Ukrainian Conflict - New scenario project - Dev Thread

Sedna

Sedna

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 15, 2023
Messages
51
1701258170466.png



Hello, привіт, привет !

(last update: November 2023)

This is my first serious project. I want to recreate the Ruso-Ukrainian conflict in ToT. I prefer MGE as a game itself, but for modding I'll learn ToT. The differences are not big, the advantages huge. I might dumb down to MGE as a second project actually.

========= THREAD RULES ========================================================================================================

My idea is NOT to politicise or give my own views on the conflict. In fact, you will never know what they are :) But here comes a BIG set of rules on this thread:

For obvious reasons, this one is a complicated one considering it is happening as we speak. For this reason, I request these rules to be followed by people on the thread:
- no political talk
- I say again, NO POLITICAL TALK
- the only thing I will accept is "Sedna, this might be seen as pro-this, or pro-that." If the argument is valid I will happily correct any mishap (see below)
- other talk is obviously okay (encouragements, chiming in to tell me this or that can be improved, help in creation sprites etc)
- talks about testing, helping, proposing units, LUA, etc

On my end:
- no political balance towards one side or the other: the experience should only feel like you can win whichever nation you are using, and events will no dictate there's a good, or a bad side, because it's a war and in all wars there are grey areas. The mod will be black and white in the sense the player will do what he want, and objective events will happen only, without judgement, without points of view gathered from either side.
- there might even be alternative version of the conflict should the player want (for instance, shaking up the position of Belarus) which also removes the scenario from being one sided.
- starting position is objectively based on summer 2023 but the player does what he wants with that.
- deliveries of units will be as per they happen on the west side (I'm talking help from other countries). On the east side, production will be attempted to be realistic and/or matched. There are mercenary factions allied with either side because that's factual too.
- tech will be on the west side in the idea that ukraine unlocks ability to produce units (as it is doing, objectively, by creating new factories together with investors). On the east, tech will be as per typical Civ2 tech: trying to improve the current units.
- some tech will be social/roleplay that are based on objective events. For ex sanctions on russia, negociations with NATO to bring this or that. On the east, they would reflect decisions taken by the government from a civilian/social point of view. Also will simulate with some civil/social tech the counter to sanctions, by increasing say improved sales of goods towards india and china to help the economy.
- as you have understood, the idea is to start at a point, leave it objective, and add different advantages for each sides which are objectively representative (ukraine receives more help than it can develop tech, russia can develop tech as per before albeit with sanctions).
- The rest will be up to the player. In fact I do plan on adding a layer of political choice up to the player so he can tailor or shake the whole scenario (trigger an end to the conflict, create his own version of the conflict alliances, decide Belarus allies officially with either side, whatever, for their own experience of the map).
- For now there is no precise plan to tune the events to follow real life events except things that, in a Civ2 games, escalade the quality of units the faction gets, or wonders and city improvements.
- TL;DR, the emphasize is a quality scenario, with an enjoyable map, set of units, a possibility for development of units from both sides (possibly to unrealistic use of stealth futuristic units such as 5th gen units, 6th gens drones etc, just because why not)

I want to emphasize I am myself affected as my gf is stuck in the east, and we are not seeing each other because of that. She's half ukrainian, half russian. So I do understand the sentiment of some people, especially from the IRL factions involved. My idea here is no to propagate a propaganda nor a personal view, but create a good gigantic map, a good representation (+/- things to make it Civ2 compatible) of the situation as of summer 2023, and let the player do their things.

======== BACK TO MODDING ========================================================================================================
Balance of rules

I want it to be easy to understand and play right away. I find a lot of scenarios are difficult to master right away. I want the units and their cost to feel similar to known units (like the conscript unit, the marine, armor etc). New units will be improved versions that the player will understand and pick up from.
I am considering altering the rules to avoid a few things: it might be longer to increase a city size. It will be harder to go beyond sizes (like aqueduct/sanitation) to avoid popping cities everywhere and tripling the production, but it will be possible to create mini cities which will look and feel like military outposts. A costly permit to create a unit (replacing the aqueduct) will be needed. Because of the timeline of the scenario (a turn = a day or something) this will be a very very big investment if done, to discourage players from overly developping a country with regular Civ2 rules.
Buildings will be similar, but they will make sense to a player picking up the game. I'm considering making the pictures similar to their regular equivalent in color so the player feels what is a Temple equivalent, what is a Collosseum equivalent etc.
Wonders will exists in a different way, some pre-given because they make sense (like UN to NATO only, Pyramids to NATO or neutral to avoid ukraine or russia getting the advantagge I don't like etc.).

