I'd like to know what you think of this mod idea...

[maguro]

I've been working on this mod for a while now and I'm not sure what I even want to call it. It's been going on for well over a year and I always seem to get sidetracked with adding new units and skins etc (thanks to all the great unit and skin makers out there), when I should be working on the scenarios and such. The map alone took ages.

Anyway, I've always enjoyed the original grand campaigns for Pz Corps and Panzer General (especially Pz Gen II) and I wanted to keep a campaign system similar to that but expand it so that it covers the European theater more thoroughly. Furthermore, I wanted to pay attention to the Spanish Civil War. As the image below suggests, this campaign is intended to cover the whole European Theater (I know that's already been done), from Spain and Morocco to the Caspian Sea and from Scandinavia to North Africa. As the map below indicates, this mod is meant to cover the whole theater but I'm finding that that 369 x 252 hexes creates issues with game play so I'm planning to scale down the map for each scenario depending on which regions are needed. There's no doubt that nocache mode will be needed for it too work.

One of the main motivations for this campaign was that I wanted to simulate the 2 and 3 front defensive nature of the late war on the German side and I wanted to have a go at recreating (As accurately as I can) the famous battles that were often happening very close to each other time-wise in the European timeline on different fronts. To name a couple obvious examples, Kursk/Soviet Counter offensives & Allied Invasion of Sicily, or Normandy, Bagration and the Allied Advance up the Italian Peninsula. All told I've come up with 28 or 29 scenarios which will likely be broken down into 4 or 5 sub campaigns, starting of course with the Spanish Civil War. This is not including the hypothetical scenarios that will be in place should the player re-write history.

Off the top of my head, a few things I'm including are (hopefully accurate) national boarders (according to pre-war boundaries) thanks to Soldberg, switchable modes for tank, SPGs & some AC skins (since at times elements of the corps will be in the Desert or Snow), hundreds of added units (thanks to all the great unit and skin makers), Slightly altered river types, Finland and Denmark added, and I can't remember what else at the moment...

Eventually I'll finish this thing but I'm wondering if it sounds like something anyone out there would be interested in playing. If so, it would give me a bit more motivation to finish it. Of course I'd like to hear any input or suggestions.

Maguro

[maguro]

Strategic map on June 6th, 1944

[maguro]

Normandy Landings, June 6th

[Cataphract88]

Sounds like a good idea to me, Maguro, particularly the inclusion of the Spanish Civil War; and the screenshots look promising too.

Will it be playable for single-players?

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Nothing's stopping you.

Looks good, but will clearly be a big time commitment.

- BNC

[maguro]

I was designing it with single player in mind. I figure the SCW will be the first sub-campaign of the mod, perhaps 5 or 6 scenarios and the player would basically start with no corps and slowly build up so that by around Kursk their corps should be at it's peak. Of course their corps by then will be, in game scale the size of an army group or two... or three?

Here's an example of what Spain would look like.

[maguro]

BNC, It has been a huge time commitment but I'm enjoying the process! Having finished the map really helps move forward.

[Akkula]

Wow, nice map maguro, I like it.
But in the end are you gonna create different scenarios covering vast areas of Europe or just one?.

[Razz1]

This is similar in context to my Danzig 1939 campaign. However, I use individual scenario's from the original Panzer General and Panzer Corps with a few extra maps.

I avoid those world maps as they always CTD. If I understand you correctly, I like your idea of the large map with few units on a specific front with a scenario goal. That should work without CTD's.

[maguro]

Akkula,
Since McGuba has already done an excellent job covering everything in one scenario and After looking at ETO and Spanish Civil War events and timelines, I've mapped out 28-30 or so individual scenarios, and some hypothetical ones.

The scenarios will break down into probably 4 sub campaigns: SCW, early war 39-40, mid-war 41-42, late war 43-45... sound familiar? I guess the format will be similar to the original grand campaign.

Because the original map is too large to use, causing lag among other issues, I was forced to scale things down, closer to what is necessary to play each scenario. That seemed to have fixed the problem with lag. The other concern I have with using these large maps is that the AI won't understand it's scripting. Originally I was getting mixed results but testing has been indicating that the AI seems to be doing what it should lately. Maybe I'm understanding how to script AI better than I did before or something.

Razz,
Sounds like maybe this is somewhere in between Danzig 39 and BF Europe. Since my small amount of PsC time is usually taken up with this project, regrettably I haven't played either yet, although I've downloaded both and plan to play them eventually.

[maguro]

Btw, If anyone has any ideas for what I might call this project, I'm all ears.

[flakfernrohr]

I am a fan of any mod of this type, especially if there is a big focus on fighting in the Eastern Front and the USSR. The armor is just so much more interesting along with the other weapons of war.

