W-I-P: Storm Over the Pacifc

[El Justo]

good to know i'll get to the unit lines for all civs once i finish the map.

 

[El Justo]

here are some shots of Australia. it's not 100% complete atm but the well known resources (ie historical) are in place for the most part.

1 South Australia, New South Wales, Tazmania

2 US cities along Queensland coast

3 Northern Territory & Western Australia

4 Perth area

5 continent

all a w-i-p of course comments appreciated!

 

[ShiroKobbure]

I was making flag leaderheads for an unrelated project, they are a flag in Poser. I haven't been able to get the animation to look right, and I will probably just release them static. Anyways these are most of the countries during the Pacific War, I dont think they are all in your mod, and of course if you need other ones I can make them easily. Let me know if you are interested and I can send you the FLC.

Japanese national Flag, Japanese Naval flag (often mistakenly thought of as the "Imperial" flag), Manchukou, Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind (Free India)
Siam, US, UK, The Netherlands
Chinese Communists, Republic of China, USSR

 

[El Justo]

hey, they're neat and exactly what i intended to use.

the two chinas, australia, new zealand, british india, and canada are the ones i actually need i have a japan and us already.

 

[El Justo]

update june 27

attached is new zealand which will probably be its own civ, ie separated from australia. 5 cities 'oughta do'er.

 

[Bengal Tiger]

here are some shots of Australia. it's not 100% complete atm but the well known resources (ie historical) are in place for the most part.

1 South Australia, New South Wales, Tazmania

2 US cities along Queensland coast

3 Northern Territory & Western Australia

4 Perth area

5 continent

all a w-i-p of course comments appreciated!

Looks good. Have you considered putting a city or two in the centre for aesthetic purposes(such as Alice Springs?) Normally I'd be against encroaching on sovereignty to the extent you have the US there, but see how it works out first. I think a few airbases and outposts with VP locations should do the trick, especially in a MP version.

Right now, what is your civ list?
Japan
USA
China
Communist China
Australia
British India
New Zealand
Canada
Soviet Union(?)
Dutch Indies(?)
and maybe some barbarian natives to stir things up in certain areas like India, China(Tibet?), and Indonesia.

 

[El Justo]

right now, i'm just kinda plopping cities in there and not worrying about the cultural continuity/borders. i guess the most important thing for me and the map and placing cities is to sort of cap the city count for each civ (to some degree, mostly for civs outside of US & Japan really).

US
Japan
China red
China republic
Australia
New Zealand
British India
Dutch maybe
Canada probably not
USSR no

i probably won't add barbs anywhere but never say never

onto the US part of the map. wish me luck finding all these resource placements

 

[El Justo]

back in action i've been busy over the last days. i managed to place more cities, finish off resource placements for a bunch of large areas of the map, and even reformatted the civ lineup via text & editor to reflect the order in the OP just above (#47).

i finally got my imageshack account up again the png quality makes a big difference imo.

note that i have not secured city gfx yet for the British India position (orange) civ color will probably get changed too. but this is it for the time being. any hints for a nice set of Hindi cities would be great. any ideas?

volcanoes are appearing on the map. the gfx are a placeholder for impassable mountains. think AoI imapassable moutains. they will lock in parts of Burma and force a land route, a historical one at that, through Burma and into China. more on that later in this post (see china burma india pic).

a tweaked SE Asia

portion of the China-Burma-India theater.

this is what i've been spending the most time with recently. it is crucial that i get this area of the map right in order to stay historically true (and as organic as possible wrt gameplay). now, there's a big dilema that i'm faced with here as a designer and it's the airlift heroics of Allied pilots during the war, specifically over the "Hump". this will be rather balky to replicate with the civ3 game engine. yes, there are a variety of options and i would surely be eager to read the opinion of others on this one. but i am afraid to get too cute with airlifting units, flag units, VPs etc etc. so for the time being, i am going to avoid any type of air transport responsibilities for British India. by this i mean in terms of human gameplay, the human as British India (ie no cashing in flag units that could get airdropped etc, isolating the air trade flag for imp's, airbases, and some other quirky workarounds).

