The Spanish Civil War v4 for ToT + ToTPP + Lua - Development Thread [ON HOLD]

Oh yes of course, I'm using that feature in my Rules.txt file. What I meant with my previous message is that I mean to represent each civ2 unit into something that makes sense battle-wise (ground vs ground, air vs air, air vs ground, vs sea, etc). I've seen many scenarios in the past (and I've made that mistake myself too) with a ship unit shore bombarding and wiping out entire divisions, because the civ2 unit representation was too off. What I want to achieve with my game is that a batte victory (a unit is destroyed) is something that could make sense.

In that case, another feature you might be interested in looking into is the Attacks Per turn limit. Again as per the guide:

Code:
65. Attacks per turn: Enables a new section in RULES.TXT, @ATTACKS.
The numbers in this section define the number of attacks per turn per unit type. The section itself consist of a list of numbers, 10 per line, corresponding in order to the entries in @UNITS. For the Original game, it would look like this:

@ATTACKS
1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2,
2, 2, 3, 1, 1, 1, 2, 10, 8, 6,
14, 12, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 5, 5,
4, 3, 5, 5, 12, 16, 2, 3, 1, 2,
1, 1, 4, 8, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,

The number of attacks is limited by the movement rate, as each attack still costs 1 movement point.
The popup shown when a unit is out of attacks can be overridden in GAME.TXT using the key @ATTACKSPERTURN.

I'm only not too convinced between the infantry vs armoured (150 soldiers vs 6 tanks in real life), but it's the only way the latter can have an active role in-game. It's hard to balance historical accuracy with playability...

I'm not sure about the scale you are intending to use here. I'm not an expert on the matter for certain, but didn't the conflict involve hundred of thousands of combatants on each side at its height? If the scenario is designed to cover the entire Spanish Civil War, won't trying to represent it at the company level represents hundreds if not thousands of units. That would certainly be considered a monster sized scenario for sure!
 
Ok That @attacks feature really looks useful, if I got it right, it allows you to set a smaller value than the movement rate. So for instance you can set up a unit with movement 2 to attack only once, but not vice-versa. This can definitely help me balancing high movement units (tanks, motorised units and ships) to actually make much fewer attacks.

And yes, there were multiple infantry divisions and several hundred airplanes and vehicles. Given the scale of the map and the actual casualties taken on both sides, we'd be talking about several hundred civ2 units. I can't wait to finish setting everything up and start the actual playtest to see how everything behaves
 
Ok That @attacks feature really looks useful, if I got it right, it allows you to set a smaller value than the movement rate. So for instance you can set up a unit with movement 2 to attack only once, but not vice-versa. This can definitely help me balancing high movement units (tanks, motorised units and ships) to actually make much fewer attacks.

It's been a long while since I tried to use the feature (the last time was for my Vietnam scenario but the feature had a bug at that time, which has since been fixed) but I can say that Techumseh as successfully implemented it in his upcoming 1937 scenario.

In essence, you should be able to set up many different logical combinations. For example:
You could decide that ALL units can only attack ONCE per turn regardless of their movement rate,
You could decide that ALL units can attack up to TWICE per turn regardless of their movement rate (of course units with only 1 MP could still only attack once),
You could set the attack rate for each unit INDIVIDUALLY,
You could limit the number of times a unit with 6 movement points to 2 attacks per turn,
etc

In essence, you have a lot of freedom, provided it makes sense, i.e. like I said no point giving 4 attacks per turn to a unit that only has a 1 movement point per turn.
 
In essence, you have a lot of freedom, provided it makes sense, i.e. like I said no point giving 4 attacks per turn to a unit that only has a 1 movement point per turn.

I will definitely give it a try, thanks for the suggestion
 
Just to let you know, the onInitateCombat event allows you to end combat with both units still alive. So, if you wanted, you could have a calculation where units retreat (or call off the attack) after they have taken some damage, provided there is a square to retreat to. It will also allow you to modify combat statistics based on the battle circumstances. E.g. an anti-tank gun might have no combat strength itself, but could give infantry units a combat bonus versus tanks.
 
Just to let you know, the onInitateCombat event allows you to end combat with both units still alive. So, if you wanted, you could have a calculation where units retreat (or call off the attack) after they have taken some damage, provided there is a square to retreat to. It will also allow you to modify combat statistics based on the battle circumstances. E.g. an anti-tank gun might have no combat strength itself, but could give infantry units a combat bonus versus tanks.

That's a super interesting concept that I really see usefulness on air attacks...right now in standard civ2, you send a bomber unit to attack a ship and combat will end either with the ship sunk, or all airplanes shot down. Implementing this, you can still have some "returning airplanes" which caused damage to the ship without sinking it. Really interesting...thanks for the hint!
 
