Would anyone be interested in helping me create a Balkan wars (1912-1913) scenario?

Okay, here's the .biq; the mod's area is considerably larger than my map's, whose limits can readily be seen by the rough rectangle of filled-in terrain.

I changed a couple of cities and a bit of coast; my map has rather more cities/towns on it - and I think we can essentially decide how many will wind up on the map as a result of testing for balance. Also note that both the scale and projection I was working from is considerably different than the .biq map; I'm certainly not married (figure of speech :) ) to any detail(s) in particular.

If you'd like, I can dig out standard sources (i.e., atlases etc.) and have a stab at the rest of the terrain.

... And I'm still searching for that @!#%!! OOB.

Best,

Oz
 

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  • BalkansMapNEW-Oz-v.01.rar
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I have some terrain maps I can use, as far as roads go though, not really sure if I have available the prominent roads of this era, although I could probably find something somewhere to go off of.
Map looks great BTW!

Here's some OOB details I could find so far in reference to sizes of force only at beginning of First Balkan War:

Greek Forces

Greece could provide 200,000 men in the field total.
The Army of Thessaly fielded 7 infantry divisions, a cavalry brigade and 4 independent Evzones battalions, equaling roughly 100,000 men.
Further 10,000 to 13,000 men in eight battalions were assigned to the Army of Epirus which was intended to advance into Epirus.

Navy
4 Battleships
3 Cruisers (one was the Averof cruiser)
19 smaller vessels (destroyers, torpedo boats, and others?)

Serbia Forces

230,000 men with about 230 guns, grouped in 10 infantry divisions, two independent brigades and a cavalry division.

Montenegro Forces

35,600 men with 126 guns, organized in four divisions, each of three brigades.

Bulgaria Forces

The peacetime army of 60,000 men was expanded during the war to 370,000, with almost 600,000 men mobilized in total, out of a population of 4,300,000.
The Bulgarian field army counted for 9 infantry divisions, 1 cavalry division and 1116 artillery units.

Navy
The Bulgarians also possessed a small navy of six torpedo boats, which were restricted to operations along the country's Black Sea coast.

Ottoman Empire Forces

The regular army (Nizam) was well-equipped and trained, but the reserve units (Redif) that reinforced the regular army included many non-Muslim and non-Turkish locals, especially those based outside Anatolia.
The Ottomans had two armies in Europe, the First Army in Thrace, and the Second Army in the Balkans.

The First Army was composed of the four corps of which were made up of Nizamiye soldiers.
- The I Corps included the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Divisions and two cavalry brigades.
- The II Corps was made up of the 4th, 5th, and 6th divisions.
- The III Corps was their premier corps, and was made up of the 7th, 8th, and 9th divisions and a cavalry brigade.
- The IV Corps was composed of the 10th, 11th, and 12th divisions and a cavalry brigade.
--- Each corps also included artillery and support troops.
--- The Army could expect to be reinforced by up to 14 Redif divisions, some from Thrace and others from Anatolia. Redif divisions were not numbered, but named after the city from which they were based.

The Second Army in the Balkans was composed of three corps.
- The V Corps, with the 13th, 14th, and 15th divisions and a cavalry brigade.
- The VI Corps made up of the 16th, 17th, and 18th divisions and a cavalry brigade
- The VII Corps made up of the 19th, 20th, and 21st divisions as well as a cavalry brigade.
- There were also three independent divisions, the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th.
--- Lastly, to reinforce the army there were 12 Redif divisions which mobilized from local personnel in the Balkans.
--- In time of war the Ottomans planned to bring more troops in from Syria, both Nizamiye and Redif. Greek control of the Aegean prevented those reinforcements from arriving. Instead those soldiers had to deploy via a land route, and most never made it to the Balkans after the rail line was cut early in the war.
 
