The Third World War 1989

[r16]

The open/closed Turkish Straits debate comes up in every scenario with Europe, the Middle East and North Africa... 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.

having dabbled in scenario building ı can only admire that hard work that a work of this size requires . Was indeed impressive as long as the laptop worked .

how about two cities of Istanbul , possible to cross with ships seperated by a piece of land that looks like sea and defended by an extra strong unit so that Bulgarians could enter the European side , leaving Russians to take the Eastern side .

and Turkey being Turkey just allow me to point out ı am not in favour of a People's Republic thing .

 

[jlvfr]

-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.
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-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.

Drat

 

[Lionic]

Hi, Tony, it's good to have you back answering questions! Sorry that I could not make more detailed reports but in short we (Commies) are screwed if it's the right word. For the first turns the game was quite sad for me I was losing about 4 of every 5 defensive battles, some chances for victories were only for full-health dug-in units, slightly better with offensive because I could provide some artillery support. I've lost all Hinds on Day 1 even without knowing how it happened.
Did I mentioned that British took Magdeburg and slaughtered almost all of the defenders of Stendal. On Turn 12 large force of Russians came from the East and pushed as far as Tours wiping out all of the low countries and Eastern Germany. I was able to get back Magdeburg and Hannover and Essen as war prizes. However things became bleak since then. Soviet air force disappeared almost entirely, American AI manages to throw lots of reinforcements on the continent every turn and USAF is happily eliminating my forces Desert Storm style. Soviets seem to be out of new tanks (only T-55's are fighting), they lost ground on the far North, Bulgaria is losing to Turks. That is one of the most interesting Civ games I've ever played but it seems it will end in my defeat as I've got nothing to fight NATO with and my research rate is quite slow.

I must add that it's perhaps the best to play such scenario as a small nation as the stupidity of both superpowers neutralize each other. I think that I've made it to close as to how conventional WWIII would look in Europe:
- Initial armored assault by the Soviets with some success and probably capture of some entire countries;
- Counterattacks by US sea and air forces reducing Soviet armor superiority;
- Soviet retreat from Europe (remains to be seen);

If there's any secret that could help me with East German game please share it

 

[Lionic]

And a couple of bug reports:
-East Germany can't into building Engineers;
-American National Guard sometimes appears in a white semitransparent square around it, although not with all animations;

-Although you can remove the rebase function, the AI can still rebase. Which sucks.

That's right. Kiel became a Bermuda triangle for ships and aircraft of both sides.

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.

Yes, T-26 and it's variants.

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.

There is a Soviet/Russian naval base in Lataqiyah, Syria.

 

[Lionic]

And I've almost forgot. AI uses Tochka and Scud after all, although that does not help it much.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

-Keeping the Romanians neutral is an odd decision. Is there a particular reason for it? They tend to be problematic once the alliances start.

I think it's for balance purposes, but by the 1980s Romanian foreign policy was acting largely (some might even say recklessly) independent of Moscow and the Warsaw Pact. Add to that Ceaușescu's god complex and the disastrous austerity measures introduced that decade, and it's not improbable they'd try to sit out the early war.

 

[ARMOREDKING84]

So it looks like my save file is way too big to save/load, is this just because of how large the mod is, or is there something wrong on my end?

 

[r16]

romania neutral would possibly lead the AI playing the Soviets to think something better than pulling all the Grade A divisions from Germany to attack Turkey from the East .

allow me to ask a couple of basic scenario making questions . ı have a previous scenario by AnthonyBoscia on an external drive as ı didn't have space on the old computer . Where ı see it has something like 1093 units . Is there a limit of 1256 for the unit numbers , meaning at its highest one could have almost 40 UUs for each civs ?

and ı do have a burning desire to limit carriers to fly only carrier capable planes . ı would expect to see the solution in this game if there's any . ı had previously tested carrier planes as marked tactical missiles with the intented ship also marked as both "carries only planes" and "carries only tactical missiles" . Could load planes to ship , but ı failed it to play it in full . If one had a F-14 onboard but not a F-15 , would the F-14 be lost after one use ? ı have been bombed in Lefkoşe by missiles in this scenario and AnthonyBoscia talks of replenishment , there must be something ı think ı mshould know .

