Slitherine

Download link for 0.99 version:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz486e ... sp=sharing

INSTALLATION:
Unzip the Data file to your main CTGW directory (place the data folder in the same place where the ctgw.exe is). Overwrite all files as promted.

NOTES:
1. Best make a separate intallation, or a backup just in case.
2. The mod is built to work with the english language file. Running the mod in any other language will likley result in a crash due to the way the files are structured.
3. Please feel free to comment and reports bugs in thsi thread. This is a beta version.
4. So far only the 1914 scenario is playable, others might result in a crash. More scenarios may come in later versions of the mod.

CHANGELOG

Version 0.99
- made for the latest game patch version
- optimized download
- Antwer captured by CP bug removed

Version 0.91:
- Senussi new minor faction added
- Persian border hexes now become open to army movements in spring 1915
- Adding new late game tech - "Combined Arms".
- Kattowitz (city), Toul (fort) and Mainz (fort) added. Wilhelmshaven and Varna are back to being a city instead of a fort.
- Russian mobilization will take longer
- Removing Trondheim port (not city!) due to a convoy blocked bug in some scenarios.
- Fixing the "garrisons units of various countries at high levels have french graphics" bug from vanilla.
- New Russian graphics, you can swich to the old flag if you want too (files in folder)
- City of Hamadan is now in the right place (bugfix)
- Manchester city name on map fix (bugfix)
- Small garrison cost&PP balance (balance) - these are now free, with corresponding city PP changes.
- Convoys now bring far less MP and a slightly smaller (and slightly randomized) PP.
- Naval battle of the Falkland islands event now has proper description and flavor text (bugfix)
- some more minor flavor events

Version 0.9:
- Gameplay extended to December 1919.
- Sunk dreadnaughts incur a 5 morale loss (20 morale was the vanilla setting), with the exemption of Britain, which will lose 10 morale for each dreadnaught lost.
- Moving land units results in a small (0.4) efficiency drop. This will become visible only in prolonged mobile campaigns. This is 1914, not 1944.
- Damage capacity of fighters, bombers and naval units attacking land units was reduced.
- Bombers will take more time to be researched.
- Rail guns will take less time to be researched.
- If Paris falls before Italy enters the war, there is a chance taht Italy will switch sides.
- If Italy will join the Central Powers, Austria will cede Trento to Italy.
- There is a 10% chance that Russia will launch a surprise attack on the Swedish fleet at the begining of the war, resulting in sweden joining the Central powers.
- There is a small chance that the German Asian squadron under von Spee will manage to brake out into the Atlantic.
- There is a small chance that the British will deliver to Turkey the two dreadnaughts being completed in 1914 in UK shipyards. This will delay Turkey's entry into the war.
- Manpower dropping below certain levels will result in a special event and a morale loss.
- The British may now proceed with offensives on the Mesopotamian front, drawing supply from Abadan.
- If the UK and Turkey are at war, Kuwait will switch sides and join the Entente.
- If the war is not going well for the Entente, it migth prompt an early Irish war of independance. Ireland will then act as an active CP faction.
- If the war is not going well for the Entente, it migth prompt an early Wafdist uprising in Egypt. Egypt will then act as an active CP faction.
- If Russia surrenders and the war is not going well for Turkey, a republic will be established in Transcaucasia. Transcaucasia will then act as an active Entente faction.
- Small chance for German submarine warfare pulling the Dutch into the war on the side of the Entente.
- USA will sue for a white peace if all its major allies in Europe are defeated.
- Small chance that the Turkish call for Jihad will be met with some sucess amongst the arabs.
- As the war drags to late 1917 and beyond with no clear victor, there will be a sepcial chain of events lowerign global morale due to War-weariness.
- Strikes and protests on the home front may erupt in case of low morale and a prolonged war.
- Austro-Hungary will now be more brittle, possibly flaling apart before the war ends.
- Several minor or flavor events regarding the war outside Europe - mostly regarding Asian, Pacific and African colonies.
- Modified Austro-Hungarian graphics for eearly war units. The uniforms will now be blue, as historical.
- If the war is going particularly poorly for the Entente, Spain may join the war on teh side of CP (small chance).
- There is a small chance that the Grimm-Hoffman affair will escalate into a French declaration of war on Switzerland.
- Chances of colonial unrest for France or Britain if the war is goign badly for them, which will lead to furtehr morale loss.
- More fortresses ahave been added.
- Some city PP values have been slightly altered. The Russian PP centrepoint has been moved west, with the western regions now having more valuable city centers.

