Global Scenario Ideas

[pzgndr]

From EuroCobra:

@ pzgndr: I have thought about this slots... if there should be the possibility to create world scenarios how would that work with only 22 nations?

Obviously one could not have ALL the nations that participated in WWII with only 6 majors and 22 minors. Something more abstract would be needed for a global scenario. If you take a look at Gary Grigsby's World at War over at Matrix, that game provides a pretty good model for a possible adaptation to SC2.** For example:

- Germany and Italy are combined as one major, creating a slot for Japan.

- UK and USA are combined as one major, creating a slot for China

- Many minors can be combined into regional "countries" such as the Balkans, Scandanavia, etc.

Also, with a map limitation of 256x256, tiles would be about 100 miles across. It's not like you'd be able to define every little country at that scale, and many minor countries around the globe had no role or a very insignificant role in WWII anyway. So creating an abstract global game with 6 majors and 22 minors should be possible, and manageable for both players and the AI.

What's unique about SC2 that would make such a game different than GGWAW?

- Politics and Diplomacy, plus event scripts

- Variable turn length, so a SC2 version could have monthly/seasonal turns rather than quarterly turns.

These differences alone would result in a fundamentally different game. It will be interesting to see what develops after SC2 is released. :cool:

** Note: I think GGWAW will be a very good game and I'm not trying to compare and contrast it with SC2. However, mods using the SC2 Editor are expected so I'm just trying to objectively highlight some possibilities, and GGWAW offers some helpful ideas.

[ November 28, 2004, 12:17 PM: Message edited by: pzgndr ]

[Desert Dave]

- Germany and Italy are combined as one major, creating a slot for Japan.

- UK and USA are combined as one major, creating a slot for China

This is probably one of the very least appealing parts of that other game, to me anyway, and so...

Alternately,

Adding to Mr Bill's excellent and pertinent and helpful remarks,

One could probably just make China part of USA, in the similar way that Egypt is "part of" UK. With Chungking as an added "industrial city" so that some MPPs might be used to repair and reinforce mangled units.

Since USA will very likely have a VERY LOW industrial modifier, until 1942-43 anyway, then China should pose, appropriately, little threat to Japan.

The game player would have to apportion those LOW USA MPP's, else USA could not even garrison itself! Nor do research or diplomacy, and etc. :eek:

Just ENOUGH level-0 "garrison" type infantry corps units might be placed... until such time as USA would enter the war. Maybe even build the "Flying Tigers." Play-testing would be necessary to insure that Japan could... MAYBE attain conquest of China, but, not without the historically expected... time and expenditures.

Also,

Italy and GErmany squish-squashed together is not so awful wonderful neither, to me, so I might simply start the game in July 1940 and have Japan assume France's slot.

If I am not mistaken - and that is always a dicey proposition, no mainland Vichy France is actually required, and you could lower France's conquered resource ratings to "adjust" for the additional ports/cities in the entire southern area.

The game-beginning script for creating Vichy could simply make the Med colonies, and French Indo-China (... and any other French holdings in the Pacific, the names of which escape me at the moment - one near Australia?) as per usual, with the Capital located somewhere among them, movable or not.

[in this scenario, mainland France is simply an inherent part of GErmany, as Austria is. This would entail no future "liberation" of France, but, really, that's no main complaint in terms of actual game-play... by then, GErmany's about finished anyway, and how many Free'd French units actually contributed to the eventual conquest in any event? USA or UK would still get the conquered resources in France which GErmany has lost.]

UK could have Syria right from the scenario outset, which is historically reasonable I would suppose.

Well,

As pzgndr has quite ably demonstrated, there ARE indeed MANY ways to go with your OWN whole World War encompassing scenario.