- Map is huge: I went for 140x220 (30800 tiles) so that the map can be drawn realistically according to a slightly vertically compressed copy of GPS maps. It allows for a total war if you desire to go away from realism!
It is WIP and I'm trying to have it realistic with hills, forest, water, placement of cities, routes, highways (railroads) etc. Cross checking with many scientific maps to make a map that is realistic but also makes sense from a Civ2 map perspective.

- Events might start before the ukrainian invasion of this year, after russia fortified the east. Reason is: I would like a front being well defined in the east and southeast of ukraine.

There will be regular pop of units on both sides and the allied, to stimulate the front. Some possible realistic events might be simulated as possible.

- Factions:

Ukraine
Russia
NATO neutral in the war but allied with ukraine in effect (technically in peace so they cannot enter the area) (sends units, and i'd like to find if scripting "unit passing through thesee coordinates = become ukrainian". Play as a ukrainian helper
Western/Nato Help / Mercenaries (non official help to ukraine) allied with ukraine using NATO units or militia that will actually be active
RUS help (mercenaries, allied with russia, adn actively helping)
Neutral cities, TBD who and how, maybe will disappear for another entity. And idea is to block the ability to attack them unless total war is unlock by the player. They could also serve as frontline blockage east of ukraine considering official's ukraine limit in the conflict would be its own borders: they shouldn't attack russia on their side.
Belarus peace/allied with russia but not at war with ukraine uless players wants to
Barbarians as local rebels (either place)

Units
divided between regular units + ukrainian units + russian units + NATO units (more balanced but expensive)

Actually will use a lot of @Fairline amazing work. He just so happened to create a lot of russo-ukrainian units which is absolutely amazing!

Tech Tree
Divided between ukrainian tech (which is shared with NATO: it essentially unlocks the delivery of units. For ex: Ukraine unlocks research "Leopard tank negociations" and it can now produce Leopard tanks). I might script it so it can only happen in a place with a "Tank Factory". Nato already has all these techs. I'm considering long term options to escalate the tech. Also, missiles for ex will be better and better with maybe 2/3 better versions able to reach further beyond the line to simulate the ability of either side to shoot further and further (with HIMARs, SCALP, soon american cruise missiles, etc, as well as russia developping its own new weapons and producing more like hypersonic missiles or long distance missiles). Also, airplanes (F16 used as bombers initially only, as it is expected to happen etc, while russia already has its whole roster of units).
and Russian tech which is regular improvement of their arsenal (for instance: better units, or cheaper for the same price for ex "Conscription" would lead to obtaining cheaper conscript units. Conscription 2 would be a new round where you could buy even cheaper units, but as they go cheaper, they are less powerful (negative effect of going deeper in the pool of available able body men). Going for the mass and holding the front.

I'm considering finding a way to create missile launchers act as holders of missiles, but without the need to produce those missiles/rockets. Maybe through scripting by giving them one per turn as a basic mechanic? Maybe by doing it only when they fortify, so when a missile launcher truck moves, he's not firing, but when he fortifies, he now produces rockets/missiles each turn from his location ? That would actually be an amazing way of making this kind of units good. I'm considering if Howitzers would work similarly with a short distance?

Obtaining tech by taking a city will be OFF. Obvious things like that.

Governments
I do want the player to be able to switch governments. Not sure I can affect them (i will if i find out i can)
Despotism / Anarchy will be renamed.
Monarchy will be renamed as an option to go to war easily if needed (not sure it would help). It could be kept for neutral countries.
Republic will be renamed as an option to retreat and concentrate on economy a bit.
Fundamentalism will be an option should you want to go full on offensive for some time without dealing with home troubles. It will allow the production of decent conscripts (to replace the Fanatics). Essentially the president of ukraine declaring total conscription and focusing only on production. It might be the starting point for the ukrainian side considering the real state of the government is obviously a martial law (that could be the name of this government).
Communism should only be available to the east (Russia/China+others) as a balanced option to maintain a war and a decent tech and production too. But Russia should be able to choose too between this and the new version of "fundamentalism" whenever they want to sacrifice tech for units.
Democracy will be available but of course might not be the best option to maintain a big army even with the equivalent of Universal Suffrage. Considering the idea of how the game considers democracy it might only be available for factions in a state of peace.