Good idea :) Infantry can cost a lot, and only inferior infantry can be drafted. In my mind the main conquest should be done with 1 unit-armies (1 unit loaded in the start of the scen into an army) and then have some auxilliary forces as single units. This is one way to do it. Another would be to have single units in large numbers, corresponding to the size of the armies. But i think that it would be better to have armies, so that the player would have to decide where to attack, as happened in reality.

I know the AI has never been good at using Armies though, and that is the reason many scenarios exclude Armies completely. Of course, I haven't messed around with armies in so long, I don't quite remember how the AI uses them, or why it uses them poorly. If I can remember correctly though, it doesn't attack an enemy army except very rarely, it does not load units into armies intelligently. I'll have to look around and dig up info on it.

ARMY DOWNS: - The AI will almost never use their leaders to create armies (in fact I've never seen or heard of an AI creating an army in the Conquests expansion). *Doesn't apply unless leaders are used in the game.
- When they have an army (like in RoR) they will usually put a stupid combination of units in it (e.g. i once saw Carthaginians make an army of two elephants and one swordsman in RoR). *Doesn't apply unless leaders are used in the game.

- AI's are very hesitant to attack your armies. Since the AI calculates everything on a unit-to-unit basis it will have a very low chance of winning with just one unit, and since the AI doesn't know combined arms strategy they will almost never attack your armies. The few cases where some will probably see an AI attacking an army is when the AI has an army of it's own, if you got a very weak army, or if the army defends a town that the AI absolutely must have.

*This is the problem right here. AI might not ever attack your army, even with it's army. Of course, if it is just a pre-placed army, it might work alright. I suppose it's easy enough to do some tests though and see how AI does once we all get to that point.
 
For the first couple of points, you can get around them by a) having armies auto produced by wonders and b) allowing only one unit inside an army.
 
Ahh, just as Varwnos mentioned... so 1 unit Armies could be pre-placed on map according to actual OOB, with that 1 unit's strength representing the actual strength of the army. Artillery, reserve units, weaker draft units, cavalry, naval units would all be available as seperate units.

I would presume we want to include Guns as well (Machine guns), although they were not available in any great quantity, as it seems that there was maybe a MG per every 1000+ soldiers at most (this is an incredibly inaccurate guess estimation I made, just to let you know, but was about right for Serbia). A more accurate account / idea can be gotten by looking up individual major battles.

In order to give the player some flexibility, do you think perhaps going by the division level is the best? 1 unit army = a division? Serbia = 10 divisions, Montenegro = 4 divisions, Bulgaria = 9 divsions, Ottomans = 24 main/independent divisions + 26 reserves, Greek = 11+ divisions, etc. Making the whole armies into 1 unit would give each country only 1 or 2 major units to work with. Of course, by division level, the armies could not be made overly powerful, otherwise things would become a mess with out-of-control armies rampaging around on the map. :p
 
This (from a grand, world history POV) being essentially a one-era scenario, we could un-select "Army" under unit abilities (thereby opening up the AF/DF fields) and assign it both regular and artillery stats.

-Oz
 
I have completed some of the map terrain... Africa, some of Italy, lower east of map... I won't have time for the next few days to finish it. Here it is, I will pick it back up on Wed or Thurs if no one else does.

View attachment 210621

Tom

I'll have another go. :) Target: Wednesday.

Best,

Oz
 
Do you know wich was the biggest and most advanced industrial and cultural town in Bulgaria 1877-1885 ? Plovdiv in Eastern Roumelia at that time was bigger but,not under Bulgaria .
 
Wait wait wait - so what do you need help with? Your Mongol scenario, your post-4th Crusade scenario, or this one? :crazyeye: I'd focus on one in particular you want to see done and get that mostly done before picking up another. I personally know how much of an issue it is to try and juggle multiple projects such as these.
 
Wolf-brother, this scenario (the balkan wars) is dead. It was merely bumped ;)

Still - are you working on the Mongols Wars, or the 4th Crusade? Which do you need help with, and which do you have going on your own?
 
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