Once everyone is familiar with the new Editor and scripting capabilities (... and please note: not even Bill and I are CERTAIN of ALL of the potential features, as these things can, and do change on occasion, according to Hubert's wishes), then

That "whole shooting match" scenario is not only possible, given the current schematics, but... WILL be accomplished, no doubt whatsoever in my mind, within a mere matter of weeks, if not days, most likely. :cool:

The altered scale, due to map-size restrictions, will actually make the larger game more manageable, and not tedious or interminable, and appropriate adjustments can be made in the Editor for movement and combat ratings and force pool restrictions, and the like. Again, some serious play testing will be necessary.

- Many minors can be combined into regional "countries" such as the Balkans, Scandanavia, etc.

Yes, surely.

There is also Iran, which hardly takes up any space on the currently constituted game board (... has no resources, and "Persia" can be politically assigned to UK), and as previously discussed, some countries could start the game as "colonies" or "conquests"... IE, such as Baltic States or Denmark (... or Poland and Norway, assuming you begin in July 1940) in order to create such critical new countries as Australia and "Pacific Islands Group" and Burma, etc.

All things considered, should be a fabulous blast, eh!

[ November 27, 2004, 09:04 AM: Message edited by: Desert Dave ]

[Retributar]

Can you create more than one map for use in a single Campaign in SC2?.

Meaning that can you use your 256X256 map template to create several regional maps...but, where only one map could be used at a time.

Here, you would do each map in turn until they were all completed...then continue on to the next round. Units would also be transferrable from map to map.

[Hubert Cater]

Interesting idea for sure... but nothing like that is planned or currently implemented

[daamion]

Will it be possible for minors to produce units (if not directly, then by creating scripted events)?

Also, will the map wrap from from the sides to allow units to cross the world - I haven't seen this mentioned, but for a world scenario, this is important...

[J P Wagner]

One of the aspects of Editor that I am still cloudy about concerns whether it is possible to implement the AI into these scenarios or whether they will be strictly PBEM play...for example, the AI will need to know what to do with all of the other countries, including newly created Japan and China, while you go about playing Germany, in a Global scenario...it seems like a daunting task to script these actions, if indeed it is possible to do this at all...I hope an extensive editor tutorial will be included for fuzzy brained people such as I...

[pzgndr]

Minors will be able to produce units in SC2. In fact, they can have their own force pool limits, HQs, customized combat values, etc. Romania, for instance, could be allowed to build a HQ, a fleet, and tank group. The parent major will get the MPPs for the minor and get to decide what and when to build. I'm assuming with force pool limits and extra cost for building beyond your limits, majors will have an incentive to max out their minor forces even though their combat values are lower. So having these minors as real partners should help.

A wrap-around global map should be able to use movement arrows like the South Atlantic-Suez loop. We'll have to see how these work in SC2 since we definitely need to link opposite sides.

As for the AI, who knows? Even Hubert hasn't gotten there yet. Things should generally happen on about three different levels. The game will have a generic AI of some sort hard-coded into the game engine, probably optimized as best as possible for all the SC2 game features. This should be applicable to ANY game designed using the Editor.

The next level would be the new AI scripts to allow campaigns to place constraints and limitations on the AI to influence it based on time periods or locations, or whatever. This should help make games as historical as possible, by trying to encourage "good" strategies and limit the "bad" ones. We'll have to see how effective this works in practice, but it should work equally well for the ETO, PTO, a global game or any other custom campaign.

Lastly, where the AI simply cannot do what we "want" it to do, there are the event scripts to help keep things on track. An example would be a Axis invasion of Norway. If the AI simply won't do it in SC2, we can always throw in a coup event on or after the historical date and make it happen. These may be needed for the ETO and other custom campaigns.

I hope an extensive editor tutorial will be included for fuzzy brained people such as I...

Yes indeed. I've been the busy beaver working on this. And I've been working on a couple of custom campaigns to learn how everything works, get clarifications from Hubert where needed, and hopefully describing the process adequately so anyone can edit/create a custom campaign. It's all quite easy, if not a bit tedious depending on how big you want your game to be.

[Kuniworth]

Well this issue ain't a problem for me. If I only can create my eastern front scenario with Germany, USSR, Fnland, Hungary, Rumania, Italy I will be happy.