The Third World War 1989

[r16]

the must not troll line is almost an inside joke , related to how Russians would go around when their own "brainpower" was getting taxed .

skoda is just a random idea for resources , as something that "might be" . Not "must be" . When Russia / Soviets practically owned any mineral and whatnot within its borders , what resource they would have needed to build stuff ? They at least made the Czech design the standart trainer jet of WP . But then my family emigrated from Bulgaria and mother always talks of the times when the Russian cargo planes would land directly by the fields to pick the best of tomatoes . (Don't know she saw that herself though)

 

[Civinator]

Worldwide, yes. 1989, no.... I did some experiments specifically with the artillery routine of Flintlock and it did not go well. On the other hand, I changed the artillery back to regular bombard (not naval bombard) and the AI uses it quite well on the front lines.

Tony, if the Flintlock artillery is not working well, this and other parts of the Flintlock mod could be disabled. Enable only those parts, that you are thinking they work well in 1989. In my eyes the land/sea-intersections for 1989 could be an interesting option, too, as here, as in SOE oceans must be crossed by transports. In the few tests I was able to do, the setting of these intersections, land units that are looking like different merchant ships, that can be upgraded to the real land units, but not allowed to go back on the transit to the US (wheeled flag), Axis submarines with 1-range- lethal land bombardment, that are not allowed to pass coastal terrain (again wheeled flag), but can pass through these intersections by the "deepwater-harbor-settings" next to those intersection tiles in the Quintillus editor (and by additional deepwater harbor settings from their home ports) did work.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/storm-over-europe-soe.454785/page-12#post-16200979
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/storm-over-europe-soe.454785/page-12#post-16202320
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/storm-over-europe-soe.454785/page-12#post-16215757
As paratrooper now can perform additional actions after been dropped, this can be another interesting feature of the Flintlock mod, even for 1989 (especially if they are not allowed to pillage).

Concerning offensive land artillery I have the feeling, that for epic mods like Worldwide and CCM, the configurable "upbuild-rate" is even more important than the "total-upkeep-rate". A special problem is, that land artillery in contrary to the standard C3C settings should not be able to be captured by other civs, as this results in tons of artillery a clever human player can gain by easy capturing surviving landartillery from other civs. In the next version of CCM, normal land artillery is civspecific so it is destroyed when a battle is lost (if remembering well, this is the normal setting in Worldwide even before the Flintlock mod) and later self-propelled artillery has defense points, so those units are destroyed, too, when a civ has lost its battle.

 

[Ozymandias]

I recall the W. Euro VLs, but I confess I've not played in a while Perhaps you might find a way/need to suppress "proto" - Solidarność in Poland? OR, conversely, emphasize ship building ... ?

As for Czechoslovakia, from Ye Olde Wikipedia -

"In the 1980s, Czechoslovakia was — except for the Soviet Union — Eastern Europe's only builder of heavy-duty nuclear power equipment and was a joint supplier of such products to other Comecon members. For export, Czechoslovakia specialized in smaller units, while the Soviet Union supplied the larger capacity reactors."

BTW, the new Resources are fanrtastic.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Civinator, thank you for the response. I am familiar with your trans-Atlantic land bridge in SOE and look forward to seeing it in action. There are two reasons why I am not pursuing the Flintlock patch here. First, at the eleventh hour I have no desire to attempt fundamental changes to the structure of the game. I'm not sure if you have had the chance to play the scenario much but I am very happy with the current ability of the AI to transport troops across the Atlantic by air and sea. Indeed, yet again in my last test game as Czechoslovakia, the Anglo-Americans mounted an invasion after the continent was lost and made a strong bridgehead in the low countries and Danmark. The real issue they have is that they will bring many offensive units but not defensive units to garrison cities. But to try to massively change the game would require more work than I am willing to invest at this point.

