Roger's Scenario Thread

RogerCooper

@RogerCooper I would suggest to designers working with pre-gunpowder warfare, that they should make an effort to depict the following real characteristics of the time

Castles and local levies. Castles could be handled as an expensive, multi-hit static unit, while levies could be cheap static units, replaced by events.
The high cost of maintaining mobile forces. Just have them create negative PU's.
The power of cavalry and its limitations. For example, cavalry could be handled as aircraft (with terrain effects to prevent sea movement)

redrum

@RogerCooper The medieval europe download doesn't seem to work.

RogerCooper

@redrum Try http://www.rogercooper.com/Medieval_Europe.zip
I just downloaded it myself.

redrum

@RogerCooper Yep that works. Thanks.

I was hoping the map was a bit more... developed. I'm eventually looking to make a medieval map and looking for ideas. If you know of any good medieval maps let me know.

Cernel

@RogerCooper said in Roger's Scenario Thread:

@RogerCooper I would suggest to designers working with pre-gunpowder warfare, that they should make an effort to depict the following real characteristics of the time

Castles and local levies. Castles could be handled as an expensive, multi-hit static unit, while levies could be cheap static units, replaced by events.

The high cost of maintaining mobile forces. Just have them create negative PU's.

The power of cavalry and its limitations. For example, cavalry could be handled as aircraft (with terrain effects to prevent sea movement)

For castles, the recent enhancement to AA guns, the ability of land units of making SBR and the capacity of killed units to turn into other units open up a lot of feasible possibilities, but I think I would still suggest castles to be basically capturable infrastructures, as that is what they were.

Totally agree with upkeep being a must have for pre modern warfare. It is actually rather hard to get any ideas on how to represent purchase costs, instead, as, be it with cession of land or with money payments, virtually the only cost for a lord was maintainment, not "creation", of land units (as well as merchant ships) (an item may be the cost for replacement of horses lost in battle, but even that would happen only after the unit has been killed or damaged, not in the moment you raise it).

Pushing aircrafts into pre world war games, as cavalry or whatever, feels lame to me, as it is anyways making a suboptimal representation of the matter, using (and to some extent likely hacking) rules tailored for something else, just to get close to what you actually want. I think not one of the various (not fantasy) pre world war games having (pseudo) aircrafts is really good on the feature, or at least all of them are very unpopular. A good representation of the raiding or hit-and-run ability of cavalry would likely require at least an athomization of the current abilities assigned to air units, especially regarding not forcefully losing the ability to load onto sea transports (that I consider a deal breaker on its own).

alkexr

@RogerCooper & @Cernel: You are both right about castles. The first idea that comes to my mind is a two-hit static Castle unit which, when destroyed, changes into a three-hit Ruined castle capturable infrastructure, setting transfer attributes to true. Whenever this unit takes 2 damage (and would normally be destroyed) it changes into a 3-hit unit, which still only has 2 damage, so it will survive. Then the winner captures it, and next turn it gets repaired back into a non-ruined Castle. Essentially this castle would be a capturable infrastructure that can also defend itself to an extent.

I had another idea about medieval warfare which I wanted to experiment with, but that is unlikely to happen now. In short, you can think of levies or garrison as units with limited effective range. So you just make them non-kamikaze air units with 1 movement. Now they can move around but can't attack. But if castles give them 1 bonus movement, then suddenly they can launch attacks from castles against directly adjacent territories. It would be rather pointless for the player to move them away from castles (maybe give them 0 defense without a support attachment from a castle, to emphasize this). This would represent castles as dynamic defense systems, which is closer to historical reality than a static heap of bricks.

RogerCooper

@redrum There are plenty of good maps of Europe, (Age of Tribes comes to mind), but there are no pre-gunpowder scenarios which deal with the strategic reality. The best is probably Greyhawk Wars with it's stack tax. Most scenarios come off as reskinned WW2 without aircraft.

