The Third World War 1989

Hey Lionic. It's a great idea but at this point I don't want to start messing with and testing new concepts. Also, like r16 said, it can make the AI act in unpredictable ways as they chase invisible units (which happens with the spies in the Worldwide game).

I still want to get the new version of this up before the New Year, as this is now the second anniversary of the scenario already! As mentioned before, there won't be drastic changes this time, just the new units and reformed naval statistics, as well as some minor civilopedia corrections.

 

crebain is invisible, with no nation flag with 0 attack and 0 defence values and ı don't remember it ever being noticed or chased by AI . And if does , it would be simply one more notch up in reality . ı just read on an Osprey that SAS kept some part of always ready for deployment to Turkey , no matter what was happening on the Central Front . Hate and be hated , those were the days ı hear ... If that happens a non moving Turkish trawler or minefield in Çanakkale would keep the NATO out for the initial engagements . We were not expecting any help , especially after the Flexible Response became a thing .


with a thing nobody has ever sigged ever or something ...

this is the only risk for confusion as far ı am aware , that everybody can be in the same tile , with me leading Isengard to properly treat Mordor ...

 

OK, we are waiting). I am thinking of trying out South American or Middle Eastern theater of war.

 

as said before , my lap top ended up with legs up during the first turn and my experience is limited but people would be ratting it to the police , if the new scenario does not recognize the new stadium in Bursa , which was building in the city as default and which ı had turned into a factory or similar ...

 

Hi Tony! I have been looking through unit lists and found out that:
-Cuba is unable to have any AA units besides S-60. Shouldn't they be able to purchase at least ZSU-57, SA-2 or SA-6 as the war progresses?
-Iraq (and it seems other states that do not fight for USSR) may not build Soviet made SAM's but has a wide selection of Western models.
-Iraq has two BTR-60 units: Iraqi BTR-60 Mechanised Brigade and Middle Eastern BTR-60 Regiment. BTR-60 regiment is stronger (it seems stronger than any other Iraqi ground unit) and requires no Russia resource. Is it intentional?
-Egyptian Tu-16 squadron is a land unit.

 

-Cuba is cut off from outside resources since they don't have a port. I could add some mobile SAMs, but I'm trying to figure out how the USSR is going to safely deliver them across the Atlantic.
-The Egyptian Badger will be fixed. Thanks
-Funny that you bring up Iraq because my most recent play has been them in an attempt to figure out how to fix Middle Eastern unit lines. This is a big part of why I haven't finished the newest version. I have to move units out of the Diplomacy Era because Iraq et al. can't access those techs currently. I think I am going to split up some of the units so that they require either the Russia or the Poland resource, to shake things up a little and give Poland some more bargaining power. Iraq will still have weak individual units, other than the Republican Guard.
-I also want to do a Yugoslavia game and look out for stuff there, too.

 

I planned an Iraqi game for myself, so that's no surprise.
- Cuban question is interesting. Tecnically USSR may supply Cuba via other countries that stayed neutral in this war, like it supplied Iran via North Korea in Iran-Iraq war. On another hand it's very likely that Cuba is under even heavier sanctions for fightig in Guyana and even neutral ship that attempts to reach it would likely be stopped on the way. On yet another hand Cuba may build T-72's, doubt that getting SAM's there is much more difficult.
- Republican Guard units are not replaceable, are they? I have read that Saddam constructed T-72 factory in Iraq, so maybe they could have some limited production of the tank?
- I think that at least SA-2 should be available to Middle Eastern powers even without Russia/Poland assistance. China or their own stocks should guarantee that.
- Regarding Iraq, I have read in Tom Cooper's "Iran-Iraq War in the Air" that it considered purchasing Mirage-2000's but stopped on MiG-29's instead, maybe it makes sense to give them such option?

 

Yeah, the way I'm thinking right now will probably be along the lines of:
T-55, BMP- Poland resource
T-62, T-72, Hind, Su-25-Russia resource
Type 59, SA-2-no resource (China exports)
Mirage, Roland-France resource

 

Hi Tony! Czech Su-25 uses the graphics of Bulgarian (actually Belorussian) Su-25, not the graphics of it's own air force. Is it intentional?

 

No, and thanks for catching that. It links to the wrong PRTO in the biq. It will be fixed in the new version.