As for a name..........how about LEBENSRAUM Europe?

[maguro]

flakfernrohr,
That's a pretty good idea for a title, in fact much better than anything I can think of.

I think there are a lot of Eastern Front battles that really need attention so those, plus the Spanish Civil War are two big things I always wanted to include if I decided to mod a grand campaign. I'm particularly interested in the Vistula-Oder operation but I agree with you that the immensity and emphasis on tank warfare on the Eastern Front is really intriguing.

Furthermore, know you have me thinking about how to diversify the nature/style of warfare on the Eastern from the Western front. In line with your comments, I think first off the Eastern Front should be pretty tank heavy, especially on the Soviet side. To the credit of the original campaign, I think it does a good job of showing a tank heavy emphasis in the east. I don't know what statistics would suggest but it seems like artillery would be on a larger scale as well. In this project I'd really like to simulate the massive artillery barrages that kicked off late war soviet offensives.

[maguro]

Here's another random shot to give a better idea of the size.

[maguro]

Lately I've been doing some preliminary work on the Kursk/Husky scenario. All in all Kursk shouldn't be too different from he original scenario except that the events in the west will have an impact on the player's strategy: a two front war and likely changing objectives will hopefully give the player some tough choices to make about deployment and/or transferring units etc. For that purpose I'll likely increase the distance trains, ships and AC can move per turn.

[flakfernrohr]

@maguro.............a couple of years ago, I made about 22 maps for a Post Kursk campaign going from Kursk all the way to the Urals and capturing "Tankograd". It was ALL Eastern Front concentrated on the Soviet Union. That is what I called the mod I was working on, Tankograd 1943-1946. I used the first Massi tile mod when I made the maps and so they are out of date now with that first Massi mod being surpassed now by an even better Massi tile mod being available that he made for all of us active on the forum in those days. He did practically any and ALL of the suggestions we proposed which makes for a great Eastern Campaign. He made so many great tiles especially for the Eastern Front.

My theory behind the campaign scenarios was that Hitler had become insane (he actually was due to illness) and incapacitated (maybe died or was assasinated). The very capable German General Staff and military took over and removed the political lackeys interfering with the war and managed to wage a toe to toe war with the Soviet Union, making peace with the Western Allies possibly. Wartime Production and the capture of war materials and resources made so much more available to the German armed forces in all areas including the stronger support of allies who sensed German victory with the removal of Hitler and his lackeys.

This made the possibility of making use of the German Paper Panzers, jets and other wonder weapons that were in production or design by the end of the war. They would have been possible and many likely produced had the war continued and Germany had the resources available.

That being said, I also did an outline of another 7 map campaign going from Stalingrad down to Persia. I did not get started on those maps as real life began to interfere. And of course at that time Chris10 was doing his marvelous work which was never finished. McGuba did do an outstanding mod incorporating the Eastern Front from an Axis player view and he credited Chris10 with being a part of his inspiration.

I suppose it was beyond my capacity to do a whole mod like so many of these other talented modders on the forum who have contributed so much to all of us out of their generosity and hard work. For me to have thought I could do it was really only kidding myself.

Nonetheless I do have all those maps in zip files, a flow chart, a map plotted on Google Earth of where everything was routed and an outline for 1946-1947 from Caucasus to Persia in 25 more scenarios scripted into 7 more maps also. If you would like for me to send this to you, I am more than happy to do so. I spent a lot of time on the maps and although I did not finish the mod, I learned so much and enjoyed so much pleasure making those maps dreaming of what scenarios could be played out on them.

Of course if you are not interested in them, it is certainly fine as well. If you do want them, please send me a pvt message with your direct email and I will get the files to you with a mediafire file link.

[maguro]

Here's a basic mock up of what the southern pincer might look like, July 5th, 1943

[BiteNibbleChomp]

BNC, It has been a huge time commitment but I'm enjoying the process! Having finished the map really helps move forward.

I finished the map for Rome a while ago. It hasn't gotten past 270 BC since though .

Sometimes you have to force yourself to continue, but the end result is always worth it!

- BNC

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Scratch that. Rome's up to 264 BC

- BNC

[maguro]

BNC, It has been a huge time commitment but I'm enjoying the process! Having finished the map really helps move forward.

I finished the map for Rome a while ago. It hasn't gotten past 270 BC since though .

Sometimes you have to force yourself to continue, but the end result is always worth it!

- BNC

There's no way I could finish this if I didn't enjoy the process, but even so, you're right, sometimes motivation dips at times. I really think the map was the most tedious phase and even that was pretty fun.

Having said that, I can't imagine modding a timeline spanning hundreds of years like you are doing. How much time are you planning to make each turn? Having played Rome Total War back in the day, I can't help but imagine something similar to that.