGW ended because of the German, A-H and earlier Russian Gov being overthrown for exactly that reason, and France was rather close to that mid-war...mid-level WW seems quite appropriate; anti-WW improvements are cumulative, so there is a way to fight it, at least as long as you’re not suffering to many casualities. Forces you to either win in time, or revolt to Bolshevism/ Fascism if you have it, otherwise you only can revert back to Monarchy, the only Gov available to everyone.
• Golden Ages: If I see that correctly, Germany is set to trigger a GA with the Schlieffen Plan, everyone else will trigger with the American War Entry and the League of Nations, right? If assigning traits, the appropriate flags need to be checked.

Bugs:

• Default AI level is ‘Sid’ – in other words, the AI has the same OCN/ waste like a human player on Sid, why that? If you want a real challenge, you’d have to set the AI level to Chieftain, with literarily no corruption.
• The MkIV (and only the MkIV) has the ‘Airlift’ flag checked.

Like several others already keep mentioning, the loading time is not acceptable; the game freezes at displaying ‘The Austrians are building The Schlieffen Plan’ for about 10 minutes, and I have a state-of-the-art Dell. There simply should be no reason why it could take considerably longer than the ‘Middle Ages’-Conquest.

(Everytime when I wrote ‘should’, this is intented to mean ‘Could you be so kind to consider to...?”, not “Do it that way, I know it better!” )
Comments?