 

This is a superior mod here thank you Anthony, I usually only play this in the summer,

I have a error report, after playing a couple times I get error 28- the font error and I think this is due to the 1989 menu screen, what font do I need to put in my folder OR, if that doesn't work how can I remove the picture?

Thanks in advance,

 

I don't know what that error is, freethink. The game doesn't use any special fonts and the menu screen shouldn't cause such an error. The menu screen shouldn't even show up unless you put it in the main conquests folder.

Perhaps someone here is familiar with this error?

 

Hi Tony! Just to let you know that I've started a Cuban game while waiting for a new version and I have noticed that Cuban gov-t is Democracy. You didn't mean it, did you?

Also there are only 3 technologies that I could research: Signal Analysis, Free Elections and Nuclear Decision.
Also some observations from Middle East:
- Saudi mobile artillery may not bombard.
- There was no activity from Iraqi gunships, probably they were not placed on the map.
- Algerian Su-7 may create craters, while Arabian Su-20 and 22's can not.
- Arab league seems to have no access to technology tree that allows sea trade, it is only possible to select technologies from Soviet era.

 

Wait, what? Cuba's not a democracy?

They were missing the Marxism-Leninism technology that gives them access to all the Era 1 Socialist techs.

All the errors you have found will be corrected. Thanks for your continued help in this.

The Arab League has to wait for other nations to build Petroleum Agreement small wonders in order to the connect the 'air trade'. This will only connect the Arabian peninsula; Jordan, Syria, and north Africa are all isolated regions.

Thanks for being patient. It's going to take time before I can get the new version completed.

 

Not as democratic as People's DEMOCRATIC Republic Korea, but still better than those suspicious Westerners.

Thank you for clarifying about Arabian peninsula. I was worrying that this would be useless region for unit production.

 

I've got to say, I've been lurking for years, but I've just now signed up to comment on this scenario and give feedback. AnthonyBoscia, you have created a massive, immersive scenario. It's very impressive. I can't imagine the time and effort that went into making this, but I appreciate it, because it's great, and very detailed. Unfortunately for me, I have windows 10. Civilization III will play, but only if I don't patch it. I have to play on version 1.00. If I patch to 1.22, I get the "run as administrator" error, and the game never starts. So I've been playing all the scenarios on version 1.00, and they seem to work fine. Even more unfortunate for me, this seems to prevent me from playing this excellent scenario with the "No Raze" patch. Nothing happens when I try to start it. So I can only play it through regular Civ, although the AI has razed a number of cities, and I wonder how this affects it's decisions.

Nonetheless, I had to try this scenario, so I started a game as Iraq. The ability to play as them was actually a draw for me. Lately I've been fascinated by the discrepancy between what analysts expected us to face in the Gulf War, and what actually happened. As I'm sure you know, many experts were expecting the war to be a Korea-style slugfest. We were expecting to face fanatical soldiers, hardened by a recent 8 years of experience in one of the most brutal conflicts of the century. They would be armed with top-of-the-line, or nearly top-of-the-line Soviet equipment - Mig 29s, T-72s, etc. The actual conflict was probably one of the most lopsided in human history. On paper, Iraq should have been formidable, but in practice, their performance was anything but. That fascinates me. It has inspired me to do some reading on the Gulf war, and the Iran-Iraq war.

So far, my game has been nothing special. I've probably discovered 3 or 4 techs, but the middle east has been awfully quiet. I've decided to support the United States, and when I refused tribute to the Soviet Union, they declared war. I debated on whether to send an expeditionary force to help the Turks, who were being beseiged about 4 or 5 turns distance from me. However, I decided against it, reasoning that the RG would be the only units with even a remote chance of standing up to the Soviet army in Turkey, even if they were in a weakened state - and the RG is irreplaceable. Also, 4 or 5 turns seemed like an awfully long distance for Iraq to project power, and I decided that my ground troops should be used to protect the homefront, and deal with local conflicts should they flare up. However, I built an airbase at the extreme northern edge of the country and stationed planes and artillery to bombard Soviet units as they advanced into Turkey, and possibly towards Iraq. To my total surprise, my F1 Mirage and Mig-23 shot down two Soviet ground attack planes that tried to strafe me, and I destroyed two weakened Soviet units with my own ground attack planes. I'm afraid to use my TU-22, as it's the only one I have, and can't be replaced. I don't want it shot down. Once Kars was razed, the Soviets left and their army turned around. The game has been pretty boring since then. I believe the Soviets are currently making their way to the outskirts of France, having razed several cities on the way. The Americans seem to have made a daring and highly successful Inchon-like landing in the Soviet Union, capturing Leningrad, Vyborg, and seemingly razing 4 other cities, the last being deep in the Soviet Union.

