W-I-P: Storm Over the Pacifc

[El Justo]

hi all took a break from civ3 for a bit. lots of RL stuff going on, mostly work-related. all is well though i even went so far as to buy civ5 toyed with it some, even opened the hood and looked around. it's ok. but there are some glaring limitations. some day i may jump into it all. but the fact of the matter is that there is a huge dearth of civ5 unit gfx and other things. so this is perhaps the reason i have gravitated back to this lovely little game (3)

WW2 in the Pacific has always been on my to-do lists of sorts. matter of fact, i started one many, many moons ago as a deluxe version of the conquests base scenario. it was then that i finally mastered the art of adding units i eventually gave up on the project and moved onto the first version of AoI. this was spring/summer 2004 iirc. fast forward a couple of years and i helped some of the Storm Over Europe guys with organizing that project, bounced ideas around etc. there was always a plan to produce a pacific version of that great series. so here i am after all these years

another reason for my desire for this one is that my ancestors played a role in the war in real life. one grandfather worked at New York Shipbuilding yard in Camden, NJ during the war. many, many ships were built here. the USS New Jersey is one. a crown jewel iowa class BB a museum ship today. another grandfather served in the USN on an oil tanker in the pacific. his one brother served on the USS Mobile CL. another brother worked at one of the armories in philadelphia. their father served in the merchant marines too. volunteered at 48, much to the dismay of my great grandmother (or so i'm told). finally, my dad's oldest brother served in the Marines at the tail end of the war, served in china. anyhow, lots of family background here.

onto the nitty gritty : i want to build this in the same vein as AoI. there will hopefully be a lot of similarities. here is what i have so far ::

civs:
US
Japan
Commonwealth countries
Dutch
Chinese Republic
Chi-coms
USSR

map: eric_A clipped a section of Marla Singers huge world map and made a real neat (and big) pacific map. it stretches from siberia in the NW down to the eastern part of India and Ceylon to the SW. eastern part of the map includes the US west coast, Canada, across N America and the eastern edge shows most of the US south east. Cuba and Florida are at the eastern edge. panama canal also. so the caribbean is navigable.

probable victory conditions : victory point accumulation via flag unit returns (probable) and unit kills. formula for victory needs to be fleshed out. but key AoI concept of returning raw material units will be in play. victory will be coalition. so the Allies are all together. US civ will probably be only Allied civ to spawn the raw material type units (will probably be called something else, think oil tankers and supply ships). they'll be spawned in N America and shipped across pacific to likely capital in Hawaii. Japan will have to ship out from her holdings in the pacific back to Tokyo. this is in line with japanese thirst for war resources, getting them back to japan. this concept is a WIP though. so go easy on me on paper, it seems as if it would work. just need to test etc. i don't want to try to re-invent the wheel here.

nuke race - in play. no space ship victory or anything. not sure yet whether to restrict construction of nukes to one civ (via great wonder) or to make it a sm wonder. leaning towards small wonder atm. but not sure.

units - lines will be in the mold of AoI. stats will be similar also (at least their trajectory). still trying to wade through it all. but i have some base ideas. need to set up spreadsheets for the units. but at the end of the day, it will resemble the base model for AoI. i'll get into this more later.

resources - this is what i've been working on over the last few weeks. i have a pre-lim list. iirc there are 5 strats (iron/oil/coal/aluminum/uranium) and 27 lux (almost identical to AoI ones, using the same sheet with some modifications). there will be isolated areas of the map in this scenario, like all my works. AoI had two main areas: an industry side and a colonial side. this new one will likely have three: industry, colonial/imperial, and some type of pacific island resource.

could i use help with all this? probably. the best use of outside help would be with testing and civilopedia writing, i think. i am so far away though from testing that it is probably not a good idea to seek help now. there's just so much to do in the interim. feedback, though, is nice. and to gauge interest (not that a lack of interest would preclude me from working on it). anyhow, this is where i am atm glad to be back and looking forward to getting all the super cool artwork into the files!

i'll post screen in due time. map and resources are being worked on atm...

