Presenting: 'The Cruel Sea'

Case · July 27, 2001, 22:27

Well, the scenario formally known as The Battle of the Atlantic is now finished. I sent it into Apolyton yesterday, so it should be up sometime in the next few days (fingers crossed

)

Here's a few sceenshots

First, the map:

Case · July 27, 2001, 22:30

A German Wolfpack assisted by a Condor prepares to attack Allied shipping:

Case · July 27, 2001, 22:32

After breaking through the Allied fleets, the Kiegsmarine prepares to bombard New York City

Case · July 27, 2001, 22:36

And finally, here are all the units used in the scenario:

kobayashi · July 27, 2001, 23:21

You have some really really beautiful ship units. If this had come out earlier, I would have 'stolen' some of them for ZWK.

I don't think the FW Condor was ever silver, only the Americans would do something crazy like that.

Hobbes · July 28, 2001, 14:13

Well, Case, I never really gave you any feedback on your scenario there, and that was because of two reasons: number one, I was gone for a while, didn't get to play much Civ2, and two, the scenario kicked ass and I couldn't really think of any good constructive critizism. Anywooo, I am a huge fan of good art work and if you are planning on any other scenarios in the future, I would like to help with the artwork.

Case · July 28, 2001, 20:52

Quote:

Originally posted by kobayashi
I don't think the FW Condor was ever silver, only the Americans would do something crazy like that.

*thumps head on desk*

I should have picked up on that

Still, its not that big a problem...

BTW, American bombers of WW2 were silver because paint slowed down the plane and the Americans wanted aircraft to attack thier bombers so the gunners and escort fighers could decimate the attackers (which is what happened to the Luftwaffe)

Hobbes, judging by your excelent starfighter, I may just take you up on that offer

Case · July 30, 2001, 19:08

This scenario is now advailable to be downloaded from civfanatics.com

H Tower · July 30, 2001, 21:11

awesome! but i still keep hitting those darn invincible mines when another units stacked with it. guess i have to learn some patience...

H Tower · July 30, 2001, 22:19

Um... i may be wrong but shouldn't the german naval training area in the northern baltic be called "German Training Range" instead of "English Training Range" is supposed to be English Targets for practice maybe

Case · July 30, 2001, 22:31

Quote:

Originally posted by H Tower
shouldn't the german naval training area in the northern baltic be called "German Training Range" instead of "English Training Range"

The unit is actually called 'training range'. It shows up as 'English Training Range' becuase its owned by the English

BTW, what mines have you been having trouble with? As well as the ones off the major ports, there are a few off the US east coast which 'guard' spawn points to give new ships a chance to get away from lurking subs.

H Tower · July 30, 2001, 22:35

the ones off of halifax gave me a suprise, i didn't expect there to be those invincibles so far from the coast and i keep mixing up which mines are mine(no pun intended) and which are british in the english channel. next time i play i'll know better. Live and learn

SunTzu · July 31, 2001, 00:48

yes www.civfanatics.com no has The Cruel Sea to download, while apolyton doesn't.........hmmmmmmmm choke on that poly

Case · July 31, 2001, 02:12

well, Apolyton was a lot quicker to put 'Raging Dragon' up

SunTzu · July 31, 2001, 02:18

well we were having Technical Difficulties.hmmmmm yeah thats rights

Berzerker · July 31, 2001, 21:56

Four points:

1) The objective is to sink allied ships, yet there is no scoring system related to this objective. Perhaps the PG or civ "score" could be designed to account for the objective. Maybe just a total of allied ships sunk given at the end of the scenario.

2) The tax/discovery rate has no effect and the elektro subs cannot be discovered before the game is over. Plus, city improvements are very limited.

3) Even with money in the bank, the Germans ended up losing key city improvements like docks/shipyards among coastal cities due a sudden to lack of finances during the production part of the turn.

4) Hitler's decisions interfere. His decision to stop building major ships of war was an unfortunate surprise leaving me with only one port still putting out BB's. I suppose this can be avoided by making sure some cities are still pumping out Bismarks when Nov 1941 rolls around.

Case · July 31, 2001, 23:10

Berzerker thanks for those comments, here are my responces:

Quote:

Originally posted by Berzerker
1) The objective is to sink allied ships, yet there is no scoring system related to this objective. Perhaps the PG or civ "score" could be designed to account for the objective. Maybe just a total of allied ships sunk given at the end of the scenario.

Berzerker, please have a look at the readme. The scoring system is explained in it. I also included a works spreadshet to partially automate the scoring system

Quote:

Originally posted by Berzerker
2) The tax/discovery rate has no effect and the elektro subs cannot be discovered before the game is over. Plus, city improvements are very limited.