Anyway, I have some feedback regarding the middle eastern units.

1. First, have you ever read Arabs at War by Kenneth Pollack? If you haven't, it might make a great research tool for this scenario. The author gives a detailed and scholarly treatment of the military history of several middle-eastern armies such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and more. He primarily focuses on their combat effectiveness or lack thereof. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I have skimmed parts of it, and some of the stories are mindblowing. The shocking incompetence displayed by many of these armies boggles the mind.

2. I feel like many of the units of Iran and the Arab League might be overpowered. Regular Iranian infantry stats are 13 attack and 13 defense. However, Iraq's RG infantry, their elite forces, are only 8 and 12 respectively. Likewise, many of the tank units these nations field are noticeably superior to even Iraq's best, even if they have the same equipment. With forces like that, how could the Iran-Iraq war - which ended only a year prior - have ended in a stalemate (or an Iranian Pyrrhic victory?) Similarly, Syria's army seems quite strong. Perhaps these numbers are perfectly justified. I haven't studied these matters in any detail, but the little I've read in that book doesn't inspire confidence in those armies. How do you calculate the stats of these units?

3. Also, the unit line for Iraq seems to contain superfluous units, or units of little use. For instance, I can build both Iraqi and the generic Arab infantry. However, Arab infantry is better on defense, yet costs the same. Why would I ever build the specific Iraq unit if given a choice? Likewise, the Iraqi recon unit (Attack value 10, defend 8) is noticeably inferior to the BRDM-2 recon unit [stats 12.(20)12]. Also, the Iraqi BTR-50 mechanized unit (stats 8.10) offers inferior stats than any of the aforementioned vehicle units, and yet costs more and requires several more turns to build than any of them. Finally, along the same lines, the middle-eastern BTR-60 regiment (stats 18.18) is superior to both the Iraqi T-54 and the Iraqi T-62, yet it costs much less than either of them. Why should I build these other units instead of focusing on the handful which offer superior capability at a lower cost?

4. The middle eastern SP artillery offers a bombard rate of 30 and costs 400 shields, while the middle eastern D-30 has a bombard rate of 28 and costs 250 shields. This seems more justifiable given that the SP artillery unit offers a higher attack and defense, and an extra movement point. However, for artillery purposes, I don't see the purpose of spending almost twice as long to build an artillery unit with only minimal increase in effectiveness. Again, that seems more justifiable than the units I described in paragraph 3 because of the other stats, but those are my thoughts. Also, clicking on the civilopedia entry for the ME SP artillery links to Iraqi 2S3.

I hope I wasn't too harsh! I think this scenario really is breathtaking in its detail - you even have the detailed order of battle for every nation. It's quite a lot of fun too!

 

Hi Tony!

- Should the Palestinian brigades be buildable? Currently they require NATO War preparations.
- BTR-152 units in North Africa can transport troops;
- I agree with Dr Talon about BTR-60 being far too good compared to T-54/55 units of Middle Eastern armies (or should I say T-54/55 being too weak and too expensive), the same issue is with Arab infantry brigades costing the same and being inferior to BRDM-2 recon units;

 

I found out that the "No raze" .exe runs on v. 1.21. Is there a way to fix this, or to get a no raze patch that works with 1.00?

Anyway, I had one more piece of feedback that I wanted to throw out there, and also give an update on the game I'm playing.

First, one thing I noticed is that Iraq has no special forces, yet in real-life, the republican guard had an entire division of special forces, including a special forces brigade and a brigade of paratroopers. Perhaps in the game they should have a unit?