Cities
To simulate the ability to create outposts for war purpose, new cities they will be tiny and long to grow and act when they are little like advanced outposts more than expected big cities.. Aqueduct and Sanitation will be needed at way before 8 and 12, maybe at the sizes when their logo change from a military camp to a little city, and will be renamed and expensive, so that the actual creation of a city will be an big investment, as opposed to keeping it below the size just to have a garrison and defense an area or produce a few units. It's to avoid popping super cities everywhere away from the front since the map is big, these cities would become huge, during a time of war which makes no sense, but it should allow building some outposts for war efforts and should you need it, pay the price to extend it to a bigger size..

Tiles
The balance will be slightly adjusted.
Desert, Glacier, Jungle, Swamp will be revamped as 4 available custom tiles:
- to simulate the richness of ukraine's grain and its eastern riches
Plain will be balanced with gree grassland, maybe by adding 1 trade and some tiles will exist that are super trade tiles version of the plains to simulate grain production. That way grass vs plain might be less of an obvious choice if the green has a shield.
EDIT: with ToTPP, I might not even need to do that and just use the 5 extra tiles. The basic ones might be remade still.

The extra new tiles can't be engineered. They are

1 - one new tile for Rich plains (plains that look like full of wheat in the ukrainian area) will produce an extra trade or food or both, but I don't want this OP either so I'll make it essentially a grassland + shield + 1 extra trade
2 - one new tile for rich minerals (like moutain ore on steroids, rare but big boost to a city) that we believe some areas of ukraine have and russian wants to control.
3 - one new tile for "Village". It would be a super tile, looks like a miny city. Good balanced tile (2/2/2 maybe) with defense boost, like a mountain. Can help you hold an area, simulates urban warfare. Would be anywher I wouldn't consider putting a real city, but simulating a local village or mini city as per the real maps.
4 - one new tile available for further idea
EDIT: more possibilities now that I switch to ToTPP
 
Last edited:
 
Last edited:
Current status of the Map. West of Ukraine done (center of the gigamap, about 20% of the total).
1700600351844.png
 
Hello! Just a few non-binding comments on the map. This is your project and you do what you think is right.

1. The map scale you have chosen assumes the possible conduct of military operations along the entire perimeter of the borders of Ukraine. Therefore, it would be logical if Moscow was present on the map (one of the priority targets of attacks by Ukrainian UAVs). At the moment, your map is limited to the north, it seems to be Kaluga. This will require only a slight zoom in on the map to the north. It would be optimal, of course, if the map reached in the North to the latitude of Pskov (one of the airfields of Russian strategic aviation). Plus, the Baltic countries would be present on the map (for example, in 2022 there was a precedent when a female spy who organized a terrorist attack on Daria Dugina escaped across the border with Latvia). In addition, in the event of a hypothetical conflict between Russia and NATO, the Baltic countries would undoubtedly be attacked and occupied by Russia.

2. The southern edge of the map was chosen most successfully. There are no military operations taking place south of Novorossiysk. Of course, it would be ideal if the game included the entire Black Sea basin up to Istanbul (in order to include in the games possible precedents of attacks on transports of both sides of the conflict participating in the “Grain Deal” or transporting other cargo. But in my opinion, this is not very important, and can be completely ignored in order to keep the map at a reasonable scale.

3. The eastern edge of the map is also flawless, as it includes the Engels airfield near Saratov. However, if you zoomed the map just a little to the East, you could get a small piece of the Caspian Sea, where the Russian Caspian Flotilla, which launches Caliber, is based. Literally a few sea tiles would be enough. In general, this is not particularly important, since there is a canal in the Kumo-Manych depression, which is used by the ships of this flotilla. And for reasonable generalization in the game this is quite enough.

4. The western edge of the map is surprising. It is very unlikely that there will be a direct conflict between Russia and NATO. If we still assume that it will happen, then most likely the fighting will be reduced to local battles along a line approximately corresponding to the old border of the Soviet Union. In this case, the entire territory of Poland, Hungary, Croatia and other NATO countries is clearly redundant. I think you can quite limit yourself to the meridian of Warsaw. In the event of a full-scale nuclear war between Russia and NATO, you will in any case need the entire map of the world. By reducing the essentially unnecessary western part of the map, you can use the freed tiles to expand the map to the North, and a little to the East.