Secondly, I don't want to make the game dependent on having the Flintlock patch. A player could choose to use it in order to enable better paratroopers or other benefits, but that will be his discretion. This scenario is already a handful as it is. People may see it and say, "Looks nice but I don't have the time to learn all this stuff". I would like to to keep the game as accessible as possible without references to other things that need to be enabled before playing, except what is absolutely necessary. I have seen mods for other games with a laundry list of do this, download that, and I think you know, today is my day off and I'm just not feeling it. Part of the new update has been paring down amount of units and tasks and making the tech tree more straightforward (with arrows!). I know that such tasks are second nature to veteran players but I'd like to keep the door open as much as possible.

Now for Worldwide, all bets are off. I am looking forward to making all kinds of updates and there the Flintlock patch will be erforderlich. You remember well that in that game all artillery was civ-specific and so couldn't be captured. In the current new build, the ancient and early medieval eras all have the same siege tower that can be captured, but maybe this will change again depending on the new behavior of the Flintlock patch.

 

[Node60]

The Poland resource is now the Poland/Czechoslovakia resource (I need a better name for this).

West Slavic?

So now, we have the DDR with synthetic rubber, Hungary with the aluminum, Bulgaria with electronics, etc.

I associate electronics more with DDR (Robotron). And Bulgaria is canned food or tobacco. Or is it a strategic resource that is required?

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

I associate electronics more with DDR (Robotron). And Bulgaria is canned food or tobacco.

Ha! I already have Robotron outside Dresden. Tobacco was taken out. Like Lionic said, I was thinking of Bulgaria's computer exports. Also, it is good to point out here that the resources in this scenario are representing shortfalls, self-sufficiency, and exports. Thus, if a civ is lacking a resource it doesn't necessarily mean that the resource doesn't exist within its borders. Rather that its output is not sufficient to cover its needs and must therefore import from someone else. For example, now the Soviets do not have the consumer goods or livestock resources. Of course, the Soviet Union produced a great deal of livestock, but now they must trade their Russia resource, and oil and gas for Polish sausage and Czechoslovak window cleaner. I'm trying to keep these exchanges very basic as when fighting WWIII the great marshal should not have to agonize over how many truckloads of cattle are going here or there. It's just enough to make the AI want to trade with the player. In a multi-player game, though, the superpowers could subsidize their allies as needed to make winning the priority.

West Slavic is an interesting idea, although I've been steering away from ethnic definitions since this is more the age of nationalism (or political apathy). I'll think about it. Other suggestions welcome also.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

It may look like the same old nonsense but there have been some fundamental changes to the game and it certainly plays better. The reduction in units means that things get even more violent early on. Most independent battalions, reserve infantry units, and AAA have been removed. Anti-air stats are going up on ground units, and lethal bombing is being removed (I think, perhaps, entirely removed except for F-117). The new sea routine means subs are much deadlier, even diesel subs, but especially the modern nukes. Prices are up for units across the board. Keep in mind, the shield cost of units doesn't represent just the cost of materials, but rather the amount of time needed to get the unit mobilized. The cost of early game infantry has gone up, to reduce unit spam that crashes the game. There is also a greater focus on the mid-late game. About 90% of the effort of making this mod was on the initial few weeks. In reality, It would take months to years to build new units and train them. So, we are sacrificing some realism so that the mid game can be more dynamic. As stated earlier, I've implemented a "Wargame" style of units that rewards going down the different paths. This will help the offset the removal of MPP and military alliances. Generally, there is a mobilization path that focuses on making the best heavy land units, a political path that often has trading and building options as well as airborne and long range aircraft, and a naval path that offers a variety of marine troops, aircraft, and ships of course. So you can stick to one path to get to the nice prizes at the end, or go back and forth as needed.

There has been a lot of map re-drawing, too. Trying to improve the realism of the map actually ends up making the game more fun and challenging. Here's the new Norwegian coast, and the new Caucasus. The original version was so awful that I couldn't bear to look at it anymore. Now the Soviet garrison locations make much more sense, and the confrontation with Turkey will have some new challenges.

