Napoleonic Europe

[ernieschwitz]

And here is the entire map, scaled down quite a bit, so it could be uploaded. Note the deployments are as they start the game as well. The whole map picture was taken with ATG Phoenix in game screenshot maker.

Whole Map.jpg (1.96 MiB) Viewed 1075 times

[ernieschwitz]

oh, and I think you can click on the attachment to see it in it's full glory

[ernieschwitz]

Didn't get much response from the map... :/ Oh well...

In most games you have action cards. Making these cards is often very simple. You assign a cost to it, an event it is supposed to run (ok, the coding might be not easy, but doesn't have to be hard), and that is mostly it. You do have to make an event to "deal it" to the country that is supposed to have it, which is also an event (but has often very few lines, can be as simple as, first round, deal card to all countries).

Here is a look at one of mine:

Card Inf.jpg (42.74 KiB) Viewed 1051 times

This card will grant the country playing it an Infantry Division, consisting of 20 Inf, 3 Art and 3 Cav. It will arrive in your capitol, and will be ready to move and fight immediately. It is not that difficult. What I find the real challenge is to find the art that fits and make sure it has a certain style. I hope this one fits, and that you like the style

[basilstaghare]

Didn't get much response from the map... :/ Oh well...

In most games you have action cards. Making these cards is often very simple. You assign a cost to it, an event it is supposed to run (ok, the coding might be not easy, but doesn't have to be hard), and that is mostly it. You do have to make an event to "deal it" to the country that is supposed to have it, which is also an event (but has often very few lines, can be as simple as, first round, deal card to all countries).

Here is a look at one of mine:

Card Inf.jpg

This card will grant the country playing it an Infantry Division, consisting of 20 Inf, 3 Art and 3 Cav. It will arrive in your capitol, and will be ready to move and fight immediately. It is not that difficult. What I find the real challenge is to find the art that fits and make sure it has a certain style. I hope this one fits, and that you like the style

Map and cards are of the highest quality, Ernie. Great work!

[Apollo48]

Didn't get much response from the map... :/ Oh well...

In most games you have action cards. Making these cards is often very simple. You assign a cost to it, an event it is supposed to run (ok, the coding might be not easy, but doesn't have to be hard), and that is mostly it. You do have to make an event to "deal it" to the country that is supposed to have it, which is also an event (but has often very few lines, can be as simple as, first round, deal card to all countries).

Here is a look at one of mine:

Card Inf.jpg

This card will grant the country playing it an Infantry Division, consisting of 20 Inf, 3 Art and 3 Cav. It will arrive in your capitol, and will be ready to move and fight immediately. It is not that difficult. What I find the real challenge is to find the art that fits and make sure it has a certain style. I hope this one fits, and that you like the style

That looks really cool! Will there be action cards based on historical events, or only these generic ones?

[ernieschwitz]

Depends.

What do you mean by historical?

If it is something like, "Send Napoleon into Exile", or that sort of thing, then probably no. The reason for this is that there is really no way of knowing how a scenario that allows a wide variety of what-if's ends up following the path of history. Then you might say, well, why not make it so that history repeats itself? I have a few answers for that, among them, it would be more of a simulation than a game. I am not into making simulations, I find those boring.

This is a bit more than an upgrade of Tom Webers (tweber) Age of Napoleon scenario in the scenario bank on VRDesigns.net. For one thing I've made it AI Capable. Tweber never did that. I also have added a TO&E, something that Tom wasn't around to experience. I plan on adding officers, which tweber tries to do by adding staff with specific names, but really they are just a unit with extra bonuses and able to command more units. It is not the same at all.

I have more tricks up my sleeve, but I'd rather save those for later. But, if you do have some interesting ideas, feel free to share them. Inspiration is never bad.

[lion_of_judah]

is TO&E active for this scenario, so replacements are automatic, instead of manually.

[lion_of_judah]

when will this be available for download

[ernieschwitz]

Well, yes, it is active, and replacements will flow, IF you are close enough for them to move the distance manually (or maybe just a bit more). As for release date, that is really not something I know yet.

[lion_of_judah]

what is the new supply length to units as this is set in the 1800's. Does this have an end date programmed in, or can this scenario just continue until someone has achieved victory conditions. Has the length of replacements from unit to parent HQ decreased and if so, what

[ernieschwitz]

A lot of detailed questions

I've reduced the supply length yes. Mostly because I want people to have their logistics in order, when/if invading Russia. I am not sure the stat itself would give you any meaning, since it is relative to the hex size, which I don't know, since I just used Twebers map.

