The Great War

[Chalito]

Week 34 - So I took Liege and Lods, but failed at Warsaw. I did a dumb thing and just kept throwing units into the meat grinder at Warsaw and also at the French Army units. I was basically tilting, like in a poker game. Saw the Brits approach with a decent force too. Held back my attack into the rest of Belgium as I kept sending reinforcements to Warsaw. The Russians sent a big force, but they weren’t attacking much, just wandering through the East German countryside.

Noticed the British navy kept attacking the sea mines, I think I’m taking these out for the AI’s sake. I had a navy unit attack something invisible and win, but then I get a message that the game had to close!!!

I’ll check the big and see if that was a mine I hit. Even more reason to get them out of there.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

^IIRC there was either a missing pedia entry or unit flc that caused the scenario to crash due to the mine.

 

[Belofon]

^IIRC there was either a missing pedia entry or unit flc that caused the scenario to crash due to the mine.

Yup. I've checked PediaIcons.txt, and it seems that most of ships entries are completely amiss.

 

[Chalito]

Giving this one another try, I removed all Naval Mines from the sea.

Germany - Major General Level

1914 Week 30 - sent forces to Liege and Warsaw only this time.
Bloody attack on Metz left many French units in the ground.

1914 Week 31 - Liege captured quickly, Warsaw captured after a fierce battle.
Fierce naval battle near Bremen and Riga in the east.

1914 Week 33 - Antwerp is captured! Bremen reduced to size 1 and all improvements except for three were destroyed by British naval bombardment, Damn!!! I guess that’s what the Naval Mines were there for.

1914 Week 34 - Lodz is captured! The Brits keep bombing Bremen even though there is nothing left to destroy. I rush build a bunch of Super Dreadnoughts to take some revenge. I have my eyes set an Ypres and then Brussels to eliminate the Belgians once and for all. There a bunch of Russian units all over the countryside in the east that I will need some time to clean up. For now I am content and not looking to push further east, yet.

 

[Chalito]

1914 Week 35 - Ypres is captured easily, Brussels is next!
-France declared war on the Spanish. Huge Italian force arrives at Ypres. Well they are going to slow me down a bit in the west.

1914 Week 36 - Brussels is captured! Calais is right on the border, but that’s just going to extend the front line, so I’m choosing to go to Verdun next and make a dash to Paris.
-British navy now going after Antwerp, grrrr! I have a lot of cash, so I’m just going to keep rush building Super Dreadnoughts. The rest of the Allies declared war on Spain.

1914 Week 37 - Approached Verdun and noticed a bunch of Brits hanging around, brought in 6 Flamethrower units from the east front, I’m thinking this battle could be bloody! Destroyed a bunch of British ships, but still so many more to go.
-British bombardment of Ypres now is unrelenting. British and French counterattacked took out a bunch of our units that were waiting outside Verdun.

1914 Week 38 - I hit Verdun with a bunch artillery but it did not reduce any French units in the town, I only just destroyed buildings in there. Not sure what is happening, how is the scenario is designed this way??? Decided to attack anyway and lost every flamethrower I sent it! I decide my to save my troops for later. I’m not attacking this town with all enemy defenders at full hit points.
-Mostly cleaned up the East now, but a fresh batch of 50 Russian cannon fodder, I mean infantry units arrived at Konigsberg. Most of the Italians have been taken care of in our new colony of Belgium. Major naval battles around London and Ypres’s I’m fighting the French, English and Portuguese navies. Taking some heavy losses, but destroying many ships too I think. Need to rush build some more navy!

 

[Chalito]

1914 Week 39 - Decided to attack Nancy, before Verdun instead as the border allowed me to attack the town from German territory and captured it! Arty was effective here and now I can blast Verdun from this town using arty, let’s see what happens! Hopefully I can hit their units now.

1915 Week 40 - Battle of Verdun was as bloody as expected, reduced their units with lots and lots of arty, including everything that was blasting the Russians out east. Ran out of attacking units and had to bring in Kavallier units from everywhere. There must have been over 40 French units in Verdun, but I was finally able to capture it. I killed what looked like a King unit.