Let me emphasize again. I am not insisting on any changes. This is entirely your project, and you decide what will be best. Of course, if enough effort has already been put into your map, you can ignore the opinions expressed here.

Also, I highly appreciate (as a resident of Russia) your chosen academic approach in creating the scenario, and political impartiality. We're all here to play Civ2.

And one last note. Since you chose the MGE platform, if I were you I would avoid using unlimited rail. In my opinion, this is a very weak point of MGE, especially in wargames.
 
I'm waiting for my thread to appear in the scenario league but i'll continue answering here until it is approved :)

1 moscow and some extra cities serving as "production factories" will be included even if not geographically accurate. I just didn't want to spread the area to waste more of ukraine's area which at the moment, and assuming you play there, is the mostt imporotant. I can just add moscow slightly south of where it is in reality (I believe it's very near the top of the map). Baltic countries will have a city for them, stuff like that. but I do agree the baltic country might have been good to include, I just realized it later that i'd like the scenario to go WWIII (maybe if one side uses its nuke? or suicide your president if the MGE logical engine works well for this. And not just ukraine and nato help centric. If WWIII would happen, that would need the baltic countries and finland too, and I'm not willing to go that north, at that point I would just make another scenario/map for it I think because ukraine would loose a bit of its size. Another consideration is, in reality, russia is close to the USA if you use a north pole projection, so realism is off the window in terms of maps anyways. So yeah, maybe I could redraw the map from a little bit less west a little bit more north. I will have a quick look after I type this answer

2 istanbul was a concern for me: what if I want the turks to be relevant since they block ships as a NATO entity (I know politically they are a bit in between, but I don't wanna go too far). But I decided it's minor and the "grain" war is not really relevant per se, I might add a trading ship and imply to the player they can trade from port to port, but it's not even sure. Also for this purpose, and spawning of unitts, I could create Istanbul as a lonely city in the south of the map just so it produces units/serves as trade. I could also have it have its own little sea so the russians would have the rest of their fleet there blocked by istanbul, but not sure how useful it would be.

3 you know your russian geography better than me :) I just eyeballed that area so nice to read it's relevant. I'll look into the canal, I didn't know about it, my approach to the map is that a significant river has to be 1 ocean wide so it is of strategic importance for the units. If a canal exists and makes sense i'm happy to add it. That would assume a bigger map.

4 that's totally fair, but as it stands now, I don't think it is possible that russia enters the baltic and NATO doesn't intervene, I was thinking about it a little bit recently but purely as a "why should I go all the way to the west". It was accidental as I unzoomed on google earth and i liked what i saw around ukraine, also it goes to kaliningrad. But I also see the point especially considering i could just create cities to the west named FRANCE / GERMANY / USA etc for support of delivered units. At the same time, if the baltic are part of the conflict, it goes worldwide anyways.

There has been a bit of work done but nothing more than a few hours. I'm ok restarting the work, I go quite fast using an image overlay app and I had to restart twice already due to bugs in the map editor aha. I might even be able to use the mapedit tool to cut off the west and add rows to the north without having to restart it, I have to try that. It could save me the work i've done on the current map (about 2h of work only actually!). Also the work on the west part has been minimal so far.

Another approach of the whole thing is: I could make two versions of the scenario once I finished it:
- one where no WWIII is possible (locked alliances): concentrated in ukraine and supposed to be played as russia, ukraine, or mercenaries. Maybe a possibility of WWIII still coded in the events, but that's not the intent of the map. That could however be an hypothetical future where, say, the UN vote for official help gambling against non nuclear use of Russia, and eventually ukraine becomes a proper theater of peacekeeping - Sarajevo style - as an excuse for not going global.
- one where WWIII is possible (unlocked alliances) where the map would zoom out to include the baltics, a bit of finland, maybe istanbul to include russian fleet and some USA terrain in a corner for their big production, and nato supercarrier groups in the scenario. I'd sacrifice a bit of ukraine for a global theater.
- an alternative is a worldwide one. I could reuse a giga world war map to save me that time, I think there's a couple good giga world maps available. It would include china, india, japan, europe, etc as respective allied. At the same time... don't we have enough WWIII scenarios? At that point, this scenario looses its interest, it would become similar to a "what if" cold era > wold war scenario.

It would literally "only" be making a second map, but the rules, the units, and some events would be similar. It could be later. I'm unsure at the moment.