Anyway, my game has gotten a lot less boring, although much less realistic. The US/NATO is now at war with Israel, the Arab League, Egypt, Iran, Yugoslavia, Romania, and the European neutrals. Some of those are plausible, but some are completely unbelievable. I know that asking for more is probably a degree of complexity that Civ III is not capable of, but it sure is a little bizarre.

 

Hey Dr. Talon. Thanks for the post and feedback, and it's too bad you're not able to play the game in its proper state. AI city razing is devastating for the integrity of the game. I'm still using Windows 7 so I wouldn't be of much help in troubleshooting the windows 10 issues, which I haven't been following closely. The no raze patch will only work with the most recent (v 1.21). Due to real world concerns this year, very little progress is being made right now on this and other civ 3 projects, although they will eventually get completed. The one upside of the delays is the new units that are becoming available to add.

As you may have read in the thread, I also have recently played as Iraq to get an idea of how well the Middle Eastern balance works. By necessity, this was the least play-tested part of the scenario because all the NATO and Warsaw Pact civs had to take priority. Your observations on the Gulf War are absolutely correct. The Iraqi army was enormous and their most modern equipment (MiG-29, Roland, F1, T72, etc.) was a major concern to coalition planners, even if it made only a small part of their forces. The CENTCOM plan was very conservative in many ways as limiting casualties was foremost on their minds. As you mentioned, high losses (probably in the 20-30,000 range) seemed quite probable. 1 ID was expected to be combat ineffective after breaching the berm and opening up VII Corps' advance, so when it survived almost intact it was given the mission of guarding the corps flank. The coalition forces used their advantages to pick apart each facet of the Iraqi defense, eventually unraveling the whole.

Here's a brief summary on Arab unit stats and why they are the way they are. With Civ 3's system, the human player has enormous advantages, especially concerning bombardment, air units, and missile units. The human player can pick apart a strong AI by judicious use of proper bombarding, and in the regular game this can often happen without losing any units. The Arab nations were primarily designed to be AI controlled. If their stats were severely reduced (to probably better reflect their real-world capabilities), they would be an even bigger pushover for invading Soviets or Americans. Basically their stats are giving their fighting capabilities the benefit of the doubt. The exception to this is Iraq, and the reason is that Iraq's army is comparatively so much bigger than its neighbors. If they were even in stats, they could easily walk all over Iran, Saudi, and everyone else nearby. If I get to the point where I make a multiplayer version, these stats will most likely be altered to make all Middle Eastern nations weaker.

Iraq's unit roster is a soup sandwich for a couple reasons. When first designing the game, I made individual units for each nation. The intention was to have unique stats, graphics, and civilopedia entries for all units. Once I built the scenario, however, the sheer number of units available (and specifically their graphics) were too much for a single CPU core to handle and the game would crash. Therefore, I consolidated a lot of entries, such as the various types of Arab infantry, to save space. The downside, as you saw, was that units with different stats that share the same entry (the PRTO_) will get mixed up in the civilopedia. In addition, I never got to the point where I could streamline the unit roster for the Middle Eastern states. This is what I am working on now. So the answer to your questions of why Iraq has multiple units of varying quality is that I simply couldn't finish the roster properly, because the European nations had to take priority. Iraq will probably get appropriate special forces as well.

I'm familiar with Kenneth Pollack but haven't read his book. I've been catching up on books I have and re-reading some before delving into new ones. Might have to check it out.

There's no way to correctly align or influence countries to be more or less friendly in Civ 3. Either they are in a locked alliance from day one, or can attack anyone they please. I didn't want Israel, Saudi, etc. at war with Warsaw Pact from the start, mostly because this would further slow game times during the crucial opening phase.

Thanks for the great feedback and look forward to hearing more of your input and game progress. Reading about people's games is probably the most helpful feedback in trying to balance the scenario.

Lionic: Palestinian Armor can only be auto-produced by the State of Palestine wonder (with Balthasar's great building graphics). I think the mech infantry is currently unavailable, probably because I didn't find a way to fit it in. These are meant as flavor units only.

 

Hi Tony! Could you check if Syrian Republic Guards T-72 were placed on the map? I have lost almost all Syrian T-72's in my course of actions, but I am 99% sure that there were all the same quality.
In other news Arabs don't seem to have access to Merchant Marine tech and therefore to Sea Transport. Also they don't know their own Arab Culture.