what i will concentrate on however is the Burma Road and in the case of British India, the Ledo Road. the Burma Road, as many are probably aware, was the lifeline from india, into burma, and on to china for Allied forces. it was cut off by the japs when they overran burma. so the Allies had to force there way through Burma and reopen the lines between India and China, Kunming specifically. so for the time being, i will try to design this part of the map to sort of force British India to link up to China. resources will play the key role here: British India would have access to the China resource (and vice versa) thus allowing for certain advantageous builds, units and buildings, wonders too i would think. all a WIP atm. so i do not have specifics. i have a base idea. but have not gotten to unit lines or the master building lists yet. at the end, for me, i think it will be better for the AI to push for resources, to fight for them rather than the clunkiness of air transport. the historical dilema for me? a huge percentage of supplies that went from India to China was done in the air. once the Ledo Road was linked up to Kunming, supplies etc trickled in, way, way under the total weight etc of supplies flown in. i can't recall the exact percentages, but by the end of the war, it was like 80-90% by air and the rest over the Ledo and opened-up Burma Road. so historically, i am fudging it some. just wanted to put that on the record

northern India

in keeping with the theme of alloting cities in proportion to gameplay and history, British India will have 17 cities. it is one or two more than Australia. however, it is only half of the crown colony (+ ceylon). so this number seems about right, especially in proportion to the japanes in south asia. not averse to adding more cities though. but this will do for alpha/beta version. imho, it will make for a nice theater in terms of production/frontlines.

southern tip of India & Ceylon

i'll post shots of the US, probably tomorrow or late tonight.

 

[Bengal Tiger]

Good stuff. Are the volcanoes to act as a barrier at some point?

 

[El Justo]

yes, just like AoI.

 

[El Justo]

as promised, some shots of the US mainland.

a satellite-like shot of north america

not shown is Panama (1 city) and the Aleutians (x2). that eastern edge shown in the pic is the real edge on the map.

Pacific Northwest and surrounding area

California and the Southwest

The Midwest and Surrounding Area

Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama

Eastern Edge of the Map

Florida & Havana

 

[Delta_Strife]

Lots of US cities should prove tough for the Japanese.

 

[Bowsling]

Out of curiosity, do you plan to pop borders to make countries have contiguous borders?

 

[El Justo]

japan has piles of cities too. they're just spread out more and not as concentrated.

i'll probably keep the culture for each city at -zero- to start, at least in alpha testing.

 

[Virote_Considon]

I think it'd suit the scenario quite well: cultural expansion = funneling more resources into the war effort for the city, allowing for greater productivity (i.e. the use of more [and sometimes more valuable] tiles)

 

[El Justo]

yeah, that is sort of what i was thinking too. it might look a little disjointed, the map, in certain areas but i don't think it will be that big a deal. one nice side effect though is that it will shave off IBT times. this map is big. so any help here is always great

 

[El Justo]

july 16 update

steady progress with the map and some other map-related gfx.

northeast asia at max view

if you look close enough, you can make out the tan-ish mountains from AoI that i used as impassable terrain. same here. need to work out some gfx kinks with getting the pcx sheets to show volcanos as impassable (whereas AoI used the Marsh tile). a quick fix once identified

i had to sort of pack the japanese islands. almost every city has 2 tiles between it and the next city though. so it should work. will modify if necessary once at beta (like all other adjustments as well).

Manchuko is packed too. but it was vital to the japanese war machine. so packed it shall be

i found a couple neat ww2 maps of china during their second sino-jap war.

those are flood plains appearing throughout china.

most resources are placed in the areas shown above. just need to tidy up some.

new Chinese city gfx

nothing all that sexy. a mashup iirc of Red Alert's asian cities and Aieon i think. Meteor Punch the compiler. open to midifications to them though. i should say that these were clearly the best among 'Chinese' city sets. the others just don't look Chinese. they look more greek than anything else.

new Indian city gfx

this set otoh is really, really sharp. Red Alert. great color contrasts and textures. only thing is that these are ancient era (pre-muslim). the one thing really going for me and adding these in is that moat of the Indian territory shown on the map (i think) is hindu (and not muslim). for the most part that is. ideas etc welcomed.

new Mine gfx

thinking a little outside the box here with this new addition. gone are the literal 'mine' gfx. swapped in are my crude attempts at replicating 'heavy industry'. iow, they are the new mine gfx. here's the rub: gotta have iron & oil in strat resource box/es to build it. just like railroads need iron & coal. surely a WIP, this theory. but on paper, it makes sense.

just started compiling the unit spreadsheets. this is gonna take a while. fortunately though, i have a nice repository (and neat scenario in itself) in the SOE folders. i can simply c&p the unit folders, do some text entries, adds into the editor etc. upward ond onward as they say

 

[El Justo]

20 july update

onto atm the building of the unit lines this is typically my favorite part of scenario design b/c it dictates the tempo of the entire scenario, from game play on down. plus, it's sort of research based. so i do well with assembling data. nonetheless, here is a screen of the first version of US ground units. print is a little small. sorry squint a little.

only some prices coordinated at this point. they are all tiered in prices (and abilities), just like in AoI.

