The White Man's War

[willemvanoranje]

Allright, I am not sure how this works.. or even whether I am supposed to post here and not in Scenario Creation, but this one looks like the active forum.. with the best chances for me to gain any input.

I’ve been playing with the idea of creating a Boer War scenario for quite some time now. I have seen two or three other Boer War scenarios; one wasn’t really worth playing, the other two were allright, but came from a time where we had not yet reached the paramount of MGE scenario creation (which must have been about 2002). I think a new and well worked out scenario with some interesting mechanisms and the possibility to ‘change history’ will make a significant difference. Time is scarce however, so only recently I actually started to actually work on it. I haven’t advanced much yet, but hope you guys may have some nice ideas and interesting comments.

The History
So, as you may know the Boer War (1899-1902) took place between the British Empire looking to dominate southern Africa, and a white population of pioneer farmers of mainly Dutch, German and Hugenoth descent that wanted to remain independent. It is often portrayed as David vs. Goliath, armed farmers on horses against the mighty imperial army. Although Goliath ultimately won, the Boers did give the British a very difficult time. At first in ‘regular warfare’, later in guerrilla warfare.

The Main Objectives
The objectives of the British will of course be the conquest of the Boer Republics and the annihilation of every Boer unit in Southern Africa. To be able to simulate the guerrilla war, the Boers will have an island city far away from the main battlefield. The Boers in real history would probably have been satisfied with independence. In this scenario I feel it must be the conquest of the Cape Colony.

Spoiler Game Mechanisms - The Boers :

I think the Boers are the most interesting side here, and the things I would like to include for them actually mean the AI will not be able to play well as the Boers.

The Boer army basically existed of mounted militias; farmers from the same area that took their rifles and joined the local ‘commando’. History shows that, hardened by the pioneer life, they were excellent marksmen. Furthermore, they were very quick, knew their surroundings, and were able to deploy creative tactics. In the first part of the war the common tactic was to make small raids on British columns and then wait in entrenched positions for a full attack. Later guerrilla tactics meant ‘hit and run’.

For Civ2 this means to me a horse unit with alpine ability; I would also use the sub-ability, but I think that would prohibit land attacks (right?). Early on they would have normal attack and relatively high defence, however relatively low HP to simulate the lack of discipline that did cause units to flee in self-preservation. The guerrilla version, to enter the game after the capture of Pretoria, would be faster, higher attack and FP, but low defence.

The Boers did have some artillery; the only actual military available. Those guns were even better than what the British had early in the war. Later on, as the regular warfare phase was over, they were used less because of the lack of movability, lack of tactical advantage in guerrilla, and the lack of ammunition. This could mean a carrier type land unit holding cannon balls to be fired. Cannon balls can be produced in cities, and can possibly be obtained when destroying British artillery units.

The units can be trained in cities, but only at high cost. I would prefer to use a non-player civ with ‘village units’ that when destroyed give the Boers a commando unit. This simulates the way commandos mobilised, and allows the Boers to get reinforcements from Boer villages within British territories as well. The villages would be recreated every X turns.

Furthermore, since the Boers did not have much of an economy, I am looking into a trade system. So far I am thinking of a one attack caravan unit, which must be ‘killed’ attacking the Portuguese in Moçambique. Doing this will generate income per event. Trade carts will also be generated when conquering Kimberly, to represent the riches of the diamond mines. At the capture of a harbour (Durban, Port Elizabeth), the Boers will gain the ability to build a tradeship. This ship can be ‘killed’ the same way on an island city called [EUROPE].

The Boers will gain small (not significant) reinforcements from international volunteers, who will be mainly infantry. They were usually more experienced fighters than the Boers themselves, and were actually much braver in the most heated moments of battle. I’m thinking of making them relatively immobile defensive units.

Finally, I want to include the possibility for the Boers to gain support from Germany. This never happened in real life, but might have happened if the Boers would have had some offensive success. It is hard to determine what the trigger could be; the conquest of Durban would be too easy, as the conquest of Port Elizabeth might be too. Conquering Cape Town should be too difficult without German support though. Any ideas or suggestions here?

Spoiler Game Mechanisms - The British :

The British are more upfront. Early on they have a limited amount of units, concentrated in two or three tactically disadvantaged areas. They have bad offensive and defensive qualities, but relatively high HP. Fairly early on (after a certain defeat, to be determined), however, they will get ‘upgraded’ infantry units (as in real history). Throughout the war they will get reinforcements per event, and upgrades per event or by research. These range from using naval guns on wheels in battle, getting more cavalry (hugely lacking throughout the war, despite massive reinforcements), getting volunteer militias and City of London Imperial Volunteers, to the arrival of Colonial regiments from Australia and New Zealand (it was a ‘White Man’s War&#8217. The tactics for the British are very straight forward, following then default military tactics for the conquest of territories, and adhering quite well to the MGE AI. To make sure the AI can play the British well, they will of course not have the artillery/canon ball thing.. which is historically acceptable as the British had no problem getting ammunition. The only tricky part would be the ‘blockhouses’ used to counter guerrillas. This would be a 0-movement paradrop unit.. I guess the AI does not really understand that though, so they may have to be planted per event.