 

[Bengal Tiger]

First.
Colour me excited...
Will France and Thailand be included? Also, do you think you could put part of Canada in as a Commonwealth country?

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Good news, EJ. A long overdue project and fortunately in very good hands. With SOE out and Storm over the World in Blue Lion's secret lab, we will one day have WWII all covered.

I know you don't need help in the idea department, but I am working on a similar project using similar game concepts. So as playtesting goes on, perhaps some of that feedback would be pertinent to SOP. For example, one side effect of the resource race in AOI I noticed was how it affected unit distribution- ie. huge stacks of colonial infantry in Britain over time. So I've been trying two methods: one the traditional way of East Indies producing raw materials that have to go to Japan, but the other has the victory locations in the Pacific, and the raw materials produced in the Home Islands, forcing the computer to deploy troops abroad in addition to keeping big fat merchant targets sailing the Pacific and making ripe targets for USN submariners with their lousy non-functioning torpedos. Also have a Dec 41 order of battle in progress if that would help.

Anway, looking forward to your updates as this chugs along. I especially like the idea that the map extends to include the Caribbean. Good luck.

 

[El Justo]

thanks guys i gave some thought to france. but i wanted a start date of may/june 1942, at the height of japanese expansion. vichy dudes were nominally in control. but vichy france lacked the ability to resupply, infrastructure etc. so it's easy to nip them from the civ lineup. thailand was under japanese boot, too. so i'll likely give bangkok to the japanese (and all other holdings as of late spring '42). canada will be represented

Blue Lion/Civinator gave me some really encouraging feedback when i approached him about this inspiring even

@Anthony
neat thoughts thanks for sharing. definitely yes to the units accumulating in the 'cash-in' spots. so my hope is for the raw material units (working name atm, hope to rename them in due time) to ship out from the continental US bound for the in-game capital of Pearl. DC is not on the map. the area of the mid-atlantic region up through the northeast is not on the map. so to set the capital in Hawaii, it forces the human US player to form a logistical train to the hub and then spread out from there. of course, a wip. japan, otoh, will (probably) get to spawn 5 types of 'raw materials' based off the 5 strat resources (iron/oil/coal/aluminum/uranium[end game]). it'll be like AoI...with shipping heading out from the colonies back to the mainland, in this case, Tokyo. no VP locations planned in this first design. of course, i'd alter it if i don't see the right behaviors etc. again, it's all a w-i-p

the nagging question for me atm is what to do with the soviets? that neutrality pact they had with the japs played a huge role in the geo-strategic outlook in the pacific. how to handle this? i realize that there are a few options. but i want for any solution to be as organic as possible. do not want to try and reinvent the wheel

 

[Quintillus]

Certainly sounds interesting. I wonder if something similar to SOE's curtain between Germany and the USSR would work here as well, with it being impassable until a mass upgrade to "wheeled" units until a fairly late technology? That'd prevent war, whether via locked or via the Soviets/Japanese declaring war by chance. Even if a war did break out, being limited to air wars and the occasional paratrooper, hopefully it wouldn't be too detrimental.

Though the sea could prove more challenging. Maybe a similar movement-point tech upgrade for the Soviet Navy, plus a line of supermines that would deter Japan from trying to land troops in Siberia by sea? Just ideas, though, I don't know if they'd work well in practice.

 

[Bengal Tiger]

Certainly sounds interesting. I wonder if something similar to SOE's curtain between Germany and the USSR would work here as well, with it being impassable until a mass upgrade to "wheeled" units until a fairly late technology? That'd prevent war, whether via locked or via the Soviets/Japanese declaring war by chance. Even if a war did break out, being limited to air wars and the occasional paratrooper, hopefully it wouldn't be too detrimental.

Though the sea could prove more challenging. Maybe a similar movement-point tech upgrade for the Soviet Navy, plus a line of supermines that would deter Japan from trying to land troops in Siberia by sea? Just ideas, though, I don't know if they'd work well in practice.