Quick update: all naval and air units have been placed for scenario start for both sides and now match historical numbers and locations. Now I need to focus on the land units.

I've also decided the new update of the scenario will start depicting the global situatrion as of 22nd July 1936 (instead of the 18th), once the situation was more or less stable. Between the 17th July (1st revolt of the Morocco Protectorate) and that day too many cities switched sides too quickly and the situation was too uncertain to be depicted in a civ2 scenario successfully. Most of the warships, whose commanders followed the revolt, suffered a series of mutinies by their crews between the 18th and 20th July which put them back into Republican control, and also many pilots defected with their airplanes to the other side.

And now, just some screenshots which show how I've moved/renamed some cities, and expanded and corrected the original map. Please ignore the units present, these are to be repositioned.

Ebro area (new course of the Ebro river, amended city placement, included extra key cities:

OLD v3

old.png


NEW v4

new.png


Strait of Gibraltar area (expanded the map South including all of Spanish Morocco, amended the coastline in Gibraltar and Cádiz:

OLD v3

old_strait.png


NEW v4

new_strait.png
 
Hi all, just a brief update: I'm still placing all scenario start ground units based on historical research, reliable July 1936 OOBs and misc. publications I've found (again, all the information available to me 20 years after I first published the scenario is outstanding and allows me to be much more accurate) and then I am applying the civ2 unit conversion ratios I explained in this post.

I'm also adding damage points to most units to reflect historical reduced manpower. Due to the summer holiday season and rumours about a possible coup, a huge number of leave permissions among officers and soldiery were granted and all fighting units were between 50% and 80% of their effective numbers (I have the actual percentages available on each division).

As you can see, I'm putting a huge effort in historical accuracy in this scenario revamp, I really hope playability doesn't get affected :)
 
I'm also adding damage points to most units to reflect historical reduced manpower. Due to the summer holiday season and rumours about a possible coup, a huge number of leave permissions among officers and soldiery were granted and all fighting units were between 50% and 80% of their effective numbers (I have the actual percentages available on each division).
That's a great idea. Well done !
 
Two quick screenshots on how I've implemented some of the extra terrain slots allowed by ToTPP. Now I have slots for the three basic crops in Spain: Wheat, Olives and Vineyards (the Mediterranean trilogy since ancient times), plus strategic resources such as mining or heavy industry.

So below you can see the Northern Andalusia (Jaén) region and its endless olive fields contrasted with the Valdepeñas vineyards North of Sierra Morena, and in between, the coal and silver mines in the Linares-La Carolina district.

But also North of Andújar, the Guardia Civil garrison from Jaén has revolted against the Republic and entrenched in the Virgen de la Cabeza sanctuary. Will they resist? More info on these events here.

2022-03-08 12_32_46-Civilization II_ Test of Time.png


And below the cereal fields of Castille, land also home of the delicious Ribera del Duero, Toro and Zamora wines...

2022-03-08 12_34_29-Civilization II_ Test of Time.png


That's all for now.
 
Given placing and editing scenario starting units is extremely tedious and boring (especially when one tries to fine-tune to meet historical figures as I said earlier - placing only the Army of Africa already took me several hours), after a short holiday break to go to Spain to see family I've been designing on paper how the combat system will work in my scenario revamp. I don't know if it's been done before (I haven't played most of the new TOTPP/Lua based scenarios out there), but I think Lua will allow me to do the following in combat:

1) Add dynamic bonuses/penalties to combat according to unit types (applied to both attacker and defender): This means that I can add bonuses to MGs against infantry units but penalise against armoured units, to AT guns against armoured units, to AA artillery against airplanes, to naval bombers against ships, etc regardless of what the original unit stats in the Rules.txt file say. This is extremely useful to force the human player to choose wisely which unit use to attack another. Unfortunately, I don't think the AI will be able to handle this given the limited unit domains, therefore these bonuses/penalties won't be too high in order to balance gameplay.

2) A combat will not always result in either the attacker or the defender destroyed. I'm going to favour chances for the attacker to abort the attack and regroup if taking severe casualties. There will be a random factor in place that will simulate "ambushes" where the attacking unit is completely destroyed, but in general (let's say 90% of the time, I'll playtest this), the attacker will stop the attack once X hit points are taken. With this I want to avoid the usual "endless civ2 kamikaze" attacks and the "fortress in a mountain" effect, while also being able to send bombers against targets with the chance to have planes coming back to base as it would be in real life and without implementing "ammunition" techniques. Also I want to add extra random modifiers inspired by the Hearts of Iron/Darkest Hour games, like "brekthrough", "encirclements", "surprise attacks", "counterattacks", "tactical withdrawal" etc that will increase or decrease the chances of victory in combat or the amount of damage taken/inflicted.