 

[Lionic]

lethal bombing is being removed

NOOO! What would be the perks of units like A-10, Su-25, Hind then?

 

[Ozymandias]

NOOO! What would be the perks of units like A-10, Su-25, Hind then?

I'm down with Sulla on this one:

"Lethal Bombardment: This change, without a doubt, was by far the worst thing that BreakAway Games did to Civ3. The stand-alone game offered a great balance between artillery and regular units, with artillery being able to damage other units but unable to defend themselves. Most importantly though, they could NEVER kill other units; the only unit which could was the pricey, one-time use cruise missile. Regular units were the only ones which could actually kill units or capture other artillery pieces, so it was necessary to use a combination of both to achieve best results. Intelligent use of combined arms like this added a great deal of strategy to Civ3, and helped elevate it quite a bit beyond its two predecessors (where catapults were 6/1/1, for example). Bombardment on ships and planes worked the same way, and intelligent players fighting wars in the Modern Age would frequently use both. Bombers, for example, could hit targets much further away than artillery but had the weakness of being shot down or having the city they were based in captured. Battleships could defend themselves against attack without need of a protecting unit, but could only hit targets along the coastline. Bombardment in standard Civ3 was thus able to offer a very large advantage to the player, but the fact that units still had to expose themselves to attack in order to finish off another unit for good kept bombardment units from running away in strength and the player from exploiting his/her edge in artillery to ridiculous degrees. Any such balance has been thrown out the window in Conquests"

 

[CorvusFortis]

The reduction in units means that things get even more violent early on.

Does that mean my potato would be able to run it without 30 min interturn times?

I'm down with Sulla on this one:

The thing is vanilla C3C bombers are broken. They have range, bombard strength and rate of fire. Lethal Bombardment is a cherry on top. I like the idea of ranged lethal units be weak in general, so they are only good at finishing the stuff off. More realistically, I suppose, there shouldn't be lethal bombardment at all, since you always need ground forces to clean up the area.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

The real problem is that it is all or nothing. In a perfect world, you could give units lethal bombard targets the way you give them stealth attack targets. For example, it would be possible to kill anti-aircraft and artillery, but not line units. There is no way in Civ 3 to represent the suppression of air defenses properly. This is why I wanted to run it by you guys in the thread again. I am actually inclined to agree with Lionic here. But it would be necessary to give these short-ranged attack aircraft a low rate of fire to offset the strength of lethal bombard. You will see in the new version that both artillery and aircraft do less damage, which reduces the ability to redline every enemy before you have to commit your ground forces. This is the end goal I'm trying to reach. Like Corvus describes, you always need ground forces to control the area.

The real problem will be in the late game when these units become buildable, because the human will mass produce them in order to stack wipe everything like bombers in an epic civ game. And so, the ground attack planes will be expensive, and have low hit points so they get shredded by interceptors.

 

[Civinator]

The real problem will be in the late game when these units become buildable, because the human will mass produce them in order to stack wipe everything like bombers in an epic civ game. And so, the ground attack planes will be expensive, and have low hit points so they get shredded by interceptors.

Wouldn´t this be a good constellation to autoproduce these units ?

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

I'm down with Sulla on this one:

I'd never seen this piece before. I'm now re-evaluating every mod I've ever consigned to development hell.

This is why I wanted to run it by you guys in the thread again. I am actually inclined to agree with Lionic here. But it would be necessary to give these short-ranged attack aircraft a low rate of fire to offset the strength of lethal bombard.

I forget if it was here or elsewhere I read a discussion on design strategy for artillery units, and one modder's approach was: High bombard, low ROF / low bombard, high ROF—essentially, accuracy v. saturation. I don't recall if it specifically addressed lethal bombardment, but for close air support as detailed here, I can see a 1-ROF LB attack craft functioning as a sort of 'sniper' unit.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Wouldn´t this be a good constellation to autoproduce these units ?

