The Third World War 1989

[Ares de Borg]

Thank you very much for your hard work, Andy, and not only because of this masterpiece of a scenario, but also for the new units you've created. German tornados, finally!

 

[jlvfr]

Don't know if this would please you but I left Portugal as a separate side and combined Spain with France in my Cold War scenario))))

 

[jlvfr]

Found an error, and something I think should be altered:
-error: french navy's F-8 Crusaders can only bomb, not do "air superiority" missions. This is wrong, the F-8 was the navy's only interceptor.
-naval helicopters do not exist: you have the units but, afaik, we cannot embark them in any ship, other than carriers. This cripples ASW and ASuW warfare...

 

[Lionic]

Hi Tony! There are a couple more questions: a) what does "Red Air! Red Air!" message during the air raid means? b) May I suggest to FORBID REBASING Soviet PVO aircraft? On Day 2 Warsaw Pact suffered some disastorous air raids from all NATO countries, only a handful of E. German, Czech and Polish MiG's attempted to interfere, not a single Soviet fighter was there. One of the things that could have happened was that Soviets rebased many of their fighters into the newly "liberated" West German cities where they were all destroyed during the NATO counterattack next turn.

P.S. MiG-21's managed to knock down an AWACS and Mirage IV.

 

[nick0515]

Congratulations on releasing this magnificent scenario, Tony! The amount of effort you have put into this is truely impressive.

 

[Lionic]

I've spotted (or rather heard) a small bug in one of new units. Attack sound of one of the Spanish armored cars (not BMR600, another one) keeps on playing after the fight is over, in fact until I shut down the game.

 

[loki1232]

I'm having trouble playing this. Whenever I try to load the game it tells me it can't find the ini file for the Alize and Etendard fighters. Something about the french E with the accent is messing things up.

 

[Lionic]

Had the same problem. I suggest renaming Fr-Etendard and Alize ini's and folders into english characters without french symbols and correct the corresponding lines in Pediaicons.txt.

 

[Wolfhart]

Finally some time after all xmas chores to sit down, download this and take it for a spin.

First impression: Wow... Tony, this is an amazing game you've created! I'm awed by all the thought, research, creativity, and pure headsplitting fingernumbing work you've invested in this. It's overwhelming really, but above everything else it's a great play!!! I'm still learning some of the new concepts you've introduced and they make the game challenging and bloody exciting!

No game of this magnitude could be bug free from the start so I'll make a small contribution to next update: the warships of the Royal Danish Navy are accidentally Belgian in the game

 

[r16]

an uber nationalist here . Gave a try to the game playing Turkey , before ı somehow managed to wreck the entire Civ III . My computer certainly doesn't have the werewithal to play this but ı watched the Russian attack , the Bulgarians , the Greeks and presumably 5 Italian Tornadoes attacking Russian shipping . ı readily accept that the Russians would quickly sink anything in the Black Sea during the first day but would somehow like to challenge that they could travel to Med in just one day . Somehow knowing people who sort of had an interest in Soviet war games and planning ı would suggest that there should a way to prevent that . Maybe Neutral shipping in the Straits . Or perhaps by closing the Bosphorus so that Russians would have take the city by land forces . Which might necessitate hobbling all the Bulgarian forces wheeled or too good defensive lines that might require the Russian firepower .

don't worry about NATO operations in the Black Sea , it's common knowledge it would be us versus them . If that still needs a realisation create a NATO Black Sea Command under Turkish flag . The AI would certainly play it to fight the Russians in the Med anyhow .

the thing about this comes from a presumption that the Soviets assumed between 5 days and never to pass Marmara , might have been cut to 4 or so , if the Peoples Republic of Turkey came to reality . Supposedly Brejnev asked why it was so long , with all the nukes and tanks and MiGs and the answer was that we would close the straights by sinking the Black Sea Fleet in the straits . On top of each other just for fun .

and similarly US Tacair reinforcements to Turkey . Possibly with a base somewhere where 0 moving planes wait for the Turkish player to amass enough credit for upgrades to get flying . When the mutual hate became visible in the 1970s the Americans decided to move the plans to Iran where they build enough rampspace to handle 3000 combat jets . Talking of flank attacks . Was always a linchpin of Soviet planning to expect that , knowing it very well that they couldn't spare enough resources to counter it .

 

[Lionic]

To all Soviet Army fans out here, who had not played the scenario yet. Soviet forces are REALLY HUGE and I mean it. Even controlled by AI on the Day 12 they crushed low countries, finishing Western Germany and fighting deep in France.

 

[ARMOREDKING84]

First, let me say that I love the mod. You're making me regret scheduling a two-day trip to the mountains this weekend.