This scenario covers the Battle of the Atlantic with the player playing the head of the German Navy. As such I thought that city improvements were unessesary, and would distort the scenario. Eleckro Boats didn't enter service till 1945, so I made them difficult to reach. If you play on past the end of the scenario you can develop them.

Quote:

Originally posted by Berzerker
3) Even with money in the bank, the Germans ended up losing key city improvements like docks/shipyards among coastal cities due a sudden to lack of finances during the production part of the turn.

Damn, I though that I fixed this

This is caused by the Germans being financially penalised for losing ships, If this keeps causing problems just edit the events.txt file

Quote:

Originally posted by Berzerker
4) Hitler's decisions interfere. His decision to stop building major ships of war was an unfortunate surprise leaving me with only one port still putting out BB's. I suppose this can be avoided by making sure some cities are still pumping out Bismarks when Nov 1941 rolls around.

Again, this is explained in the readme. As this is historically accruate I ask as a 'house rule' that you stop building major warships when this happens (remember, Hitler's your boss

)

Berzerker · August 1, 2001, 05:43

Quote:

remember, Hitler's your boss

But if I follow his orders I'll lose

Ok, how do I edit the event files to prevent the loss of city improvements? I'm a real novice at doing stuff like this.
Oh, btw, thx for the scenario

ps - the problem with the scoring system I believe is that using the defense minister - a good way for tabulating a score - will include ships sunk by other nations.

SunTzu · August 1, 2001, 16:34

case why don't you fix the problem and re-release your scenario with the updated fixes. It'll be much easier instead of having the scenario players do it. And if you do this it'll give you a better review over at CFC

Grothgar · August 1, 2001, 17:03

Case is 1985 points by october 42 a good score on emperor difficulty?

Case · August 1, 2001, 19:43

Grothgar, as long as you've remembered to subtract points for the ships you've lost, any score over 0 is good

SunTzu, good idea. I'll snd an updated version to Civfanatics in a minute. In the meanwhile I'll attach the updated files to this post and a post on the Civfantics board.

To keep the difficulty levels up, I've tweaked some of the events and the scoring system

To install the update, just copy the new files over the old ones.
However, you may need to restart the scenario to get the new events to work.

Cal · August 3, 2001, 00:58

I have a problem, I can't get my spreadsheet to work.

Otherwise, it's a great scenario, reminds me of Shay Roberts pirate scenario.

Cal · August 3, 2001, 06:18

Hey... wait a sec.

In June, 1941, when Germany declares war on the Soviet Union, the alliance with them is broken and all of the units are moved out of each others territory and such. Quite a few of the german and soviet invincible mines are moved, is this intentional, or is this a bug?

Case · August 5, 2001, 06:27

Cal that is intentional. By removing the mines the Germans have to worry about the Soviet Fleet.

However, in future versions I'm planning to modify this a bit

BTW, what problems are you having with the spreadsheet?

MarkG · August 5, 2001, 13:32

http://apolyton.net/cgi-bin/civ2/db/review.cgi?ID=534

Cal · August 5, 2001, 19:40

Well, then I have just a few more questions...

1. Is it illegal to disband invincible mines in cities to help towards the purchase of a costly warship?
2. Is it illegal to disband submarines and warcraft (especially bismarck's) before the Allies can sink them to avoid the score penalties?

Berzerker · August 5, 2001, 20:39

How does this spreadsheet work? Do I have to keep a written record of ships I sink? If I use the defense minister's tabulation of casualties, the score will include allied ships sunk by other powers...

Case · August 5, 2001, 22:20

Mark, thanks for posting the scenario

Cal, I'd consider those two actions to be 'cheating'. I'll add them to the 'house rules' in future updates.
(Anyway, I don't think that you'd get many shields from disbanding mines or fortresses

)

Berzerker, the easiest thing to do is use the defence ministers report and include ships sunk by the Italians as they're your ally

Then just enter the numbers of ships which have been sunk, and your score will appear at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

Case · August 5, 2001, 22:59

To help me in creating updates of this scenario and implimenting the great spreadsheet Boco has created for me, could everyone who's played this scenario please post your final score below?

BTW, If anyone is playing the French version of Civ2, Julian has translated the scenario into French. The transalation is advailable here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/Forum4...000300.html#22

Cal · August 6, 2001, 00:13

Each invisible mine disbanded can almost build one bismarck... and can definitely build one scharnhorst.

Also, the victory for attacking New York doesn't seem that great, couldn't you make it more worthwhile somehow? Maybe by making an American Wonder obsolete?

edit: Final suggestion: Blockade runners don't appear very often, I only had two appear in a game I played until late 1943. Can't you make them appear more often? Say, once a year, at least?

Otherwise, it's a wonderful and fun scenario.

edit2: Final gameplay question:
Does sinking a RCN corvette also count as sinking a regular corvette? Should the sum of RCN corvettes and regular corvettes be used when determining the score, or just the normal corvettes sunk?