Other of your considerations:
- I would choose to remain apolitic in the approach. I actually had a russian gf and I was in Moscow the day of the attack in ukraine. I know how complicated it is for citizens, and I know also that despite my ideas about it, I can also recognize our own propaganda, the others, and ultimately, the common denominator being the suffering of both sides anyways.
- Yes I was thinking of making highways and only keep them in the quiet areas of the map. I was thinking, given the size and zoom, to use the multiplicator of 9 so that roads are important without adding movements to the units (or they can attack too many times). near the borders and especially at the front, roads would be limited in quality, the highways would only serve to accelerate moving units away from the front towards the front. As far as I know the engine cannot not consider highways as unlimited (I saw someone who decompiles the exe mention that). Each turn would be a day worth of battle with what I can see of the MGE engine, so it's fine if tanks can only drive 9x3 =27 squares instead of unlimited IMO.
 
From what I see and given the isometric system, it's not sure i could go all the way to the north (the isometric system doesn't really help vertical or squared maps:it costs double the expansion in tiles to go north vs sides) but maybe at least north enough for mokba, nijni novgorod, and lithuania
 
Good news: the mapedit tool is fantastic and it offers preview. If I stop at Warsawa in the west, and keep the rest of the map, this is how much real estate is available on the north, and I think it reaches moscow, novgorod and Riga give or take a cell or two. Bad news it the max height or width is 250, so i have to sacrifice a few cells in the south of crimea if I want to go more to the north. The width will have to be showing a bit west of warsawa. I don't feel like redrawing the rest or restarting the map because the few different tiles are not worth it IMO. But here is a possible result

This is the map from mapedit.exe which shows I can reach north of moscow, I can even then extend 5 tiles to the east to balance west and east around ukraine

I drew in red the borders, you'll see kaliningrad now appears fully, lithuania too, latvia partly (no estonia, no finland). Moscow, novgorod and you'll recognize the rest.

I think it's a good trade considering the minor victory for ukrainian side would be to retake its cities, but major victory could be to push into russia (possibly with nato declaring war with you).

BTW I'm assuming MGE as the basis of my scenario. I quite like old school civ 2, but I could go for ToT and have 169 units etc (I'm wondering if it is worth it though? for 2 major armies?) but I need to learn the little differences, I never played ToT.

1700655501978.png
 
Updating the first post because I'm definitely going to use ToTPP :)

I just will play one ToT game just to see what's different (I'm doing an extended game, see what's after the ship), but definitely will use ToTPP, use MGE style blinking units etc and unlock the power of it, the amazing tools made by TNO, and give a go at lua. There's so much to do, even just scripting battles like that of Kherson, more control over unit deliveries, goTo commands of allies, control over which factions a player can play and what difficulty, ToTPP just sounds amazing.

I'll post here my issues, I understand some answers might be somewhere else in the forums, but I am new here and I'm actively searching for the info including diving into decade old thread pages.

PATCHING
I'm just having trouble updating to 1.1. I download the file and it obviously is trying to find my game installed in the registry. For an obvious reason that this forum considers out of reach because of the abandware status of ToT, I have a 1.0 version at the moment. I'm willing to get a hand on the CD if it is helpful (I'd like to own the original big box of MGE that I had as a kid) but if in the meantime someone could help me fix the 1.0 to 1.1 issue I have "ifyouknowwhatImean" that would help. PS: i did sign the Gog petition. I can't fathom Civ2 is not on GoG. Should they release it on Steam they would sell decently, a lot of 30+ yo people have played Civ2. I digress anyways.

UNITS AND TERRAIN
@Fairline :) I'm going to need nicer terrain as well. I guess I can start from the basic Civ2 MGE land. I have noticed ToT still has all the bmp and gif from MGE. Is that a typical solution? Also, I didn't find a thread for terrain, unless all there is is in the "other" thread with cities, people etc?
Is there a way to play ToT with old graphics? other than copy pasting the files ?

EDITOR
Also, can I drop the map editor in the ToT main folder? (it's not a big deal if not).

TOT ISSUES
I have one specific issue (again, I'm on 1.0). To move units with the keyboard, only diagonals work (791 and 3). Cordinal directions do not (4862). Is that a known bug? I use the mouse goto function for now.

