ModAAR: American Front, a CSA v USA WIP mod

[Alikchi2]

Happy new year! Still looking forward to this! Great work illustrating the dev process.

[WideEyes]

With the Holidays drawing to a neat close could we expect more details - or even the final refinements - in the near future?

[PaxAmericana]

Still looking forward to this!

[Bufo]

Any update? Hope all is well.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Haven't heard from FOARP since Nov 2021. With the world kind of upside down who knows? I hope he's alright too....

[FOARP]

Haven't heard from FOARP since Nov 2021. With the world kind of upside down who knows? I hope he's alright too....

Still working on this painfully slowly. Bought a new house so not so much game time, plus like a lot of people just following the news particularly from Ukraine grabs a lot of my attention nowadays.

[Jazon]

Hi!
So you are all well right? I am glad. We all were thinking what happened with you!
Cheers

[FOARP]

Still hoping to finish this...

[WideEyes]

Lovely. Can't wait till I'm finally able to play this.

[FOARP]

Lovely. Can't wait till I'm finally able to play this.

It will happen.

[FOARP]

And we're back...

Long story short, moving house and getting a promotion turn out to be things that impact your modding activities quite a bit. However, I've always been intending to finish this mod. There actually aren't so many things left to do on it, but the things that there are left to do are the things that are typically the most difficult - debugging and testing. From now until this mod goes live I'm going to be giving weekly updates so stay tuned.

And We're Back.png (3.1 MiB) Viewed 739 times

[FOARP]

NATO Counters
Originally I hadn't planned to provide any updated NATO counters for this mod because I don't use them. However, since some people do use them, and since a new unit-type - militia - is introduced in place of ANZAC units, the NATO counters also need to be updated to accommodate this. Additionally having marine units having NATO counters labelled "SOF" seems anachronistic and a bit confusing, so I've changed that as well.

Changing the NATO counters ought to be a straight-forward affair, but a complication exists in that any writing on them has to be legible even in the zoomed out version of the counters. Unfortunately, at least with GIMP, the text reading "MILITIA" "MARINE" on the scaled-down version of the counters for the zoomed-out version I made wasn't legible, so the zoomed-out version is a bit different.

Pictured - Tennessee state militia backed up by Confederate marines hold a mountain pass high in the Smoky Mountains:

NATO.png (822.9 KiB) Viewed 698 times

And the same picture zoomed out:

NATO zoomed out.png (284.75 KiB) Viewed 698 times

[OldCrowBalthazor]

I for one appreciate that you decided to give NATO counters a retool. Looks good. Welcome back FOARP.

[FOARP]

I for one appreciate that you decided to give NATO counters a retool. Looks good. Welcome back FOARP.

Thanks Crow! Yeah, playing some WiE has given me ideas about how to address some issues in this mod.

[FOARP]

Tweaks and fixes

This week I've been working on game balance to ensure that the cities that fell to one side or another in the opening months of the war as written in Turtledove's books will typically fall in the first few turns of the game as well. This isn't easy as it requires the CSA to be strong on the Potomac, but the USA to be strong along the Ohio, without forces being moved from one front to the other.

I've used unit-morale boosting and morale-reducing events to boost US morale and reduce CS morale along the Ohio as the cities along it fall to the US - this should assist an US invasion of Kentucky. I've also done the same for CS conquests of US cities in Delaware/Maryland/Pennsylvania, meaning that if you can capture Washington DC, then Baltimore, and then outflank US defences before Philadelphia, you can cause a large-scale demoralisation of US forces that might win the war by allowing you to take the de-facto US capital city.

At the very least in hands-off games this seems to work with the AI playing against the AI.

I've also toned down the level of fortifications facing the US invaders to give them a bit more of a chance of at least conquering the things they are supposed to conquer in the CSA. Additionally I've been adding more photos to the events for colour - as you might imagine, pictures from natural disasters and other events in the America of the early 20th century (e.g., the Bonus Army) feature significantly.

OhioEvent.png (551.33 KiB) Viewed 542 times

WashDCEvent.png (544.25 KiB) Viewed 542 times

[PharaohVirgoCompy]

I remember watch how this mod went in 2020 but it ended up escaping me, I recently joined a discord server that happens to like talking about Turtledove's Southern Victory and was remined of it, nice to be able to find it again and see all the work you put on it. I don't think I can comparand the amount of time and effort you put into this, congrats!