I'm having a problem saving unfortunately. When I try to save a game I receive an error saying that it isn't a valid pathway (I think that was the wording) and my autosaves give the error "Not a valid save file." I was planning on playing it normally and relying on autosaves, but since those aren't working I guess I have to play it the old school Super Nintendo way. Any advice on the issue? Has anyone ever encountered it before?

 

[KevinLancaster]

The game crashed after it couldn't find GR-M60.ini, when I checked it was named US-M60A3.ini.

Also I noticed that the time unit in the editor is weeks but then in the game the text was changed to days, which causes the problem of there being only 52 days in a year.

First, let me say that I love the mod. You're making me regret scheduling a two-day trip to the mountains this weekend.

I'm having a problem saving unfortunately. When I try to save a game I receive an error saying that it isn't a valid pathway (I think that was the wording) and my autosaves give the error "Not a valid save file." I was planning on playing it normally and relying on autosaves, but since those aren't working I guess I have to play it the old school Super Nintendo way. Any advice on the issue? Has anyone ever encountered it before?

I think the save file may be too big.

 

[Lionic]

I think it would be better to use weeks. I doubt that a tank regiment or brigade could be totally destroyed in just one day in conventional warfare even in so brutal as in this scenario.

 

[loki1232]

Had the same problem. I suggest renaming Fr-Etendard and Alize ini's and folders into english characters without french symbols and correct the corresponding lines in Pediaicons.txt.

This isn't working for me. Which lines of the pediaicons do i have to change? Also, do I have to change anything in the biq file?

 

[Lionic]

On example of Etendarde
1.Go to 1989/Text Folder, find the following lines:
#ANIMNAME_PRTO_FR-Йtendard
FR-Йtendard
2. Change it into:
#ANIMNAME_PRTO_FR-Йtendard
FR-Etendard
3. Go to Art/Units folder, find FR-Ptendard folder. Rename the folder into FR-Etendard
4. Go inside that folder and rename *ini file there into FR-Etendard.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Thanks for the nice comments and I appreciate you taking the time to provide feedback. I know the game is a lot to chew on so I hope it’s worth the time. I wanted to post a few responses, and also I included the first patch for some of the problems. The patch is at the end of post 1.

You've also managed one of the first real plausible late-century WWIII backstories I've come across.

Thanks, Thorvald. I don’t know if it’s plausible, but at least I didn’t have to rely on UFOs or time travel, I guess. 

So, I am playing for Eastern Germany and the Day 2 of WWIII has begun. On Day 1 I decided not to go on the offense before the Soviets, so I signed Right of Passage with USSR and Poland, dug-in my land units and put my air force on the air superiority, then ended turn.

Hey, Lionic. Nice turn report! The East Germans are kind of a mess in the game thanks to Civ III’s byzantine turn order method. When you play another power, the DDR moves first, followed by the Soviets, and then all other nations move in reserve order except that Germany and the U.S. are switched. I have no idea why the game does this. When you play as East Germany, however, the turn order starts at the top and works down, which of course makes NATO the aggressor and has the Soviet Union go last. This means that the DDR takes the brunt of the attacks. The Chieftains and Leopards are hard opponents one on one, but as you’ve probably seen, the Russians will crush them in the long run.

And now some of my questions/suggestions/complaints:
- Is it possible to make some sort of a spy satellite unit and give at least one to each Civ? It is not for military purpose, but I really would love to see "Battle for Atlantic" or "Battle for Norway" show which I could not do because I am stuck as a minor power in Europe or elsewhere?
- Eastern Germany has no ground strike aircraft, just a few Mig-21/23, I think there should be at least some Su-20. Also I've got no navy, although perhaps I am not supposed to. I also read that Eastern Germany was the only country in Warsaw Pact, besides Soviet Union, that operated S-300 SAM's, maybe they could have at least a battery?
- Szczecin does not have an access to the sea, was it meant to be that way?
- 2S7 has great animations, but it looks a bit small compared to 2S1, 2S3 and M110.
- I am a bit uncertain about Saudi Arabia. I could not imagine it alligning with Soviets against the West under any circumstances. Maybe it could be controlled by USA?