1915 Week 41 - Huge French attack at Verdun, was a route, a whole bunch of French units were eliminated. I’m in a regrouping phase after Verdun, healing all of my injured units.

1914 Week 42 - 43. Mostly Regrouping, but decided to send a bunch of units to Brest and Chamblon. It’s go time! At sea, we’re taking it to the Brits, but suffering many losses. The Russian navy on the other hand is getting whipped every time they show up.

 

[Chalito]

1914 Week 44 - Brest and Chalons are captured pretty easily. I feel the French and Russian are hurting so I’m going to push for Paris now and immediately send 59 units to the southeast tile, ready for the attack!!! Leaving many front line cities without many defenders as a gamble
-As suspected not a lot of attacks by the French and Russians, they must be low on troops. Italians keep crossing the French border and they are just annoying!

1914 Week 45 - Set out for the close city of Grodno and captured it! Lubin is completely isolated now and will take that next if the Austrians don’t beat be too it.
Battle of Paris began with a massive Arty and Zepellin bombardment. Afterward the attack commenced, I lost some 23 units (the martyrs will be remembered forever), but my massive force overwhelmed the French and Paris is now mine!!! I now have my eyes on Reims and Versailles.

1914 Week 46 - sensing the French weakness I go for Reims and Versailles and captured both! I’m quite overextended now, but I believe France doesn’t have much to counter right now. In the East I divide my force in 2 to attack Lubin and Kaunas.

1914 Week 47 - Lubin and Kaunas captured in the East, troops advance to Arras and Amiens in the West.

1914 Week 48 - Arras captured!
-big French counter attack in Arras defeated. I can now see the Austrians battling the Russians.

1914 Week 49 - Amiens and Calais captured! Many units sacrificed to capture Calais.
-French attack on Verdun. I’m going to stop the offensive operations in the West for a bit to regroup. It’s time to go down south to Besancon and eventually give it to the Italians!

 

[Chalito]

I tried to get back on this, but the turns are long and I’m just getting a bit bored. The biggest problem is my own use of Artillery. It’s basically just rinse and repeat at this point going through every Russian and French city slowly. I think I need to limit my use of Artillery on the offense to keep me more motivated. Also all of the new units that keep popping up for Germany makes it a bit too easy for me. I’m thinking maybe it’s better to create different versions of the game for each main Civ. And maybe speed up the techs and timeline to be shorter.

 

[Ozymandias]

I tried to get back on this, but the turns are long and I’m just getting a bit bored. The biggest problem is my own use of Artillery. It’s basically just rinse and repeat at this point going through every Russian and French city slowly. I think I need to limit my use of Artillery on the offense to keep me more motivated. Also all of the new units that keep popping up for Germany makes it a bit too easy for me. I’m thinking maybe it’s better to create different versions of the game for each main Civ. And maybe speed up the techs and timeline to be shorter.

I've not done so with this mod, but you can try running it with @Flintlock's C3X.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

I tried to get back on this, but the turns are long and I’m just getting a bit bored. The biggest problem is my own use of Artillery. It’s basically just rinse and repeat at this point going through every Russian and French city slowly. I think I need to limit my use of Artillery on the offense to keep me more motivated. Also all of the new units that keep popping up for Germany makes it a bit too easy for me. I’m thinking maybe it’s better to create different versions of the game for each main Civ. And maybe speed up the techs and timeline to be shorter.

Have you also disable trade across oceans and set all maintenance costs for buildings to zero? That will help speed up turns.

This scenario, El_Justo's The Cold War, and WW2 Global all share that basic rinse and repeat of massive artillery bombardments and moving on from town to town. For me that is the hook that keeps me playing Civ 3. I'm the kind of person who loves this kind of tedium. Just wish the AI was a tad bit more challenging.

 

[CorvusFortis]

My work on graphics (and slight gameplay) update is almost complete.

I have, however, one serious matter to decide: pop cost for units. It is really nice flavour addition to represent mobilization, however, I always found it having little impact on actual gameplay.