The only thing with that is that it would be dead boring playing as the USSR(unless they never were meant to be played) until 1944ish.

For the raw materials idea, I wonder if there is a way to reverse the flow of goods, so that "supplies" from major cities(i.e. Mainland Japan/America, Australia, Canada, or others depending on how things develop) have to be sent to combat zones in the Pacific. I think that would be much more realistic, although I'm not sure how one could implement this in such a way that you can't just send all your supplies to the nearest island without having to worry about threats and such.

And the scenario will be starting in 1942? Then we miss a whole section of the war where Japan began expanding. Of course the decision is up to you, but I think that you could simulate the flow of combat by having the Japanese start with the advantage in unit numbers, allowing them to start with the upper hand, and give the Allies the advantage in production, so that if they can hold back Japanese expansion until 1943ish they will be be to mount significant significant counterattacks.

Anyways, good luck!

 

[scratchthepitch]

What about getting the AI to attack across all that water? Has that been solved? I had started on a Pacific scenario years ago, but dropped the idea when I couldn't get the AI to do a decent job of invading across water bodies. I found the sites below a useful reference - in case you have not heard of them before:

This site is good for locating where various Japanese and Allied forces were, Pacific:

http://www.ordersofbattle.darkscape.net/site/ww2/drleo/600_pto/41-12-07_pacific.htm

General WW2:

http://www.ordersofbattle.darkscape.net/site/ww2/drleo/000_admin/000oob.htm

And for Japanese ships and their movements, this is a fairly good source:

http://www.combinedfleet.com/kaigun.htm

Good luck.

 

[Klyden]

Well, I have been on a long hiatus from Civ in general. (Dinked around with Civ 5 and with the new expansion due soon, figured I would check in to see what was being said about it).

As usual, my friend El Justo has a project cooking.

@scratchthepitch: Not sure if you have tried AOI or not, but we had pretty good luck with amphib landings by the AI. The personal best I saw was a landing of around 10-12 units from 3 different transports on the same turn by the AI. It is tough to get the AI to do it, but the groundwork is there to give it a shot.

The big thing with any Pacific scenario is the first 5 months or so of Japanese expansion and how to get that to happen in Civ 3 terms, especially in terms of getting the Japanese AI to be that aggressive.

With the 1942 start, a lot of that as an issue is gone, although it will remain for the Allied AI.

Either way, I would think a way around it is likely to have two different versions depending on which side you play (IE, there would be one designed to be played as the Japanese as a human and one designed to be played as US/Allied human). Typically the differences between the two are not huge, but this would follow the pattern for some of the experimentation done with TCW.

I would not think the Russians would be available as a player position.

One thing of note would be to try to limit the game to 8 positions so it could become a multiplayer at some later date. It looks like El Justo has already considered this since he has only 7 listed.

Either way, good to see one of Civ's best back at it again.

 

[Bowsling]

What? Christmas is on the wrong side of the calendar this year!

I have been toying around with a WWI scenario lately, and I came up with two victory conditions that would work here too.

- Strategic victory, where the player controls enough objectives to win. All forms of trade are removed, and no roads are placed. All terrain is set to impassable too wheeled. All normal combat units receive the "Treat all terrain as roads" flag. Roads are then placed leading from a friendly city to an objective, so in WWI Germany's case, there would be roads leading from Bremen to Brussels, Köln to Paris, Posen to Warsaw, Königsberg to Petrograd. A wheeled flag unit is placed at the beginning of each road. I'm pretty sure this would work at sea. The victory condition could be modified to use space race as well, but that would be hard.

- Attrition victory, where you simply kill more units than the other guy. This would use the sacrifice mechanism and win a "cultural victory". You could even have immobile units that upgrade off "Japan" and "Allied" resources.

I would be more than willing to help with the dirty work of the scenario. Once I finally finish up with the Pirates Civlopedia, of course.

