WW2-Global

[Sasebo]

I look forward to seeing what you plan to do tom2050. I've always liked this scenario, though finishing it has always been hard for me as it does require a rather huge time commitment. It's always fun unless the UK or USSR get out of hand.

 

[againsttheflow]

Thanks for posting about it here tom2050.

 

[tom2050]

I may include an alternative .biq along with the original .biq with a change that involves the US auto-producing a transport every so-many turns (6 turns or so) from New York and San Diego. I have tested this quite a bit and US does bring these transports from San Diego to Japan, and from New York to Europe. This is the only way (besides a supertransport, which is hard to make work correctly) to get US more involved.

The No-Raze patch will be included, so that players don't have to put up with cities being razed constantly. I'll try to have this completed by this Friday. EDIT: Monday or Tuesday.

I've also heard (seems as was discovered by the SOE team) that installing mods and scenarios to the Conquests/Conquests folder instead of the Conquests/Scenarios folder makes loading times much faster, and cuts initial load time in half. I will time it to see if that holds up or not... if it does than that should help very much with waiting times for this scenario!
EDIT: I timed initial loading times for both above, in Conquests/Conquests folder it took about 3 min 50 sec. From Conquests/Scenarios folder it took about 3 min 55 sec. Seems to not make too much a difference.

 

[againsttheflow]

Hey tom, were there any "hyperlink limit extended" errors in the Pedia do you remember? If so you'll want to be sure (especially since you're already requiring the no-raze patch) to include the fix that ED posted a while back, PM me if you hadn't heard about it.

 

[tom2050]

Hey tom, were there any "hyperlink limit extended" errors in the Pedia do you remember? If so you'll want to be sure (especially since you're already requiring the no-raze patch) to include the fix that ED posted a while back, PM me if you hadn't heard about it.

The no-raze won't be required at all... it will just be included, for those who want it, since it's not the easiest thing to track down (especially for those that don't know it exists).

The hyperlink limit error that pops up I thought would always pop up when you click on a resource that is used for more units than can fit on the screen. If there is a fix for it, I was unaware, please let me know where it is, and I will include it. (PM sent)

EDIT: It fixes the hyperlink limit extended error perfectly!

 

[againsttheflow]

The hyperlink limit error that pops up I thought would always pop up when you click on a resource that is used for more units than can fit on the screen. If there is a fix for it, I was unaware, please let me know where it is, and I will include it. (PM sent)

I'll send you the fix but it will come with the no-raze to cut down on the confusion (otherwise you'd only be able to have one patch or the other, not both). I think the no-raze patch is a very important part of retaining some degree of historical accuracy in modern scenarios and also helps with game balance. Just to note, it does not keep the player from razing though that would of course be pretty unethical even in a World War...

Also to clarify, the hyperlink patch is not something you'll need for the regular game or many of the mods available. For those that could use it without the no-raze its around here on the forums somewhere.

 

[Rocoteh]

"A comment on the future

I started to work with scenario-creation February 2003.

General interest for Civ 3 reached zenith March 2005.

In early 2005 WW2-Global was downloaded 50 per day.
Now its 40-50 times per month.
That is OK with me.
(From my own stats I can see that overall interest for Civ 3
has dropped some 90% since March 2005 and its still downward.)

However I also think most of you understand that my motivation
to invest more time into Civ 3 has dropped.

Thus I think its very good that players of the scenario (like tom2050)
make their own graphic updates since its uncertain if I will launch
an update.

As some of you know I will reduce time allocated to Civ during
Spring and Summer.
I see no project completed before the Fall."

Rocoteh
(From the Stormoverciv Forum)


Thus its OK that people launch their own graphic updates of the scenario
(at the Stormoverciv Forum).

Its not OK that people launch their own versions of my scenario without
my permission.

I have very bad experience from the past with regard to that and as a general rule I do not accept it anymore.



Rocoteh

 

[againsttheflow]

Rocoteh,

I hope that comment was not a consequence of the patch I was mentioning. Sorry if it was. Let me clarify that it does not affect gameplay in any way, shape, or form. It does not add to the game files or the .biq either. It is simply a patch on the .exe that allow you to open say, the oil page in the civilopedia without getting the annoying, recurrent "hyperlink limit extended" message thus allowing you to view the page and continue browsing without having to deal with this "bug".

 

[tom2050]

It may have been the fact that I mentioned including an alternate scenario with only change being US auto-producing transports. I brought it up over at Storm over Civ and had some pretty good results, but posted that before I actually thought about it. I intended only to do graphics updates to units that were available, and make absoultely no changes to the 2.6 version gameplay, which is what I have been doing. I have edited my previous post, to be honest I forgot I even wrote that, it was probably late at night or something.

 

[Rocoteh]

Rocoteh,

I hope that comment was not a consequence of the patch I was mentioning. Sorry if it was. Let me clarify that it does not affect gameplay in any way, shape, or form. It does not add to the game files or the .biq either. It is simply a patch on the .exe that allow you to open say, the oil page in the civilopedia without getting the annoying, recurrent "hyperlink limit extended" message thus allowing you to view the page and continue browsing without having to deal with this "bug".

againsttheflow,

No I was refering to things in the past.
Thus no problem.