 

[Fredeye]

Looks great. Unfortunately it's too large for me to download. My internet situation sucks and I don't want to cut a tree down to make it better. Maybe I'll be able to download it when all the bugs are worked out.

Lately I've been dabbling with this more modern era in my Mods...someday

 

[jlvfr]

Forgot to ask one thing: as France (and I assume other EU) I had no access to petrol... so, how do we get it?

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Happy New Year, all. A few answers:

Lionic: I think the DDR is in a terrible position because of the reversed turn orders. It is hard to make meaningful contributions to the fight, especially in the early game. The Hind got wiped out because it is in a city and susceptible to bombing, as opposed to an airbase where bombing can't harm it. Your description is accurate for how the game plays out in most instances. I reactivated the East German Pioneers...they'll be in the next upgrade.

The Romanian neutrality thing was done because of the political situation as Thorvald described. It helps the game balance, but also it helps keep Southeastern Europe volatile and unpredictable. If you are the Soviets, you need to keep some people in Ukraine just in case.

ARMOREDKING, I don't know why it won't save for you. I haven't run across the save being too large before.

r16: There is no limit to the amount of units in a mod. Steph and Ares had over 2000 in theirs, and someone once testing 10,000 just to check for limits. The easy solution for carrier aircraft is as you described: tactical flag for carrier aircraft and no flag otherwise. The reason this game is different is to have missile units, and I didn't want Tomcats and Forgers landing on submarines. The replenishment thing is only related to the ASMs. Although they look like missiles, they are actually programmed to act as normal aircraft...that is, they will not be expended after attacking. So they can attack again as long as they don't get shot down.

jlvfr: There is a civilopedia entry on oil EU countries want to research the Merchant Marine tech from Era 3 (for France it's Era 2) to unlock the Petroleum Trade Agreement so you can trade for oil from the Middle East or Venezuela. Or, in my current French game, I recaptured Torshavn from the Russians which gave me the Danes' North Sea oil resource. They didn't need it anymore since they were already wiped out.

 

[Lionic]

Hi Tony! I have already looked into editor--both helicopter regiments were in the cities that were lost on the first turn. Another request/suggestion is to allow East Germany to build heavy SAM's (SA-4/6/8) as currently there is no way to build them even with technological advance.
My observation that might be useful for whoever tries to play the scenario is that each unit is far more and each city is far less valuable than in most other scenarios. It's not worth risking the loss of your damaged units holding most cities just as it's not worth being a hero and raiding enemy cities risking the loss of your assets. If I started the game again I would have moved artillery, Scuds and SAMs from the Western cities (except Wismar as there's no way to move) and tanks and APC's into the hills leaving only a Grenzregiments behind as AI is not willing to attack units with full health in the rough terrain.

Spoiler :

Speaking about my progress. It's Turn 44, NATO is slowly pushing Soviets back (France and Netherlands are liberated, British hold Kiel for a few turns), Soviets respond by building awful numbers of BRDM-2 and sending them into the fight. A few turns ago Soviet Union discovered military alliances and is currently making all previously neutral nations fight NATO). Even Romania joined the fight but instead of fighting Turks and saving Bulgaria it sent it's troops into Northern Germany.

 

[Wolfhart]

A little more for next update:

The Spanish aircraft carrier Dédalo has a movement of only 1. Bad machinery?

The Portuguese corvette class has not been assigned any values in the editor.

The Polish Naval Infantry Regiment has not been flagged Tactical Missile and so can’t board the Polish amphibious landing ship.

The MLRS, the BM-21 and the BM-27 rocket artillery units should all be tagged Rotate Before Attack because their animations requires this flag.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Thanks. These are corrected for the next update. A few of these had already been fixed, then unfixed when the game corrupted and was rebuilt. As far as I know, land units can't rotate before attack.

I agree 100% with Lionic that preserving your combat power will almost always take priority over saving cities. It is very hard to rebuild your forces. I've also found that keeping your marine and airborne units alive keeps your options open in later turns when everyone is stretched thin. Also, it might pay to keep your air force grounded for a couple turns until your 'allies' help thin the air superiority fighters. Better the dumb Ai lose its planes than the clever player.