So far no end date has been programmed. There might be one, or there might not be. Tweber has set no end date, and made an overview of how many VPs on average each nation has (or something like that), and suggests you start off with deciding how long the game is going to be before deciding a winner. Honestly, the game can run quite long without ending. To give you an idea, I have played upwards of 50 turns (they are somewhat fast, since you have fewer units than a normal ATG scenario), and I have only gotten to level 2 researches. It is designed to have 4 tiers of research, that get more and more expensive, and you don't really get many more Research Points each turn.

I have set the distance replacements can travel as 120% of their original move. However since there is no transcap of any kind... things have to be very close to get replacements. In fact I've only seen things with Cavalry move, and Fast Cavalry move get sent to HQs so far.

[ernieschwitz]

A bit on the process on making the Officers (graphics):

I began with this, which I have from another Napoleonic scenario.

Officer 7.png (14.27 KiB) Viewed 944 times

This is a blurry picture, which is by design, and it is a bit fuzzy due to it being enlarged. Never the less, it was the best generic picture I could find, that I did not have to rework, or had recognizable features.

I then to make a picture of it, with the dimensions the graphic came in, but with some symbols and such. This is what I came up with:

British 7.png (27.46 KiB) Viewed 944 times

However it turns out that it is not just any dimensions you can use. The picture will show up alright, when you click the officer picture on the HQ menu, but, it will be squashed (in this case), to fit. Not exactly ideal. So I made a 2nd version.

Britain New 7.jpg (9.02 KiB) Viewed 944 times

This one is the new picture I'll be using unless something changes, and I find that I don't like it, or some new idea is thought of that I just can't wait to try.

EuroNap Officer3.jpg (22.39 KiB) Viewed 944 times

This is how it looks in game.

The names are auto generated, and I made a list of typical first and last names of the Era (25+, sometimes 250+). With 14 playable nations, this is a lot of graphics, a lot of names, and thus a lot of time spent.

[Apollo48]

Looks great! I like the variety of names.

[ernieschwitz]

Thanks It took a few hours to do.. well... maybe more than a few. But I like the variety too. I did sort obvious names out, Like Napoleon, and Bonaparte

[ernieschwitz]

I've been doing a lot of AI work lately. It is hard stuff, and it is very hard to show off on a thread like this. Suffice to say that it can be very nasty. It still has some quirks I am working on.

I can however show you the research screen.

Research Pic.jpg (158.38 KiB) Viewed 881 times

Notice how you have to pay for researches using Research points, not political points. Initially I thought the AI would not be able to handle this kind of payment. So I sat down and tried to program an algorithm. I was wrong however, the AI can handle researching using Research Points instead of PPs. I can only credit Vic with having an excellent program!

[Apollo48]

Looks really good! With the effort that you're putting in, I'm sure that this scenario will be amazing.

[ernieschwitz]

A screenshot (made using the AutoScreenshot feature of the game) of the troops of the 2nd Kalmar Union (a fictional union between Denmark and Sweden), marching on Moscow!

Before Moscow.jpg (1.28 MiB) Viewed 862 times

Note how the units are spread out, there is no front to speak of. The ATG AI is programmed out of the box to be good at wars with stable and long fronts. This has neither, everything is very fluid. ... and the AI is actually doing well, all things considering.

This is of course from a test game, against the AI playing the other 12 nations. It should be noted that the Russians are also at war with the Prussians and Turks. The Turks are an optional choice, the Ottoman Empire can be split into three nations. Turkey, Egypt and the Barbary Pirates.

[ernieschwitz]

Let's talk options. One of the things that makes a scenario worth playing again and again, is if it is never the same. To this end you can use the Options that the Editor lets you make. You of course have to program them. Here in this two part reveal I'll tell you what the first 4 of these are (there are 8 in total, so far).

EuroNap StartScreenA.jpg (179.87 KiB) Viewed 836 times

I've covered up the lower ones, but you can see one is selected as default.

The first option is 3 round breather. A rather simple choice, but very effective for those that don't want to go to war with just what you have, and want to set up your forces a little better. It makes it impossible to declare war on anyone for the first 3 rounds. After that, who knows what will happen.

The Second option is Greater Prussia. This is an option to make the German states and Prussia be one nation. They simply start out as one. They have the same people in all cities, their troops are all of the same people, etc. It gives a different flair to the game to be able to do such things.