Both ideas on combat came inspired by @Prof. Garfield 's comments here.

Also regarding general movement, I am going for realistic airplane, land and ship movement ranges, therefore I'll implement the @ATTACKS section in the Rules.txt as @tootall_2012 advised here. With this, given each turn is a calendar month, I can have realistic naval movements based on the scale of the map (we'll be able to divert ships from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay and vice-versa wherever they are most needed without taking "years") in a single turn, but only allowing them to engage in combat a few times. This will also allow the player to deploy newly received reinforcements from the ports to the frontlines in the same turn, avoiding what (in my opinion) was the worst aspect of all previous versions of my scenario: endless and tremendously boring movement of hundreds of units from Cádiz, Cartagena, Barcelona and Valencia ports to wherever they were needed, taking an unrealistic huge amount of turns to cross 1000 km :). Of course the Nationalist troop transports used to move the Army of Africa from Morocco to the South of Spain will be an exception to this and will still have a very limited movement rate and will keep the trirreme flag, as I still need to simulate the difficulties to cross the Straits of Gibraltar with most of the Republican Navy controlling its waters.

That's all for now, soon I'll post some unit previews grouped by unit type and sides. As always, happy to hear your thoughts!

Thanks,

Pablo
 
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And now some of the beautiful bits.

First preview batch of units by master designer @Fairline. This batch is focused on the artillery (including AA) and heavy/medium MG units present in the scenario. Artillery is usually forgotten on many scenarios but there's plenty here as I wanted to showcase the huge variety and disparity of foreign equipment we used.

SCW_Arty_MGs.png


First row: Standard-issue Spanish Army units as of July 1936

From left to right:
  • Schneider 70/16 M1908
  • Schneider 75/28 M1906
  • Vickers 105/22 M1922
  • Schneider 155/13 M1917
  • Skoda 76.5 mm M1919 AA
  • Hotchkiss 7 mm M1914 AA
  • Hotchkiss 7 mm M1914
  • Colt-Browning 7 mm M1914
Second row: Sent to both sides during the war from different sources

From left to right:
  • 37 mm M1916 TRP
  • Krupp-Ansaldo 75/27 M1906
  • Krupp 77/24 C.96 nA
  • Skoda 100/17 M1914
Third row: Sent to the Republican side from different sources

From left to right:
  • Puska-Maklen 37 mm M1917
  • 45/32 M1932 AT
  • Putilov 76.2 mm M1902/30
  • OQF 114 mm (4.5-inch) M1910
  • 76.2 mm M1931 (3-K) AA
  • Bofors 40 mm wz.36 AA
  • Oerlikon 20 mm AA
  • Maxim 7.62 mm M1910
Fourth row: Sent to the Nationalist side from different sources

From left to right:
  • 3.7 cm PaK 36 AT
  • Terni 65/17 M1913
  • 10.5 cm leFH 18
  • Skoda 149/12 M1914
  • 8.8 cm FlaK 18 AA
  • 7.5 cm FlaK 14 AA
  • 3.7 cm FlaK 18 AA
  • 2 cm FlaK 30 AA
  • Breda 20/65 M1935 AA
  • Fiat-Revelli 6.5 mm M1914
 
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Add dynamic bonuses/penalties to combat according to unit types (applied to both attacker and defender): This means that I can add bonuses to MGs against infantry units but penalise against armoured units, to AT guns against armoured units, to AA artillery against airplanes, to naval bombers against ships, etc regardless of what the original unit stats in the Rules.txt file say. This is extremely useful to force the human player to choose wisely which unit use to attack another. Unfortunately, I don't think the AI will be able to handle this given the limited unit domains, therefore these bonuses/penalties won't be too high in order to balance gameplay.

I just found out this is already being worked at :) https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/controlling-lua-enhancements-with-rules-txt.675741/page-2
 
Thanks @Locopath!

Second preview batch of units by master designer @Fairline. This batch is focused on the naval units present in the scenario.