TOTPP specific questions
- Is there a way to have more than 8 tribes (counting barbarians as a tribe)?
- Is there plan for more than 189 units? I read somewhere it is possible with lua but i'd rather have something simple. To be clear, I am comfortable with even less than this, but it is just to know.
- If it is correct there are 16 tiles possible with the patch meaning 5 extra tiles, can the map editor know this, or you have to, in-game in cheat mode, add the tiles one by one? Wouldn't be a big issue for me as I do plan on using those tiles for special tiles, but it is a nice-to-know.
 
Last edited:
Hi @Sedna I've moved the old thread from scenario creation into the Scenario League as requested, and I've approved the duplicate thread and merged it into this original thread. Your wording is a bit different between both thread posts so I felt it was best not to delete one of them and leave it to you to clean things up in the duplicate post here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...nario-project-dev-thread.686869/post-16536652

Apologies for the delay in doing this. When Sedna decided to make the new duplicate thread here instead asking someone to move the old one it triggered the site’s duplicate spam detection system resulting in it appearing in the approvals area in front of all site staff requiring some deliberation. Unfortunately there’s been some pretty bad incidents in other areas of the site with proposed Ukraine war scenarios quickly turning into heated arguments about the real war situation so there was considerable hesitation in approving this. However Buck2005 seems to be okay with things so far and Sedna seems like a nice bloke and has given us some assurances that he'll do his best to keep things friendly in the thread and the scenario focused on the gameplay fun and simulation side of things and not turn it into a political thing leading to real world situation arguments (there are threads for that in Off Topic so anyone with a strong opinion on that best go there). So after much discussion over the week we've decided to reluctantly let it go through. Please don't make us regret that decision, otherwise @JPetroski may have to shut things down to keep the politics & real world stuff out of the SL. However while things went pear shaped elsewhere lets prove that the Civ2 scenario making community are different and can do the right thing! :)
 
Last edited:
Hi all,

Just to echo @Blake00 's comments, I want to be very transparent and upfront with everyone here:

Sedna is a new member, and I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we're happy to have him, and thrilled to see our community grow. He's here because he has an idea for a scenario, and we're the exact sort of folks who can help him bring it to fruition and also enjoy it when it's done. He is making a scenario for our beloved game.

Awesome to see everyone is keeping things friendly and civil and that Sedna is, as Buck2005 put it, keeping things academic. I would ask everyone who ever reads this to keep that up because we are, at the end of the day, guests at this fine website and the owners have allowed us considerable leeway in having this discussion. As Blake00 mentioned, let's show them that the Civ2 scenario making community is different and can keep things on the up and up!

With all of this in mind, and with great consideration to our hosts, I do intend to rule this thread with an iron fist if necessary lol and will take a much stricter approach than I normally would with other threads, so, let's keep it on topic, and clear of "jokes" that could be misconstrued.

I'm super excited to see Sedna here and it would be such a shame for a new member's project to get shut down when we're always looking for someone else to share this amazing hobby with.

I'm counting on all of you ;)

/soapbox
 
Thank you, I edited my first post to make it extremely clear this is not a place for political debate, and to clarify the intent of the scenario which for now will be "basic" when it comes to politics. The idea is to mod the events which will eventually happen anyways, and try to have a good baseline.

I hope people can appreciate that!

As an update, I'm missing the southwest of the map to have a 0.1 version of it. Borders usually have some sort of terrain (even if IRL it doesn't exist) just to make it clear to the player + to make border crossing away from roads difficult.

You can maybe already appreciate from the distance the use of some grassland to plan ahead where the roads will be: they are according to google earth, so I'm trying to place the cities and roads as per IRL. However the terrain will be a bit customized (more forest, terrian etc) to simulate that they do matter between units, and although tha rea is relatively flat, say 100m of difference in height does matter for howitzers etc. Also, without them, cities have no production. So cities will overall have more forest in between them and a few hills to mine near them. Another reason is a big land of flat terrain is boring to navigate through.

A final adjustement of removing a as much on the left side, add to the north all the way to moscow, create the districts of moscow, and maybe use the tiles available to the east (by 5 or so) is on the way. I'm keeping to this because I am using a map that fits this perfectly, and later will recut the map a little bit with the Mapedit.exe which works well to resize and move the terrain.

1701260941912.png
 
Now @Sedna with all of that said, I have some suggested homework for you before you break ground. There are several great Civ2 scenarios out there for ToTPP, and I think you're going to be doing yourself a disservice to your own scenario if you don't go and play a few before you get too far on this. In particular, I'd check out @tootall_2012 Battle of Italy. I think you might enjoy several of the concepts he has placed in there, especially tile stack limits and the most refined supply module yet in a scenario.