The main problem with it for me - it only affect infantry and cavalry units. Machine guns, artillery, tanks, navy - all just costs shields. And since there are a lot of quite accessable lethal land bombardment artillery, why even bother building infantry and cavalry? My usuall strategy - defend stacks of artillery with machine guns, bombard everything to death/red line, finish off/take cities with partisans/starting infantry. I also noticed that AI seem to be preferring partisans over infantry, and I suspect that pop cost is the matter.

I really don't want to change much, and so far all my tweaks were based on discussions in this thread. Yet this one looks important. I have the following thoughts:

1) Just leave everything as it is. My initial intent was just to make one of my favourite scenarios look better. I can just fix the bugs and stop there;
2) Give pop-cost for all units. This willl mostly eliminate human player advantage and probably make building strategy more thoughtful. But I suspect it to make to much of an impact. In theory, it can cripple AI too, draining them of popullation;
3) Just remove pop-cap all together. Only infantry and cavalry units have it anyway, there's enough population, it barely affects the game, but gives slight advantage to human players. So, probably, removing it won't affect the experience, but make the game more consistant. Or am I missing something important?

Before making the decision, I would like to hear other opinions.

 

[Chalito]

The population increases so rapidly in this scenario that it really doesn’t affect the human player much at all. But if it’s forcing the AI to build lesser units, then I would vote to eliminate it for all.

 

[Lanzelot]

I would also say, either have it for all units, or eliminate it for all. Strategies that allow circumventing the pop cost, defeat the purpose of having it. (I'm thinking especially for multiplayer.)
BTW: not sure whether this has already been mentioned here, but one bug that turned up in a multiplayer game, where it kind of spoiled a plan (we fixed it in the .sav kind of), was: the Civiopedia says, that tear gas units (or chlor gas, or whatever is the name of the first gas in the game) can be upgraded to mustartd gas, but in the game it cannot,

 

[Chalito]

Any update on the updated scenario?!?!?!??

 

[CorvusFortis]

Any update on the updated scenario?!?!?!??

Well, it was completed for about a month now, but I had some RL stuff to solve. I will upload it till the end of the month, I hope.

 

[CorvusFortis]

I really don't know, if it is worth of separate thread. Anyway, here it is, after almost two years of development, heh.

Yo can download TGW graphics update here.

Pics below.

Spoiler :

Credits:

Special thanks to Rocoteh and Sarevok - original creators of the scenario.

Graphics:

Special thanks to Delta_Strife and Vuldacon, who were kind enough to make units for this update at my request. Special thanks also goes to Moff_Jejerod, who kindly allowed me
to use Art content from his wonderful Le Grande Guerre scenario.

Aaglo
Batyskaff
Blue Monkey
Balam-Agab
Balthasar
Deth McBones
imperator1961
Kyriakos
NavyDawg
Pounder
Plotinus
ronning
tom2050
WildWeazel
Wyrmshadow

Contains minor balance updates and bugfixes, mostly inspired by discussions in the thread:

- removed pop-costs of units for better AI performance;
- removed lethal land bombardment for Zeppelins;
- slightly increased Russian Infantry offensive value;
- added ability to build Submarines to Germans;
- renamed Kaiserjager to Stormtrooper, updated civilopedia accordingly;
- removed sea trade from ports and air trade from airdromes, gave sea trade to major ports for turn time reasons;
- added "wheeled" flag to tanks;
- Secret Police HQ is not tied to Bolshevism - any nation can build it;
- removed transport capacity from submarines.

This tweaks should not change core experience of the scenario.

Enjoy!

 

[Arexander]

You left the .biq in DEBUG mode, though that's an easy fix

 

[CorvusFortis]

You left the .biq in DEBUG mode, though that's an easy fix

I knew I would do it. Thanks, fixed now. Updated main files (really should have created a serapate .biq download just in case).
Attached fixed .biq here too.

 

[Chalito]

Thank you!!!

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Thank you Corvus for this update. I can't wait to give it a try!!