That is an option, although I am not fond of auto-production and try to limit it as much as possible. Also, with the updated tech trees the goal is to make more units available for the player late game.

As it stands now, the air units generally follow this pattern:

Aircraft Type	Examples	Shield Cost	Hit Points at Veteran	Bombard Rate of Fire	Lethal Land
Air Superiority Fighter	F-15, Su-27, MiG-29	600-800 shields	5 HP	1	No
Multi-role Fighter-Bomber	F-16, Tornado	600-700 shields	5 HP	3	No
Medium Fighter-Bomber	F-111, Su-24	600-700 shields	4 HP	3	No
Close Air Support	A-10, Su-25	600-700 shields	3 HP	3	Yes
Attack Aircraft	Su-17, Alfajet, A-7	500 shields	4 HP	3	No
Attack Helicopter (Warsaw Pact)	Mi-24	600 shields	3 HP	3	Yes
Naval Fighter	Yak-38, F-14, F/A-18	500-800 shields	4 HP	3	No
ASW Helo	Ka-27, Sea King	500 shields	3 HP	4	No
Medium and Heavy Bombers	Tu-16, B-52	N/A	3 HP	4	No

Does that mean my potato would be able to run it without 30 min interturn times?

I promise nothing.

I forget if it was here or elsewhere I read a discussion on design strategy for artillery units, and one modder's approach was: High bombard, low ROF / low bombard, high ROF—essentially, accuracy v. saturation. I don't recall if it specifically addressed lethal bombardment, but for close air support as detailed here, I can see a 1-ROF LB attack craft functioning as a sort of 'sniper' unit

That's basically the way rocket and tube artillery are working in the scenario now. Many years ago I suggested that multi-rocket units should have a high rate of fire, when someone suggested that the opposite should be true, as they are a saturation weapon. So right now in the game tube artillery has 3 RoF and rocket units have 2 RoF with a higher bombard. As far as aircraft go, I don't think that CAS should be 1 RoF snipers. They should show up and wreck your day.

 

[Civinator]

I'd never seen this piece before. I'm now re-evaluating every mod I've ever consigned to development hell.

Sulla was a betatester of C3C and wrote interesting statements a long time ago - but not all of his statements are completely fitting. He didn´t take into account, that the production of units in C3C can be effectively limited to small numbers by setting these units to be only produced by some buildings in a low rate. What in big numbers is poison, in low numbers can work as medicine.

 

[Ozymandias]

Sulla was a betatester of C3C and wrote interesting statements a long time ago - but not all of his statements are completely fitting. He didn´t take into account, that the production of units in C3C can be effectively limited to small numbers by setting these units to be only produced by some buildings in a low rate. What in big numbers is poison, in low numbers can work as medicine.

Sulla was very specific in his singling out the Statue Of Zeus as The Big Mistake, and for more than one reason:

"7) The Statue of Zeus: I could extend this discussion to all of the wonders, but the Statue of Zeus stands out as such a huge problem that it can stand alone by itself. It's almost funny to think about how silly the wonder was in its original conception. The Statue of Zeus was going to give you a free barracks in every city on the same continent - same as Sun Tzu's - only it would expire unlike the latter wonder and be available much earlier and much cheaper. This proved to be confusing, and so a new unit was created and its function changed to its current state. It has always required ivory to build though, which is half of my complaint. I don't have any problems in theory with requiring a resource to build a wonder; needing "stone" to build the Pyramids in the Mesopotamia wonder seems logical to me and doesn't bother me. The problem with the Statue of Zeus is that it uses ivory as its resource requirement. Ivory is a luxury resource. Luxury resources almost always "clump" together, meaning that is probably one and at most two locations in the entire world where ivory can be found. What this usually means is that by dumb luck only one civ will be able to build the Statue of Zeus. Now if this wonder came along in, say, the Industrial Age when trade routes had already been formed and every civ could conceivably have a chance to trade for ivory to build it, that would be one thing. Making the Statue of Zeus an Ancient Age wonder essentially limits who can build it to dumb luck, and that is not a good thing. I would have raised this issue more in testing, but I never started next to ivory and thus never really saw what this wonder was like. At the time, I was trying to explain why adding more than 8 luxuries to the game would break its happiness model (yes, tobacco/bananas/etc. were all originally luxury resources - I played one game in which there were 11 luxuries! The fact that the designers didn't realize that that would break the happiness model should tell you something...)