Spoiler Map :

I do not have a map yet. I will make rivers out of ocean squares though, as crossing rivers was one of the most difficult things for the British to do. For eye-candy purposes there will be a ‘fordable water’ terrain. If space allows for it, the coastlines will be made invisible with special water units to blend fordable water in with the rest of the river. Depending on whether or not there will be any offensive ships (probably not > no real use), there is a need for a ‘block river’ unit to prevent warships moving up rivers.

Spoiler Civilizations :

Apart from the British and the Boers there will be the neutral Portuguese (who could also have the island city [EUROPE]) and a fourth civilization that can have the 0-movement river blocks, coastline and village units.

At this point I do not see any necessity for the inclusion of African tribes or other colonial powers. Maybe you can convince me otherwise though.

Spoiler Units :

I will not need all the unit spaces provided by MGE, even as limited as it is. I will not even be able to use all, since I do not intend to include barbarians at this point. Currently I cannot see the Boers having much succession in units; should the guerrilla phase start, however, they would be given a tech making the old commando obsolete and replacing it by a new one. In addition, they will have on or two artillery units, one cannon ball unit, one Boer infantry unit, one foreign volunteer infantry unit, a trade cart, a trade ship, and three German units to be given by event (infantry, cavalry and artillery).

The British should have more succession, as they did in real life. I am thinking of four successive offensive infantry units (regulars), three event specific units (CIV, militia, colonials), at least two successive cavalry units, and two artillery units.

Furthermore, there will be of course the mentioned village unit, river blocks, etc.

Spoiler Technologies :

Now it gets tricky. I have not worked out anything yet here. Since the war takes place in a time frame of three years, technological advance did not really influence anything.

For the Boers I was therefore thinking of making research into ‘lobbying’ obtaining ‘political points’. The player could for example chose to research ‘Launch Propaganda in the Netherlands’ to get Dutch volunteers. This could also be the key to German intervention; conquering Port Elizabeth unlocks a tech for the Boers, that will allow them to reach ‘Kaiser Wilhelm’s Intervention’.

Basically I am thinking of a lot of small tech tree branches, unlocked by specific conquests during the game, to make it a real action > reaction type of thing. The British tech tree is actually more important in the traditional sense, as the AI must be able to use it well to improve. No need for fancy ideas there really, just think of good tech names and links to improvements and upgrades.

Spoiler Wonders :

I haven’t worked this out yet either. The Boers do need a happy-wonder (‘Majuba Day&#8217 that mitigates war wariness as long as the British are not in the Republics. Ideally this wonder is in Pretoria and becomes obsolete per event at the conquest of that city. The Brits did suffer from a little unrest at home, and with a lot of Boers living in the Cape Colony were always afraid of uprisings. No need for happy-stuff there.

Furthermore, to simulate the abandonment of carts when the guerrilla phase started, the Boers should have Leo’s in their ‘external’ city. That way all living commandos will automatically become guerrilla commandos. Not sure how to do that with the village units though.

That’s all wonders I could find any use for so far.

 

[McMonkey]

This sounds like a great idea for a scenario. It looks like you have considered how the AI will be best employed, something that is often overlooked early on in development. Do you own a copy of Test of Time? If you do I would urge you to design with it as the events will give you much more freedom than with MGE. Either way I would very much like to play a good Boer War scenario so good luck!

 

[willemvanoranje]

I do have a copy, never played it much though. And I definetly do not have the design skill to make 'cool' ToT units. Then again, it would probably be acceptable to have a ToT scenario with an MGE look.. Are there any other major differences in designing between MGE and ToT?

I would very much have liked to make both the British and the Boers playable, but that would mean the Boers would have to follow 'conventional' tactics in the game.. which they didn't. It might be a long-term project, by the way.. time is scarce.

 

[JPetroski]

I second McMonkey's advice to use ToT... Not only can you very nicely simulate conditions required for a German entry into the war, but you can also give units the "invisible until attack" status without forcing them to only attack naval ships.

Further, there is an absolute wealth of pre-made units that would look great in this scenario right here in this forum and on the SLeague wiki.

Just make sure you are designing with patch 1.1!

 

[willemvanoranje]

I guess now I have to try.

I just installed ToT again from the Chronicles CD. No idea where I have the first original copy I had. Must have gotten lost somewhere in the last decade. Should be patched then, right? I'll download just to be sure.

Except for events options, which I do have to explore further, ToT of course offers the interesting (but irrelevant for gameplay) option of actually travelling to Europe for trade Colonialism style.. and the British actually needing to produce troops in London (although I am unsure whether the AI would transport them to South Africa).

 

[JPetroski]

Considering this scenario (I assume) basically runs North/South, and the various civs positions are essentially reversed for each, it's one of the few that you could use multiple maps with without asking people to skew their perceptions of an atlas.