Known Bugs&Issues as of 0.91:
- Some commanders have a name, but no description
- Senussi event still fails to fire properly when the Entente is winnign the war.
- Tsar takes command event fires even if Russian morale is high.
- Kristiania (modern Oslo) named "Kristiana" - vanilla error (FIXED)

LEGACY FILES (old versions)

Download links for 0.91 version:
http://www.filedropper.com/allthismadness091
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz486e ... sp=sharing

Download links for 0.9 version:
http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=361 ... 7121079026
http://www.filedropper.com/allthismadness-ctgwmod09
Each link contains the full mod, you don't need to download from 2 links.

Hi, Sabratha, great to see another CTGW Fan getting down to modding this game, so rest assured I'd be glad to see the results of your efforts!

I also planned to do some heavy modding myself but decided to put it on hold since there's still a nasty naval-phase AI crash in the 1.64 update that can lead to games that can't be finished and hours of wasted playtime.
Personally I don't see a justification to put any more time into playing or modding a game that has such a game-destroying bug but I'd be interested to see your approach to alter the game.

Good luck and best wishes.

That bug wouldn't happen to involve ai subs, would it?

Hm... I don't think I have witnessed that AI bug yet. Or if I did, it was a crash that did not reoccur after reloading.

I stopped playing Commander: Europe at War because of AI naval crashes and freezes, but I have not experienced anything like that in this game. Having said that, if you spot the bug and have a solution, please let me know.


As for my mod, the new nations work OK, but so far I have yet to find a way (if there is any) to change "original hex owners". What this means is that any new factions will work like Arabia does now - it cannot build units, as it doesn't have a capital whoise hex they ar ethe "original owner" of.

I looked for an event script that would let me change the original owner of a hgex through an event, but didn't find any. I suspect the only way to change hex ownership is map editing, which as we all know is not possible at this time.


As for other features -
A) I've added some forts and cities, changed the PP value of others but will try to keep the "total PP per faction" the same as it is now.

B) I'm still considering which places will be turned to forts. So far I made Cologne and Belfort as west front forts and I must say they they function fine as far as gameplay goes, preventing early and overwhelming brakethroughs in their respective sectors. Osowiec, Boyen and Posen are forts of the estern front - Posen certainly works well in this context, but I've yet to see how the two on the masurian front will do.

C) Mesopotamian campaign, working fine. British will draw supply from Kuwait (which is now a capital and will revolt against the Turks early on). The British also get to occupy Abadan through event (historical) and can use that as a limited supply source if needed.

D) Possible Irish and Wafdist uprisings, cause I don't want to make the late game too easy for the Entente.

New Commanders are a staple of all mods for this game and I'll add a few, mostly land commanders for minor nations. Minor nations commanders will have a range of 1. I may also add one German and one more KuK general for balance (far more many minor nations on the allied side).

More changes:
1) After some testing, I've decided to drop Kuwait as a faction and just spawn a small arab garrison belonging to Britain at said hex. Reason being that Kuwait's forces played a very small part in the war and gameplay-wise Kuwait would never be able to build any meaningfull units, instead it would just add to the clogging-up of various menu screens.

2) Arad fortress no longer exists (was a minor and outdated fort in ww1, and it was inside Hungary not in Romania mind you), now Romania has a fortress in Silistra, near to the capital.

3) All factions lose 5 morale after losing a battleship fleet and 25 morale for disbanding one. Britain is an exception, it loses 10 morale after losing a dreadnaught, 2 after losing a crusier or pre-dreadnaught. Historiclaly Britain was a naval nation and as such the british public was keenly focused on the standing of the fleet. Even an indiccisive battle such as Jutland proved a shock to the public in Britain. Losing naval units should thus have a bigger impact on Brtian, force the british player to spend more on teh navy and play it safe. Also perhaps help balance the game a bit more, without making it too unhistorical.