Good luck!
 
JPetroski said:
Hi all,

Just to echo @Blake00 's comments, I want to be very transparent and upfront with everyone here:

Sedna is a new member, and I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we're happy to have him, and thrilled to see our community grow. He's here because he has an idea for a scenario, and we're the exact sort of folks who can help him bring it to fruition and also enjoy it when it's done. He is making a scenario for our beloved game.

Awesome to see everyone is keeping things friendly and civil and that Sedna is, as Buck2005 put it, keeping things academic. I would ask everyone who ever reads this to keep that up because we are, at the end of the day, guests at this fine website and the owners have allowed us considerable leeway in having this discussion. As Blake00 mentioned, let's show them that the Civ2 scenario making community is different and can keep things on the up and up!

With all of this in mind, and with great consideration to our hosts, I do intend to rule this thread with an iron fist if necessary lol and will take a much stricter approach than I normally would with other threads, so, let's keep it on topic, and clear of "jokes" that could be misconstrued.

I'm super excited to see Sedna here and it would be such a shame for a new member's project to get shut down when we're always looking for someone else to share this amazing hobby with.

I'm counting on all of you ;)

/soapbox
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for the nice words, and I myself edited my first post to reflect these things a little bit :)

And I just read your suggestion for Battle of Italy. In fact since i'm on sick leave, I might open it right now :)
 
Good luck @Sedna with your creation process !

I'd repeat JPetroski peace of advice :
JPetroski said:
I have some suggested homework for you before you break ground. There are several great Civ2 scenarios out there for ToTPP, and I think you're going to be doing yourself a disservice to your own scenario if you don't go and play a few before you get too far on this. (...) I think you might enjoy several of the concepts he has placed in there, especially tile stack limits and the most refined supply module yet in a scenario.
Click to expand...

Discovering possibilities, maybe to keep them aside (if one whish to keep his civilization2's feelings) can only strengthen your goal and brighten your creation path. :)
 
Yes I downloaded the scenario. As a new ToT player, I do not have yet a good 1.1 install. I ordered recently the CD so hopefully I can have a go at it soon. It seems there are a good ideas in this scenario considering the logistics is indeed what defines this conflict. I was thinking of nice mechanics in the likes of "units cannot fix themselves" and give that role to medic/supply trucks (that way, an alternative way to attrition to win an area is to cut supply lines). The unknown is AI, it probably wouldn't play it correctly. On another hand, maybe something is programmable for a non-human behavior vs a human player behavior.. Also transport of troops etc, and it seems the scenario has some of those ideas.

Because for ex, let's say leopards are delivered, it's all good and nice but if they get broken, they shouldn't be able to fix themselves up by skipping a turn in this specific scnerario. Same for conscripts at the front if a local logistic depot is hit and the logistic line broken (that could be a thing? a special unit that serves as logistics depot and all units within an area of its radius can fix themselves up? And as they get closer to the line, they get closer to ennemy missiles. The challenge is say you do so, the AI wouldn't be able to know it can use them or rebuild them. It would have to be scripted maybe city by city, where would logically such a depot be positionned if a city is taken).

Before that I'd need to even pop a unit with LUA :D

Also, premptive question: is it recommend to, then, set ALL the scenario parameters in LUA and just disregard the .txt files then? To make scripting easier later?
 
Sedna said:
Also, premptive question: is it recommend to, then, set ALL the scenario parameters in LUA and just disregard the .txt files then? To make scripting easier later?
Click to expand...
None of the standard Civ II files change (except that the rules.txt get some TOTPP fields), except that events.txt stays empty (though I have code that translates the "macro events" into Lua), and a bunch of .lua files are added. I've just started re-writing Lua Lessons to work with my Lua Scenario Template (see links in my signature). Just start by building a "standard" (non-lua) scenario, then you can add Lua after you have rules, etc. done.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

T
Under the Comanche Moon (dev thread)
3 4 5
Replies
90
Views
3K
Prof. Garfield
P
techumseh
Old project getting started.
2
Replies
20
Views
730
gapetit
gapetit
civ2units
War of Spanish Succession / Great Northern War scenario idea
Replies
11
Views
646
civ2units
civ2units
techumseh
Whither scenario design?
2 3
Replies
40
Views
2K
Blake00
Blake00
Fairline
Mercator's CivSprite
Replies
8
Views
435
Dadais
Dadais
Top Bottom