-The only issue with that is that you would only be able to see little spots in a big wide ocean, and it would add a bunch more units.
-Somehow the DDR attack squadrons went missing. I added them in: two Su-22 units (JBG-77 and MFG-28) and a MiG-23BN unit (JBG-37). As for the naval units, I haven’t added in a lot of small corvettes and coastal units because a) we don’t have unit graphics and b) I haven’t figured out a good way to represent them. In the future, I may add them in as flotillas or groups like the German subs.
-There was a reason Szczecin was cut off from the Baltic, but God knows what the reason was. One problem with coastal cities is that the AI will stack naval units there with like one land defender, and then they get overrun and wiped out.
-The 2S7 was added at the eleventh hour. I tried two versions, bigger and smaller, and chose the smaller one. So I could redo it, but it takes time to remake the whole unit.
-There is no way to make neutrals favor one side over the other. They are either neutral, or part of the locked alliance. I didn’t want the Middle East at war from the start. I know this risks dumb wars like U.S. vs. Israel or Syria vs. Russia, but to me it was preferable over Day 1 chaos in the Middle East.

First, to thank you for including Portugal. Saddly, in most scenarios/mods, we are either simply ignored or included with Spain. To see us properly represented in a scenario is a pleasure, so thank you!
I do, however, have one problem with the scenario: the maritime patrol aircraft. You have them moving around like naval units, which not only gives them unlimited range, it makes them vulnerable to attack by submarines! I realise that some soviet subs had short-range SAMs, but not all; and western subs had none. I ran the RAF for 3 turns, during which I lost all the Nimrods to sub attack... right after I sunk russian ships in the north of Norway, which is a bit far! I would suggest making them regular land-based aircraft with long scout/bombing range.
Also, should not right-of-passage exist from the start, within each aliance, since all the diplomatic niceties have gone out the door?
Edit: forgot one point: the UK has at least 2 units that seem to be for show, the Household Cavalry and the Victory. Is there any actual ingame reason for them? Can they be upgraded? If not, I'd recomend removing them. While I apreciate the fun factor, the turns are quite slow. If more countries have such units, eliminating them would help speed it up a bit.

-Hi, jlvfr. It was mentioned in the development thread that Portugal be folded into Spain and I was adamantly against it. 
-I didn’t want to make maritime patrol aircraft air units because the AI will simply use them to bombard tanks with torpedoes. To me, the option of making them sea units gave them a different purpose. As you pointed out, this makes them vulnerable to subs, but these are the limits of Civ 3 and we have to pick our poison. I like to stack them with regular ships (they’re flying overhead, right?) to protect them, and then use them to scout the area for subs wherever my fleet moves.
-RoPs cannot be implemented from the start of a scenario, unfortunately.
-As for turn times, I spent untold hours testing ways to reduce them. I would even use Steph’s editor to make clones of the game and wipe out whole classes of units to see which ones slowed the game down. I removed all immobile and superfluous units, including the REFORGER and historical units, and it made absolutely ZERO difference to the turn times. The huge turn times at the start are due to the air and Scud bombardments. For some reason, bombarding, especially hits, takes a large amount of time for the game to process. This is why the first two or three turns are much longer. Once these air units get wiped out, the game starts zipping by.

Found an error, and something I think should be altered:
-error: french navy's F-8 Crusaders can only bomb, not do "air superiority" missions. This is wrong, the F-8 was the navy's only interceptor.
-naval helicopters do not exist: you have the units but, afaik, we cannot embark them in any ship, other than carriers. This cripples ASW and ASuW warfare...

-Interception has been added for the Crusaders in the update. The civilopedia was correct, but not the unit.
-ASW helos in the game represent squadrons of 10-12, and so are meant only for the carriers or land-based units. Ships with 1-4 helicopters on board have the ASW abilities built into their numbers. Otherwise, there would be a hundred single helos rebasing to Germany to torpedo tanks. Also, this forces the small frigates and destroyers to get close to enemy subs, and risk getting sunk before they can find their target.

Thank you very much for your hard work, Andy, and not only because of this masterpiece of a scenario, but also for the new units you've created. German tornados, finally!

I finally realized the only way I was getting German Tornados was to make them myself. Thanks to Delta for the great model. It was fun researching the camo (the textures were a B to make), and even the wing and open cockpit angles are correct.

Who is Andy?

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Hi Tony! There are a couple more questions: a) what does "Red Air! Red Air!" message during the air raid means? b) May I suggest to FORBID REBASING Soviet PVO aircraft? On Day 2 Warsaw Pact suffered some disastorous air raids from all NATO countries, only a handful of E. German, Czech and Polish MiG's attempted to interfere, not a single Soviet fighter was there. One of the things that could have happened was that Soviets rebased many of their fighters into the newly "liberated" West German cities where they were all destroyed during the NATO counterattack next turn.