SCW_Naval.png


First row: Gunboats and Destroyers

From left to right:
  • Gunboat/Trawler - Graphic inspired in the Cánovas del Castillo gunboat class (3 ships), however it will also depict the older Recalde class (2 ships), several torpedo boats and the numerous "bous" (armed trawlers) used in the North.
  • Alsedo class DD - 3 destroyers, 2 in Republican service and one in Nationalist
  • Churruca class DD - 14 destroyers, all of them initially in Republican service.
  • Aquila class DD - 2 purchased from Italy and entering into Nationalist service in 1937
  • Alessandro Poerio class DD - 2 purchased from Italy and entering into Nationalist service in 1937
Second row: Cruisers

From left to right:
  • Méndez Núñez CL - Blas de Lezo class, 1 light cruiser in Republican Service
  • Navarra CL - Reina Victoria Eugenia class, 1 light cruiser in Nationalist service, repaired and put into service in June 1938
  • Cervera class CL - 3 light cruisers, 2 in Republican service and one in Nationalist
  • Canarias CA - Canarias class, 1 heavy cruiser in Nationalist service
  • Baleares CA - Canarias class, 1 heavy cruiser in Nationalist service
Third row: Battleships and Submarines

From left to right:
  • España class BB - 2 old dreadnoughts, one on each side.
  • B class SS - 6 submarines, all of them in Republican service
  • C class SS - 6 submarines, all of them in Republican service
  • Archimede class SS - 2 submarines delivered by Italy and entering into Nationalist service in 1937
  • Italian Legionarii SS - 4 undercover Italian submarines operating with the names of General Sanjurjo II, General Mola II, González López and Aguilar Tablada
Fourth row: Transports and special event units

From left to right:
  • Convoy - Depicts any seaworthy vessel used to transport the Army of Africa from Morocco to mainland Spain.
  • Transport
  • Soviet freighter
  • Deutschland CA - Attacked in 1937 while docked in Ibiza - more info here.
  • Admiral Scheer CA - Bombed the city of Almería in 1937 - more info here.
 
Hi, just a quick update: I'm currently studying for a technical certification exam (for work) which I'm taking at the end of April so Civ2 had to be put aside for a little while and I'm not making great progress with my scenario revamp. However, on breaks I continue planning "on paper" the placement of all the starting units in a consistent way to meet the historical situation as of 22nd July 1936. My OOBs and documentation are as of pre-war situation mid-July 1936 so I need to research how the "coup" evolved on every single city, what happened to its garrisons and find out the troop/column movements between the 18th and the 22nd July until the frontlines more or less stabilized. This is tricky but rewarding at the same time as I continue learning deeper about the Spanish Civil War overall.

In other news, I might be able to free up some unit slots to include even more different stuff (more militia and police corps) as I think Lua will allow me to especifically identify a particular unit itself by storing and working with the unit ID itself (as per the unit object documentation).

Example situation: I want to have separate events and in one instance even different unit stats for the two Canarias class cruisers (Canarias and Baleares) and the two Deutschland pocket battleships (Deutschland and Admiral Scheer), as they performed different actions, pretty much look the same (with slight differences) and I want to differenciate between them in-game. In the "old world" of macro events, I couldn't re-use the same unit slot and I'd be forced to use different slots & names. But with Lua I believe I can create a unit of a particular type and then store its ID internally, so then in combat I can identify it and dinamically amend its attributes if I want. Also show different texts when that unit with a particular ID is killed, etc. Please correct me if I'm wrong :)

I also plan to invest heavily in location-based events. Again, thanks to Lua the unit object can return the unit location and work with it. This is going to be crucial in my scenario revamp as to compensate the AI flaws, back in the previous MGE version I was using a lot of "if unit killed then create unit...etc", but the location I was creating the "compensating units" was static. This time I can actually create units close to the locations where I need them, where the combats are actually happening. I can also have specific texts based on where a unit is killed...the possibilities are limitless.

That's all for now.

Pablo
 
In other news, I might be able to free up some unit slots to include even more different stuff (more militia and police corps) as I think Lua will allow me to especifically identify a particular unit itself by storing and working with the unit ID itself (as per the unit object documentation).

Yes, this is possible. The only issue is that the only way I know of for the player to tell the difference is with some sort of text box, which could get annoying really fast.

Example situation: I want to have separate events and in one instance even different unit stats for the two Canarias class cruisers (Canarias and Baleares) and the two Deutschland pocket battleships (Deutschland and Admiral Scheer), as they performed different actions, pretty much look the same (with slight differences) and I want to differenciate between them in-game. In the "old world" of macro events, I couldn't re-use the same unit slot and I'd be forced to use different slots & names. But with Lua I believe I can create a unit of a particular type and then store its ID internally, so then in combat I can identify it and dinamically amend its attributes if I want. Also show different texts when that unit with a particular ID is killed, etc. Please correct me if I'm wrong :)

This is possible as far as I know.
 
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