Third option is 2nd Kalmar Union. Like the above option this one also makes two nations into one. This time it is Sweden and Denmark. Despite me being a Dane, the Swedes are the nation that is transformed into this new nation. The researches this new nation has is the one that has the most. Since the Danes had an Excellent fleet, they have given their naval research levels to the Kalmar Union.

Ottoman Empire is the fourth option. With this one, you merge the countries of Turkey, Egypt and the Barbary Pirates into one nation. I am not sure if this is going to be the default option, to have enabled, but I am thinking about it. Seems more likely that the Ottomans would exist, rather than three sub countries. Feels like the smaller countries are the variant for reality.

That is it for now. Look forward to the next installment. I think that is where things get a little more interesting

[ernieschwitz]

Well, I promised a continuation, and here it is.

The last of these options, Nation Profiles, is the one that is most like the ones mentioned in the above. Here you get to turn on the special settings for each nation. They will have different move allowances (some being faster than the base game), they will have different people morale, some with less, some with more than in the base game, and finally there is a difference in how much free XP each nation can accumulate for each of its units. This makes it easier to play some nations, while others will be a lot tougher.

EuroNap StartScreen.jpg (143.63 KiB) Viewed 812 times

Now let us jump into the rest of them. They are to do with the AI. Vic has coded an algorithm for which to determine how the AI would normally determine if it declared war. There is of course some randomness to it, and there are many things checked, but suffice to say that it determines if it might win a war by declaring it. This works well in cases where the AI is bigger than or equal in size to the Human player(s). However it works badly if the Human player is bigger than the AIs. They won't gang up on a player, they will sit back and take it. I call this option AI War (Vic). As you can see it is selected as default.

Obviously with a scenario where the nations are mismatched, like they are in this one, there needs to be some alternative to this. So, I programmed a pretty simple AI Algorithm, to determine if a fight was "fair". If it wasn't other AIs would join in on the war, until the fight was "fair". This means that the AI if France for instance went to war with Spain, might suddenly find itself at war with Britain, or the German States, or maybe both. This is the option I call AI War (Ernie). Of course it too has a problem. If no-one declares war, no wars will happen. I might change this so the AI would slowly gain a willingness to declare war, but, for now I haven't done that. The reason is that the two AI War options are compatible. So you can actually choose both. Or you can choose none of them, if you just want to conquer Europe one country at a time. Sweden/Kalmar Union going after Russia could be an interesting one to start... or if you just want to lay back and relax, on easy mode, take France, and decide what nations you want to be at war with.

The last option that I have not described yet, is Rnd DOW settings. This will set the chance of AI declaring wars from happening for both types of AI Wars you can select, to be randomly generated. That is France and Spain might have differing willingness to go to war. This addition can also make you form a game that is different for each time you play it. Like I said, variation is the key to being able to play the same scenario again and again, and we certainly have that here.

[ernieschwitz]

A small and simple change in AI programming can sometimes lead to big and sweeping changes in behavior. This is a story of one of those. Let me present to you the Humble Militia.

Militia.jpg (85.32 KiB) Viewed 785 times

The Militia, as said on the screenshot above, is best at garrisoning, it is not meant to be an attack unit. Just a defensive one. The AI doesn't know this. In fact, it looks at the power points of the unit and says: Hey this one is cheap for the buck, let's build it.

So something had to be done about that. I came to the solution of not letting it produce these, but instead giving the AI a chance to get them "for free" (cheating I know, but remember I am twisting the AIs arm to play better) that are ungarrisoned at the end of it's the turn. Obviously that doesn't solve the problem of it building them, but I simply coded it to be unable to produce them. That worked well, and it is not that which went wrong.

I also decided to freeze militia in place, so as to have it make fewer garrisons. They, like everyone else, starts out with some in areas that might need them or are important. I figured with frozen militia, I'd keep the amount down, that came into play, so as to not let them build a horde of them by not garrisoning. I already did some work to make the AI think that cities and such were worth more to it, than otherwise. Alas it didn't feel like garrisoning enough.

So I was happy with the way the AI had been aggressive, and challenging before I did this. Suddenly it became very passive and some of you may think this strange. Well, the reason is I forgot another thing, that I did know, but didn't cross my mind. You cannot control the way the AI composes it's units. So instead of having garrisons and offensive units separate, it decided to mix them. Obviously this meant that the units did not attack, they were frozen in place.

Lesson learned: Good ideas, don't always pan out.