3 primary infantry builds. US Infantry buildable anywhere. Marines only on islands in the pacific and airborne once the war in europe is over. all "Foot Units" which means they will be able to traverse the non-traversable tiles for wheeled units (eg jungle & mountains). airlifting is something i may want to restrict some for logistical/game play reasons (ie use transports). a limited airlift is ok. so this is why the airborne troops get this (and airdrop of course). 1 movement rate atm (2 for armor). has as complimentary units (ie non-wheeled) the 75mm pack howitzer and also 40mm bofors AAA (consider it infantry support).

worker units will be split up among the three distinct regions on the map. Civil Engineer buildable only in US, non combat unit. Seabee a USMC comapanion in the pacific islands. Army engineers need the Imperialism resource (fka Colonialism, ie non pacific islands and non US and Japan). all "Foot Units" which means they can go onto the jungle and mountain tiles and build roads and rails which would then enable wheeled units to traverse the formerlly non-traversible tiles. the US, by having all 3 of its worker units as "Foot Units", is a nod to the elite level of engineering, consruction, industrialization etc. not all civs will have engineers/workers as "Foot Units" easily avaialable. not sure whether the a/d values for the worker units listed will work. i know game play-wise, they can defend themselves etc. but not sure how it will impact AI build decisions. another wip that i'll be keeping an eye on once i launch an alpha version.

the tanks listed above follow a similar trajectory of the tank stats from AoI. defense values are intentionally low, or to be precise, significantly lower than the infantry-type units that are buildable, in order to give the human an AI clear cut decisions on what to build : armor is for attack while the infantry units sport the best defensive value (along with a good attack value [but lower than that of the armor]). it boils down to the raison d'etre of each unit in the game. this means each unit must have a disctinct and clear cut purpose in the game. and it's the player's (or the AI) job to sort out how they may want to assemble their forces. their will be a light tank line (m2 thru the m24) and also a medium tank line (m4 to the m26) that pushes the limits, close to heavy tank (pershings were beasts). of course, armor was not used on the same scale int he pacific as it was in europe. however, those light tanks were useful in the pacific theater. once the M4 became standardized, it was introduced into the pacific. in addition, the evolution of the US medium tank designs were also done with the thought of an invasion of the japanese home islands. this would have surely required the use of medium tanks and basically the whole US arsenal. the "Wheeled" flag, of course, restricts movement to certain tiles that don't have a road/rail. attack values based off of gun size and secondary armaments and to a lesser degree, speed, crew competentness. HP allotments based of of weight and armor thickness.

self-propelled artillery and anti tank guns are next. these are essentially support for the tanks; same movement rate (2), a decent bombard # and the blitz flag. shoot and scoot bonus. note the lower bombard rate of the spa units compared to the field pieces. again, raison d'etre : armored support. not sure how the a/d values will impact gameplay AI unit building decisions. another WIP note for me. HP allotments based mainly off total tonnage and armor thickness, like with the tanks. these units have the "Blitz" flag. so in all, they're capable of launching 2 bombardments at 1 rof each (compared to field arty which is 1 move total, 2 rof).

field arty - basic 75mm pack gun, no resource requirement and easily trasnportable, so the "foot Unit" tag (and airlift, airdrop). 105mm the medium piece and the 155 as the heavy. had to fudge it a little to make sure all the units are worthy of building (AoI has this model also).

anti-aircraft guns - the bofors is the other infantry support weapon (75mm is the other). 90mm beasts, an attempt to replicate the fearsome German 88. a very good aa gun. M19 is an armored/mobile AAA unit. consider it support for the armor (same speed).

despite the large number of bombardment units, i do not want the scenario to be based off of artillery like in AoI wherein one needs a good pile of arty pieces to take down cities. instead of arty, i want that role to go to aircraft and to a lesser extent, naval bombardment. but, i had to put some base arty pieces into the mix (for historical purposes too). basically, the arty units (field pieces & spa's) will be support weapons to the tanks and infantry.

 

[Bengal Tiger]

Thanks for taking the time to put all this up. I'm really looking forward to it.

 

[El Justo]

just launched the first alpha last night it's pleasing to me to see it launch, i mea, all the pieces fitting together and working. i'm still way far off from beta. but this is a crucial first step!