Rocoteh

 

[Rocoteh]

It may have been the fact that I mentioned including an alternate scenario with only change being US auto-producing transports. I brought it up over at Storm over Civ and had some pretty good results, but posted that before I actually thought about it. I intended only to do graphics updates to units that were available, and make absoultely no changes to the 2.6 version gameplay, which is what I have been doing. I have edited my previous post, to be honest I forgot I even wrote that, it was probably late at night or something.

tom2050,

Again: I was refering to an old sad story.
Your version with US auto-producing transports is OK with me.

Rocoteh

 

[Emerentius]

Hi Rocoteh,
good to see you here again.
Missed you. I do stop over sometimes at Storm over Civ but not as frequently.

 

[tom2050]

Work is steadily progressing... working primarily on naval units now, likely finish date will be Tuesday (hopefully). Re-flc'd the A-bomb animation, to be able to show the A-bomb drop, but also show the whole Nuclear explosion (instead of just the secondary nuke explosion that was in there before). Added a better Nuke animation (great animation in fact, forgot who made it... but he did a great job). Navy takes a while, I need to make sure I get all the ships correct with the type of class they are. Right now, the file will probably be 100-150 MB larger (pure estimation at this point though), I will try to get that a bit smaller though, by placing duplicate wav files in a single 'CommonSounds' folder.

If not Tuesday, it should be Wednesday for sure. I will have to give it to the admin over at StormOverCiv, and then they will have to put it up (not sure how long that will take, probably not too long though).

 

[Sasebo]

The transports for the US sounds good, though I bet they will still not protect them well. I still remember the old versions with the Destroyer squadrons where the AI actually was able to invade England because those could carry troops. Though BB vs DD squadron battles were quite odd. I was sorry to see them go in a way, as the AI actually used their navies to good effect with those crazy things.

 

[tom2050]

The transports for the US sounds good, though I bet they will still not protect them well. I still remember the old versions with the Destroyer squadrons where the AI actually was able to invade England because those could carry troops. Though BB vs DD squadron battles were quite odd. I was sorry to see them go in a way, as the AI actually used their navies to good effect with those crazy things.

Oh Yea, I vaguely remember those destroyers that could carry 1 troop. I actually didn't even know they could for a long time until I saw the AI using them like that. That was quite a few versions back if I remember right! I'll have to look up why those were removed!

What you say is true, but in my tests with them, all initial auto-produced transports had escorts (some heavy cruisers, then all destroyers after). The US kept bringing destroyers over to escort the transports heading towards Japan from San Diego, but the transports leaving from New York over to Europe no longer had escorts after the 2nd auto-produced one.

This may or may not be good. Depends on who the Human is playing as. Usually Italy navy gets wiped out, and US has no problem making attacks there. German navy usually does not pose much problem either. Japan navy usually gets quite powerful, but US transports do slip through (thanks to the escorts) and drop troops off in China and Japanese mainland (although the transports rarely made it out alive). If a human player playing Italy or Germany has a powerful navy, it's not likely transports will ever get where they are going, but still you never know... gives the player something else to keep in mind.

The real question is how often the US should auto-produce transports.

I have done some playtesting with it, but it by no means has been throughly playtested, but I believe it may get US more involved than having Supertransports, which is difficult to make work properly.

 

[tom2050]

Work is about complete, and will be released Friday 3-13-09 (sometime, unsure at the moment). I will be sending the file over to StormOverCiv sometime in the late afternoon (my time at least). I will leave additional details once that is complete.

 

[againsttheflow]

anticipating...

 

[tom2050]

I'm zipping it now, I can't wait to play a game myself. My brain feels like mush going through the hordes of units. Beware, the file size was much larger than I anticipated. Almost 400MB. I might be able to get the file size down by 100 or so meg, but that would probably take a week of grinding through unit folders and re-writing INI files to save space by making all 'common files' available in 1 place (which I did to an extent, but not for everything).

Regardless, I'm handing it over to StormOverCiv.org, and you should be able to get it from over there as soon as they post it! I used to love reading other's game posts, I may start one for my next game.

 

[Emerentius]

@tom2050
Hi, I understand your update includes the us transport issue, but does your update also include the map change in the med as discussed in SOC?

 

[tom2050]

Yes Emerentius... the Alternative Scenario has only 3 changes.
1. US added wonders in New York and San Diego both auto-produce a transport every 7 turns. I tested with various turn amounts (only up to late 1940 though), and 7 doesn't make the US a mad powerhouse, but by late 1940 the US starts to have some power due to the many many transports it accumulates and keeps ferrying back and forth. By 1942, the US would likely have at most 52 or so transports (if it does not build any). But since I haven't playtested it through a whole game (since it's very time consuming to do so), I really don't know how well it will work in the late game.
2. Yes, The small piece of land near city of Tunis has been removed to try to avoid the problem of AI parking a ship right in that spot, blocking the path.
3. The Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go only requires Oil. There was a discussion about this long long ago. In the scenario the Type 95 requires Oil Iron and Rubber (I think), yet the Type 97 only requires Oil. The AI won't build Type 95's anyways (or not very often), so this is really just for human players. Type 95 is weaker, but less expensive, and is only useful very early in the game.

This is in the Alternative BIQ though (which is just to try to get the US somewhat involved in the game), the original BIQ with no changes (exact same as 2.6 is now) is included also.

I uploaded the update to the StormOverCiv server yesterday, but the administrator or Rocoteh will have to make it available (Im assuming). I have emailed Rocoteh to let him know.