-‘Red Air’ was our TAC-SOP call if we were hit by enemy aircraft. So it seemed appropriate, if anachronistic.
-Although you can remove the rebase function, the AI can still rebase. Which sucks. Part of the problem there was because you are playing East Germany, the computer turns are out of order. Russia will usually rebase its aircraft to bases in the DDR away from NATO counterattacks. These airbases were very carefully placed on the map to be inside the correct city borders to prevent them being run over in the first couple turns. But these calculations go out the window when playing the DDR.

I've spotted (or rather heard) a small bug in one of new units. Attack sound of one of the Spanish armored cars (not BMR600, another one) keeps on playing after the fight is over, in fact until I shut down the game.

My guess is that it was the Attack B machine gun sound. I checked and the sound had ID tags which may cause it to screw up. A new sound is in the 1.1 patch in Post 1. I remember a similar problem in General JCL’s Barbarossa.

I'm having trouble playing this. Whenever I try to load the game it tells me it can't find the ini file for the Alize and Etendard fighters. Something about the french E with the accent is messing things up.

New entries are in the new patch. The old entries also remain so it should work with current saved games as well.

No game of this magnitude could be bug free from the start so I'll make a small contribution to next update: the warships of the Royal Danish Navy are accidentally Belgian in the game

Thanks, Wolfhart! The Danish frigates are back to their proper owner.

The game crashed after it couldn't find GR-M60.ini, when I checked it was named US-M60A3.ini.

Also I noticed that the time unit in the editor is weeks but then in the game the text was changed to days, which causes the problem of there being only 52 days in a year.

-The GR-M60 has been corrected. The INI file itself was named wrong.
-I had a long standing internal debate about the day/week thing. The days are more appropriate to the advance…the Soviets probably would get through to the Rhine in 5 days and overrun the Low Countries inside of two weeks. Also, naval movement is set to reflect days…it wouldn’t take five weeks to cross the Atlantic. But the 52 week thing obviously can’t be changed in the editor. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just change it to weeks at some point in the future.

an uber nationalist here . Gave a try to the game playing Turkey , before ı somehow managed to wreck the entire Civ III . My computer certainly doesn't have the werewithal to play this but ı watched the Russian attack , the Bulgarians , the Greeks and presumably 5 Italian Tornadoes attacking Russian shipping . ı readily accept that the Russians would quickly sink anything in the Black Sea during the first day but would somehow like to challenge that they could travel to Med in just one day . Somehow knowing people who sort of had an interest in Soviet war games and planning ı would suggest that there should a way to prevent that . Maybe Neutral shipping in the Straits . Or perhaps by closing the Bosphorus so that Russians would have take the city by land forces . Which might necessitate hobbling all the Bulgarian forces wheeled or too good defensive lines that might require the Russian firepower .

don't worry about NATO operations in the Black Sea , it's common knowledge it would be us versus them . If that still needs a realisation create a NATO Black Sea Command under Turkish flag . The AI would certainly play it to fight the Russians in the Med anyhow .

the thing about this comes from a presumption that the Soviets assumed between 5 days and never to pass Marmara , might have been cut to 4 or so , if the Peoples Republic of Turkey came to reality . Supposedly Brejnev asked why it was so long , with all the nukes and tanks and MiGs and the answer was that we would close the straights by sinking the Black Sea Fleet in the straits . On top of each other just for fun .

and similarly US Tacair reinforcements to Turkey . Possibly with a base somewhere where 0 moving planes wait for the Turkish player to amass enough credit for upgrades to get flying . When the mutual hate became visible in the 1970s the Americans decided to move the plans to Iran where they build enough rampspace to handle 3000 combat jets . Talking of flank attacks . Was always a linchpin of Soviet planning to expect that , knowing it very well that they couldn't spare enough resources to counter it .

Whenever I work on Turkey, I always ask myself, ‘What would r16 do?’ The open/closed Turkish Straits debate comes up in every scenario with Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. I tend to agree with you on a lot of points, and closing the straits would solve a lot of problems, including eliminating the port at İzmit, which helps turn times. Also, if you play a NATO power like Italy and move into the Black Sea, you are liable to get stuck because other countries park their ships in the Bosphorus. Plus, it is hard to represent Turkish land-based defenses that would surely make life miserable for Soviet ships trying to squeeze through. Turkey used to have some transports to ferry troops across the straits, but when played by the AI they would disappear for a few turns, and then reappear when they launched daring raids to recapture Aalborg or Hammerfest. So these transports were removed.

One idea I messed with was having some of the Black Sea Fleet start in the Med, presuming that they forward deployed to Syria or Libya before the conflict started. This is why the Naval Aviation units are located near Egypt, and also to discourage them from simply rebasing their missiles to Germany, which they always do anyway. So if we close the straits, maybe I’ll move some ships down there, although they have no way to replenish unless the Russians take İstanbul.