If you forced the British to use transport points on the southern edge of Map: Europe (somewhere in the Bay of Biscay), they'd arrive in a good position to go to Cape Town, etc.

Likewise, if you wanted a German intervention, you could have them transport from possibly Hamburg/Kiel and wind up in Boer territory with a bit of minor fudging.

This is in nice contrast to your typical WW2 scenario, for example, where if you wanted America and Europe, you'd need to have one map mirrored or some other clumsy situation.

I have no idea how the AI would do with this, but I'd imagine they'd do very poorly.

 

[McMonkey]

There are a load of great Anglo-Boer War units in the Industrial Graphics thread. Also a lot of people would probably modify the graphics with Fairlines ones anyway, so why try and reinvent the wheel by beginning from scratch!

 

[Fairline]

This sounds interesting. Allard Höfelt made a decent Boer War scenario, but it would be good to see something new.

I'm sure you would be able to get any unit, city and terrain graphics you need, especially if you chose to execute this in ToT. These days there is still something of an audience for ToT scenarios, whereas MGE/FW have died a bit of a death...

 

[Harry Tuttle]

This war has always interested me. I'd like to see this made.

 

[Arthedain]

Great idea! And if you want to get ToT to look like MGE, use this:
http://users.tpg.com.au/jpwbeest/Files/ToT_Classic_Skin.7z

Edit: Credits goes to Catfish!

 

[Patine]

Strangely, my first request once I was registered here was to ask if anyone knew where to find a good Boer War scenario. I had just finished a historical fiction novel on the topic. This is quite the pleasant surprise.

 

[willemvanoranje]

There is a long way to go. I have played around with modding in MGE back in the days, but am completely inexperienced in ToT. Of course many principles overlap, but you all have made clear statements on potential benefits of making it in ToT. Therefore I will probably make it in ToT indeed.

That does mean I need to do some reading up on the event structures (macro.txt and checking some ToT scenarios). For graphics I will probably just continue as I would for MGE; the Industrial Unit Graphics is a great resource. Especially Catfish' Victorian Era units cover just about all basic needs. For cities I have already seen some interesting options by Curt, terrain I will probably get from half a dozen of other scenarios. Hopefully I can find matching terrains that give the scenario a somewhat dry green-yellow feel for the Veld.

Time is coming where I just have to start buildig, possibly with some creative destruction, instead of thinking further about concepts (hence the thread).

 

[McMonkey]

If you have worked with MGE in the past you should find ToT easy enough to work with. It is basically MHE with a load of improvements and extras.

 

[willemvanoranje]

Allright.. here come the first ToT noob questions...

1. Somehow my units.bmp is not being recognised. As you can see I used the resources available here, edited some a little bit in Paint, and then inserted them into the units.bmp using Adobe Photoshop CS3. Saved as 16-bit. I have made a scenario, put this file together with the .scn in a separate folder, but still ToT does not use these units. I started from scratch again once.

2. The terrain graphics I gathered from various sources are recognised without a problem. The only thing I would like to know is where I can change or turn off the animated resources. It's a bit weird when sheeps turn into buffalo's out of nothing.

 

[AGRICOLA]

I used your Units file to replace the file in John Petroski's Germanicus. The scen opened properly and there was the expected mixture of Boer War and fantasy units.

My setup is probably exactly like yours. Germanicus is in its own folder on Desktop and only the files that came with the download scen ZIP are in the folder.

 

[Catfish]

For basic sprite settings, see here.

 

[willemvanoranje]

Thanks, Catfish. Will take a look. ToT does put me back a little bit.. back to learning some new fundamentals.

Good to see that the units.bmp is allright.. and good to see my guess that it was sprites was probably right.

 

[willemvanoranje]

Everything works great now. Checking the smeds.log revealed that indeed Chronicles installs the unpatched version.. so with some little help of Mercator's registry edit I managed to install the patch.. and now (in combination with the adjusted rules.txt), it looks fine again.

 

[willemvanoranje]

Allright, a small update. Work on rules.txt is far from done, but part of that had to with me trying to find the right map. I tried taking Allard Höffelt's map as a base and editing it a bit, but it did not satisfy me completely. Especially with making rivers actual ocean squares it became difficult to have good city placement (with all the benefits and disadvantages of being close to a river).

I therefore decided to create a huge map (220x140) from scratch.... and that takes time. Gives a better feel of the vastness of the Veld as well, and it can strengthen Boer mobility contra British logistic limitations.

Finally, I have attached a couple of screenshots of the map.. full minimap, Orange Free State (Bloemfontein area) and Basutholand (road into Natal). The artwork is not all done yet; mountain resources will change (likely invisible - no real need), as well as the grass shield (I was thinking of a farmish look, but there are just too many shields).

Does anyone have any thoughts on the map?

 

[Fairline]

Map looks good. Be sure to check out Catfish's terrain on his site:

http://users.tpg.com.au/jpwbeest/