So first of all the Statue of Zeus is problematic because of its resource requirement. Secondly, it is drastically underpriced at only 200 shields. This is cheaper than almost all of the Ancient Age wonders; it's cheaper than the freakin' Oracle, for goodness sakes! Knowing what it does, it should definitely cost at least 300, if not 400 shields. Third, it expires much, much too late with the discovery of Metallurgy. A player can research almost all of the way to the Industrial Age without discovering that tech; either Invention or something around Education would be a better bet. Finally, the Ancient Cavalry units it produces are simply too strong. 3/2/2 AND +1hp?! I mean, are you out of your mind? And you can build this thing upon discovering Mathematics? Each Ancient Cavalry is a Gallic Swordsman with an additional hit point; since Gallics were appropriately priced at 50 shields (and are way too cheap at only 40 shields), we can figure that the ancient cavalry is worth about 50-60 shields. We can reasonably expect the Statue of Zeus to last 100 turns before going obsolete (and that's probably a conservative estimate), and producing a free ancient cavalry every 5 turns that would get us 20 ancient cavalry. Hmm... 20 ancient cavalry at 50 shields each gives us... 1000 shields worth of units (!) for a wonder that costs only 200. The Pyramids and Sun Tzu's can match that in free buildings, but only on large pangea maps, and both require a much more significant investment of shields. To get the Pyramids, for example, you usually have to sacrifice or slow down your expansion. At half the cost, you can have a first ring city build the Statue of Zeus, and if you are the only one with ivory, you aren't even in a wonder race! I've seen Ancient Cavalry run over entire civs on smaller-sized maps without even breaking a sweat. Heaven help you if you get a leader and put these guys in an army.

Random luck factors determining who gets a massively overpowered wonder which spawns an elite Gallic swordsman every 5 turns? That's another "addition" to the game which I can do without."

CCM is an entirely different matter, entirely!

 

[CorvusFortis]

Sulla was very specific in his singling out the Statue Of Zeus as The Big Mistake, and for more than one reason:

Once again, Statue breaks the game for many reasons:

1) Very cheap ancient wonder;
2) requires luxuary resource, so the builder likely won't face competiion;
3) Unit is autoproduced every 5 turns, which is pretty fast;
4) the unit itself has stats of swordsman, speed of horseman and +1 HP on top, which makes is actually stronger when a Knight way before the knight is available.

If we would have a special air bomber/attack plane with lethal land bombing which is autoproduced every 15 turns, it certainly won't break a game, where hundreds of units are dying every turn. Actually, it would be great at very specific role - hunting down important weakened retreating units, which are out of reach of ground forces.

 

[Ozymandias]

Once again, Statue breaks the game for many reasons:

1) Very cheap ancient wonder;
2) requires luxuary resource, so the builder likely won't face competiion;
3) Unit is autoproduced every 5 turns, which is pretty fast;
4) the unit itself has stats of swordsman, speed of horseman and +1 HP on top, which makes is actually stronger when a Knight way before the knight is available.

If we would have a special air bomber/attack plane with lethal land bombing which is autoproduced every 15 turns, it certainly won't break a game, where hundreds of units are dying every turn. Actually, it would be great at very specific role - hunting down important weakened retreating units, which are out of reach of ground forces.

I agree, in principle - With the "principle" being that bombers should not have "Lethal Bombard," as you can basically win a game by only building those once they become available. For my own modding, I only give that flag for naval combat, only.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

 

[Ozymandias]

... ?