Early on in the game development, the USSR would move all its forces from all fronts to attack Marmara and it took a lot of coaxing for them to turn their attention back to Germany. At one point I played with a Turkish national resource so that invading Russians could establish a People’s Republic of Turkey (presumably with the TKEP) like they can in other countries. But this idea got put on hold for now.

Airbases like Khatami can be found on the map, firmly in Iranian hands.

 

[Loki130]

Came back to civ 3 after a long time to try this, immensely pleased so far. I've started 4 games, here's what I have to report:

Spoiler :

France, played 7 turns: It's hard for me to contribute much to the German front, though that makes sense at this point and I imagine I'll get in the fight pretty soon. In the Mediterranean, I can definitely report that the Soviets make occasional breakthroughs into the Aegean, but they never last long (They grabbed Rhodes once, but the Greeks quickly reclaimed it). Also, Sweden invaded Finland for no apparent reason. Not sure there's much you can read into that.

US, played 6 days: My front line in Germany is annihilated on the first day, but after that the Soviets can't really touch me so long as I stay put. When I advance, though, they respond in force. Airbase security is definitely important for anyone playing the US; The Soviets like bombing them and they send their Spetznas after them. If you can keep them, though, the air power makes a huge difference, and by the end of the game I was sending bombing runs all across Poland. At sea, I sunk most of the Soviet navy by Iceland and had parked a couple carriers outside Murmansk by the end.

Soviet Union, 2 turns. You weren't lying about the micromanaging. If you play this country, I suggest having a strategy to find all your artillery and aircraft before you launch your land assault. Anyway, I've lost 400 units, my Navy is in suicide mode trying to keep the carriers away, and I'm sacrificing my fighter fleet trying to give my bombers the chance to attack, but I've broken through. The Danes are done for, the Germans reeling, the British and Dutch forces spent, and even the US is taking losses.
A couple notes:
-Soviet ASW helicopters can't rebase.
-The cruise missiles in the submarines are listed in the civilopedia as replenishing, like the ones in the naval bombers, when they are not (I really like the naval bombers as missile carriers, by the way).

Cuba, played around 50 turns: Played this to see what would happen in Europe without interference. For my part, mopped up the Caribbean pretty easily with a cautious advance. In the long run, things get pretty confusing once the military alliances kick in. The neutrals have a bad habit to agreeing to one with both alliances. Don't know if there's anything in particular can be done about that though. One thing to note: Cuba is incapable of building any new units save for some light militia and engineers. I feel like it should be possible to get something a little bit more useful somewhere down the line.

In general, the pattern I've seen is thus (though this is based on a small sample): Soviet forces smash the NATO front line and take cities, but can't hold them. They break through as far as Bremen, but NATO retakes the cities, and the situation reaches a stalemate. I'll have to play more games to see if this usually happens. The Soviets also take a couple Norwegian cities and maybe some of Turkey. The Bulgarians are overrun, but never completely lose.
Some general notes:
-Keeping the Romanians neutral is an odd decision. Is there a particular reason for it? They tend to be problematic once the alliances start.
-Also, why is Finland and Murmansk blocked off from Russia?
-On the Bosporus: Connecting it makes a certain amount of sense. The Turks always block it anyway, so none of the other NATO navies can make it through. Plus, it might help the Turks move around units if the Soviets break through in Anatolia or if the Arabs invade, which happened in my Cuba and US games and reached as far as threatening Ankara within 2 turns. On the other hand, if you do this it condemns any Soviet forces in the Mediterranean, and prevents any future action there for a long time.
-I think keeping the time period in days makes sense. The problem of events in the Black sea moving too quickly seems smaller than the problem of events in Germany and the Atlantic moving too slowly.

In general, I think this is well balanced, and I admire the amount of work that went into this. The NATO quality vs. Soviet quantity balance of forces works well, and there's lots of options to get creative with the various unit types. Overall, fantastic job.

For some reason, I keep thinking about the AARs I could write when playing this, so I might do that. We'll see.

 

[KevinLancaster]

-I had a long standing internal debate about the day/week thing. The days are more appropriate to the advance…the Soviets probably would get through to the Rhine in 5 days and overrun the Low Countries inside of two weeks. Also, naval movement is set to reflect days…it wouldn’t take five weeks to cross the Atlantic. But the 52 week thing obviously can’t be changed in the editor. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just change it to weeks at some point in the future.

Couldn't the units be changed to year in the editor, start from 1 AD, and have the label be "Day (Year #)" with the BC/AD removed? It wouldn't have the year, but it would be consistent over the course of the game.