RogerCooper

Scenario Rome Total War
Download Repository/Experimental/Rome Total War
Description The Mediterranean in 270BC

Good Points

Good unit art
Some interesting unit types

Bad Points

Anti-Roman alliance has a significant advantage
No victory conditions

This would probably be better with the Romans receiving a bonus and a time-limit on conquest

RogerCooper

Scenario Feudal Japan
Download Repository/Good Quality/Feudal Japan
Description A port of the game Shogun, covering the civil wars of 16th century Japan

Good Points

A reasonable simulation of the original boardgame
Some diplomatic options

Bad Points

I received a null pointer error in the middle of the game
The lack of maintenance costs is problematic in this situation

RogerCooper

Scenario 300BC
Download Download

Good Points

Good unit art & variety
Interesting historical situation

Bad Points

Big map with low movement allowances
Absurdly large stacks
No victory conditions

RogerCooper

Scenario World at War
Download Repository/High Quality/World at War

Good Points

Big, WW2 game
Well balanced

Bad Points

Geographical oddities such as the French controlling northern Canada

RogerCooper

Scenario WAW 1940
Download Repository/High Quality/World at War
Description Standard A&A pieces with a big map

Good Points

Well balanced
Interesting rules with capitals and victory conditions

Bad Points

Geographical oddities
A long game, even with Fast AI

RogerCooper

Scenario World War II v6 1941
Download Repository/High Quality/World War II v6 1941
Description: A port of the AA41 game

Good Points

Simple, fast-playing game

Bad Points

Russia is going to fall, leaving the game a draw

RogerCooper

Scenario Classic Iron Blitz 1942A; Russia Neutral
Download Repository/Experimental/Classic Variations
Description Germany & Japan vs UK & US

Good Points

Classic rules

Bad Points

Without Russia, the game lacks strategic tension

RogerCooper

Scenario Big World-April 1940
Download Download
Description Another Big World Scenario

Good Points

Fairly standard unit capabilities

Bad Points

Like most Big World scenarios, it favors the Axis because it takes too long for the Americans to accomplish anything

Cernel

@RogerCooper Especially since there we are talking about an early development stage (it is labelled as version 0.x), I wouldn't consider 300BC as a separate map. It is just the old way 270BC was called. Sometimes maps get their names changed overtime; I don't think this should necessarily make for a new map, otherwise you would be rating each single released version of any maps (so, you would have a lot of TWWs to rate, for example).

Just giving my opinion. If I would be making a map, and eventually change its name, I don't think I would see it like I've made a second map, and if someone would ask me why I've stopped developing the "first" map, I would just tell him "dude, I've just changed its name". The guy that made 270BC just initially called it 300BC. Btw, the two major bad points of this version of what would be 270BC are rather that the map is way unbalanced in favour of AntiRomans and warelephants are too cheap; at 12 PUs and 4/4 I would hardly buy any other land units, especially since warelephants are exceptionally good marines (you can ship 1 warelephant and 1 swordman, for total 16 TUV, on a 12 PUs ship).

But it would be better if names never get changed, to keep it clear.

Of course agree with the stack problem, for 270BC in general, coupled with the spam problem of the 1/1/1 cost 2 units (slingers/peltasts), tho not having air helps a lot in burning down units (because you use more land units to trade), especially if you play with regular dice (as the settings are). A minor issue for this version (no support for them yet) is that cataphract are so costly you would virtually never buy them.

So, personally, unless you plan to keep archived all the various versions of 270BC, I would remove this 300BC map, since it is just the very old 270BC. If there is an intermediate version of 270BC that rather deserves to be kept available, I would say it is the 1.3.1 one.

RogerCooper

@Cernel I put a note on my wiki indicating that the scenario is superseded.

The problems with low movement allowances and absurdly large stacks are also in 270 BC.

RogerCooper

Scenario NWO Doomsday
Description Hypotherical WW3 in Europe
Download Download

Good Points

Not just another WW2 scenario

Bad Points

The Communists are too strong
No effort made to make the units any different than WW2.

RogerCooper

Scenario Big World Small's 1939
Description World War II on the Big World Map
Download Download

Good Points

Well balanced
Income spread out resulting in fighting all over the map

Bad Points

A historical income values

RogerCooper

Scenario Ur-Quan Slave War
Description Large-scale space opera
Download Repository/Experimental

**Good Points

Interesting setting, see List of Star Control Races*
Nice unit art
Significant differences between players

**Bad Points

Each individual race has few unit choices
All units are 'ground' units, limiting tactical options
Favors the alliance significantly