 

[Virote_Considon]

thailand was under japanese boot, too. so i'll likely give bangkok to the japanese (and all other holdings as of late spring '42). canada will be represented

If you haven't got your heart completely set on your resource choices, then maybe you could so something like SOE microzones? Thai troops would thus be built by the Japanese in Thailand, allies who manage to retake Indochina would be able to reinforce their ranks in the area with Vietminh troops, the Mongolians could have a presence through the Soviet Union as their "active participant" (see below).

the nagging question for me atm is what to do with the soviets? that neutrality pact they had with the japs played a huge role in the geo-strategic outlook in the pacific. how to handle this? i realize that there are a few options. but i want for any solution to be as organic as possible. do not want to try and reinvent the wheel

For the SU itself, it's simple: artificially bolster the defensive units they start with in/around their cities, but cripple their production and offensive capabilities until much later in the game (since they're very much tied up in the East).

The SOE method of restricting troop movment mentioned above would also be pretty dapper.

Mongolia under Soviet control could act as a sort of "wildcard" for them. Poor defensive capabilities and difficulty of Soviet reinforcement until the late game but with a decent amount of offensive ability in case they got involved, and there is none of the impassable-to-wheeled terrain between them and the action. Basically they've got a fighter's chance there but they don't want to risk getting bogged down.

In real life they did not get involved (except with the Soviets?) but they were apparently tempted either way. Give the Soviets low aggression to push them into their realistic pathway, so they'll be more likely to only attack when the late-game post-Victory-in-Europe Soviet surge comes into play.

Only the allies can form military alliances, and only very late game, so only they can potentially drag the Soviets into the war.

- Attrition victory, where you simply kill more units than the other guy. This would use the sacrifice mechanism and win a "cultural victory". You could even have immobile units that upgrade off "Japan" and "Allied" resources.

Victory point victory -> The only thing which generates victory points is killing units.

 

[El Justo]

neat points, guys thanks.

getting the AI to do what we want has always been a challenge. but like Kly wrote, we have a little background on how to approach it all. so we'll see as it unfolds.

i hoped to get some work done this weekend but i was bogged down with yard work and kiddy b-day parties i'll get back to the resource sheet tonight.

one other victory condition i did not mention earlier is a mass regicide condition. this is where there are multiple king units and each one has to be killed off as part of the condition. i was thinking of putting in a dozen or so for japan (not sure about the others yet). i guess my logic is like a complete annihilation. i mean, the war in the pacific was a real white knuckle affair where japan would simply not surrender and allied forces just had to kill 'em all (i love that album btw). us strategic bombers could target them and a nuke could really smash them to pieces. don't know for sure...but i toyed with this idea for the vietnam scenario. letting the computer randomly place them could work as well. but again, not sure.

lovin' the ideas. i'll reach out to the interested parties once i can get a better grip of the files.

 

[El Justo]

here's an update for what resources should be a part of the initial version :

strat: iron, coal, oil, aluminum, uranium

lux: rubber, coffee, tea, tobacco, rice, gold, USA, Japan, silver, timber, tin, soy beans, cotton, copper, Industry, Colonialism (working title), Pacific Islands (working title), Australia, New Zealand, British India, Philippines, China, USSR (probably), Canada, spices, wines

yes, some of the lux could be tossed into the strat category. but i'm going to keep only 5 strats atm. open to change once testing starts, i guess.

i have to actually make a few of them. most i pulled from the AoI sheet which was done by Vuldacon

i'll post a screen at some point, probably when i finish the sheet. only have a few more to make.

after this, i enter them into the biq file, align text etc. i'll start placing them too.

after this, i want to try and come up with a size1 city set. by this i mean that i want to try and make size1 cities relegated to the pacific islands (hence the Pacific Islands resource). size 2 and 3 can be obtained in all other areas. point is to have gfx that show some type of atoll-looking area, perhaps with an airstrip on it, some type of defended area. not sure, specifically. but it would need to look sparse compared to regular city gfx. anyone want to take a stab at this? would only need one static image to past onto the city sheet.

 

[Bowsling]

Victory point victory -> The only thing which generates victory points is killing units.