 

[Wolfhart]

Actually the game engine allows land units to rotate before attack too, but for some reason they only rotate 45 degrs instead of the ships 90 degrs. Anyway Wyrm made those rocket launcher animations to be used with the rotate flag.

AI does much better in this game than most other scenarios I've played, but there's no wonder cure against some stupidities. I'll give you an example: when I played Poland the Soviets conquered Denmark but the US liberated Århus. They left it held with a SEAL unit and a Marine Artillery unit. Then they started to move ships into the port of Århus: almost 30 SSN's and two aircraft Carriers with escorts. Seeing this I couldn't of course resist using all my four Scud launchers to take down the defenders HP and then I launched an amphibious assault with my sole PT-76 amphibious tank to Blitz the defenders and take Århus, sinking all those US ships in the process.
Two turns later the Brits liberated Esbjerg and left a Rapier to protect it. Then they moved 8 of their own SSN's into the harbour! I felt almost ashamed about sending my trusty old PT-76 to take that city too...

 

[Lionic]

Also, it might pay to keep your air force grounded for a couple turns until your 'allies' help thin the air superiority fighters. Better the dumb Ai lose its planes than the clever player.

Couple of turns won't be enough))) I did not risk rebasing damaged fighters into the cities because AI would have bombed them out for certain. Repairing them on the airbases is slow because they restore only one hit point per turn.

Tony, could you please tell what WP units could do lethal land bombardment if any? Also I wrote about a bug with American National Guard infantryman.

 

[Lionic]

AI does much better in this game than most other scenarios I've played, but there's no wonder cure against some stupidities. I'll give you an example: when I played Poland the Soviets conquered Denmark but the US liberated Århus. They left it held with a SEAL unit and a Marine Artillery unit. Then they started to move ships into the port of Århus: almost 30 SSN's and two aircraft Carriers with escorts. Seeing this I couldn't of course resist using all my four Scud launchers to take down the defenders HP and then I launched an amphibious assault with my sole PT-76 amphibious tank to Blitz the defenders and take Århus, sinking all those US ships in the process.
Two turns later the Brits liberated Esbjerg and left a Rapier to protect it. Then they moved 8 of their own SSN's into the harbour! I felt almost ashamed about sending my trusty old PT-76 to take that city too...

Don't be ashamed. Just remember that you are doing Soviet Naval AI's job. I think that maybe it's worth adding naval mines so that foreign ships could not enter newly liberated ports.

 

[09skalli]

First of all a big thank you to AnthonyBoscia for this wonderful scenario. Finally we have a coherent sequel to TCW scenario with huge improvements!!

Unfortunately, I hadn't yet the chance to play the scenario. I followed the steps to install the scenario (I am used to install scenarios for my civ III). When i double click on the NORAZE.exe, i am asked to insert the CD. I installed my CIV III complete edition from steam and I don't have the CD...

When i start my Civ III normally and lunch the 1989 scenario, it is loaded : I choose my country, the difficulty, the level of agressivity, then during the loading of the map, civ III crashes and closes.

Please help me guys!

 

[r16]

r16: There is no limit to the amount of units in a mod. Steph and Ares had over 2000 in theirs, and someone once testing 10,000 just to check for limits. The easy solution for carrier aircraft is as you described: tactical flag for carrier aircraft and no flag otherwise. The reason this game is different is to have missile units, and I didn't want Tomcats and Forgers landing on submarines. The replenishment thing is only related to the ASMs. Although they look like missiles, they are actually programmed to act as normal aircraft...that is, they will not be expended after attacking. So they can attack again as long as they don't get shot down.

thanks for the answers , has helped a lot .

 

[jlvfr]

jlvfr: There is a civilopedia entry on oil EU countries want to research the Merchant Marine tech from Era 3 (for France it's Era 2) to unlock the Petroleum Trade Agreement so you can trade for oil from the Middle East or Venezuela. Or, in my current French game, I recaptured Torshavn from the Russians which gave me the Danes' North Sea oil resource. They didn't need it anymore since they were already wiped out.

that's a lot of turns away... can't we trade with the US?