The idea is that the strategic victory condition uses the VP system with treasure units.

 

[eazyhasaids]

I would say leave the soviet union out. The invasion of manchuria and korea was pretty inconsequential to the outcome of the Pacific campaign and i think trying to realistically include it would be kind of bulky in terms of gameplay

 

[Bengal Tiger]

I would say leave the soviet union out. The invasion of manchuria and korea was pretty inconsequential to the outcome of the Pacific campaign and i think trying to realistically include it would be kind of bulky in terms of gameplay

It would probably depend if you're going after historical accuracy, or a what-if scenario. It's possible Russia might never get involved, or maybe they might declare war on the Allies. If you are starting in 1942, then maybe you shouldn't include them, as they were far to busy with the Germans to attempt a war on two fronts. If you start in 1939, with maybe a sub bug to get the Americans to join in 1941, then a whole lot more variables come into play, as maybe Russia would try to sneak attack Japan from the start.

 

[El Justo]

i am sort of leaning towards taking Ivan out altogether. it may make the map look a little sparse. but it would surely remove the clunky-ness of simulating first the neutrality and then the '45 invasion of manchuria. i swapped out the USSR lux resource for a chi-com one at least for the time being.

got done about half the sheet last night. plopped civilopedia icons into folders and did text entries too. wasn't too bad.

 

[Samez]

Removing russia will also increase the performance and will allow to use it elsewhere. (China/Manchuria)

 

[Klyden]

More I think about it, the better off the game would be without Russia.

As Samez mentions, it will also help with game performance in terms of speed, etc.

It also solves some issues like how would you represent the Manchurian garrision? If it was not a "fixed" garrison, then the AI would absolutely redeploy those units. If it is a human, it will badly affect game balance if the player knows the Russians won't attack until a certain date, etc. You also can't guarentee the computer to be on its best behavior as to when Russia may enter the game. (It will enter sooner than later). In addition, the AI is going to "touch" those units every single turn, slowing down the turns.

Something else is the Japanese AI would be distracted by the units there and probably try to bombard them with naval and air units. As it is, I would consider blocking off that section of the map or risk having the AI send units marching around up there.

 

[El Justo]

ok. i'll keep the soviets out for the initial version. it will make life easier for me

i finished off adding the strat and lux icons to the resource sheet and folders last night. just need to plug in the bonus ones which i will get to later.

so next step for me is to determine the city gfx for each civ. by that i mean that i need to assign each civ to one of the five culture groups. the first two are easy : US will get the AoI city gfx and Japan will get the AoI set too. what about the others? i could use the AoI sets but i wanted to see if anyone knows of any real nice city gfx sets that i could use for the remaining civs (Commonwealth, both chinas, Dutch).

i am ditching the idea of creating a size1 city set for each culture group. instead, they'll be invisible on the sheet and instead, i modified the Pacific Islands resource from the shrunken-down Coconuts resource from AoI to a shrunken-down (and somewhat crude) Airbase/airstrip image. this will guarantee that all size1 cities will be shown on the map as an airfield instead of a city with buildings etc. these pacific islands cities will never be able to get to size2 via building restrictions and the no-trade settings.

the US set is one of the best ever made imo (Vuldacon of course). the Japanese set was made specifically for AoI as well (Ogedei) and is superb (much better than other japanese city sets). the british set from AoI are just ok imo. Vuldacon cleaned them up a good deal, resized them some too iirc. the commonwealth cities are weird for this scenario b/c it covers india, australia, and new zealand. so some variance here. any ideas welcome here. same for china.

 

[eazyhasaids]

For the dutch i would say use the asian set from AoI. I think it would work nicely to represent the east indies.

Do you plan to use microzones like in SoE? I think this is a good scenario for them. Railroads didnt play a major strategic role in many of the theaters in the pacific and i think it would be important to limit where certain units and improvements can be built on the mainland. Manchukuo, inner mongolia and korea are just 3 of many potential microzones on the mainland.