4) I'm testing to see if the small garrisons should have an upkeep fee and if so, what should it be?

The small garrisons didn't have an upkeep until 1.6

Also, why do you think there should be a moral penalty for disbanding a dreadnought?

@DanielHerr: flavour-wise the scrapping of a battleship might indicate

a) a clear sign to the public that either the whole naval-arms race and years of burning taxes on it was a misconception in the first place

or

b) that the nation is on it's last legs ressources-wise and has to take drastic measures like even going so far as to dismantle the "pride" of the nation (as battleships were a source of prestige).

In both cases I'd agree a moral penalty would be in order. A 10% morale penalty seems about right for losing or disbanding a dreadnought. For my own mod, I gave the dreadnoughts a range of 2 and reduced their ammo-usage from "3" to "1" to make keeping them more worthwhile.

DanielHerr wrote:That bug wouldn't happen to involve ai subs, would it?

Please elaborate why you suspect ai subs being involved in naval ai crashes. Have they been known to cause stability problems before?


@Sabratha: care to post the relevant code you used to enable Kuwait as a faction? I'm not quite sure which files have to be altered besides "factions.lua", so being able to have a look a the relevant code would be very useful to me. Is it mandatory to create new graphics too for flags etc.?

In early versions of the game there was hardly any penalty to scrap BBs. Many used the PP from scraping wittingly to build their armies (early) and also to deprive the opposition from sinking such fleets...

DanielHerr wrote:The small garrisons didn't have an upkeep until 1.6

Also, why do you think there should be a moral penalty for disbanding a dreadnought?

Yeah I know about the small garrisons in 1.6. I would prefer them to be free to avoid gamey-tactics of disbanding them for cash savings. What is making me think twice about it is the Russian income which would be pretty high otherwise.

I want to keep a penalty for disbanding dreadnaughts to avoid gamey tactics for counties (in particular Austro-Hungary or Russia) disbanding these for cash savings again. These should suck up some upkeep, in turn making the player think of actually using them to some sort of sensible end.

Countries getting rid of their costly, long-built and valued battleships in WW1 for some measly upkeep gains is just not very realistic and feels too gamey for me.

Other changes being tested:
1) Random chance for some minor nations getting involved in the war. I try to keep these either rare, or linked to historical events (France nearly invaded Switzerland over Swiss mediation regarding Russia exiting the war, Dennmaark contemplating joining the allies in 1918 to regain Holstein).

On a diff note, I'm considering the name for my mod. I considered "To the green fields beyond", but turns out there's a 1978 boardgame about the battle of cambrai named that.

So thus far I settled for "All this madness" - its from a quote of Bertrand Russel, an eye-witness to teh great war and one of the faces of the pacisistic opposition to it in the British Empire.

Robotron wrote: @Sabratha: care to post the relevant code you used to enable Kuwait as a faction? I'm not quite sure which files have to be altered besides "factions.lua", so being able to have a look a the relevant code would be very useful to me. Is it mandatory to create new graphics too for flags etc.?

1) Faction Lua example:
2) Then a ton of entries in the lang file (really just open the lang file, search for example for all "persia" entries and make a copy of all of these with your country name instea dof persia). I'm really not into quoting all of them here, as these are spread all over the lang file. Just some examples: 3) scenario lua file (Like 1914.lua for example): Also this: You may also edit the technology ratings for said country depending what year you have the scenario in etc.

4) Constructions: 6) Well, then you need all the graphics files. Flag and emblem files in the Data\Graphics\flags, then units in Data\Graphics\Units
The graphics are really a lot of work if you want to make it look half-decent. Even if you just recolor the unifgorms of existing units, its still a lot of work. Keep the selection areas within paramateres of what other flags and units have, also sizes. I only used png format to that extent, with selection editing done through my photoimpact. I can't advise you on how to do that in a different graphic editing software.

7) diplomacy_panel.lua - well, here you need to edit this: To the number of factions you want to have in the game. For example to: Keep in mind adding more than 4 new active factions will not crash the game, but it will cause the UI screen to be messed up, since the size of the diplomacy window is just too small to manage more rows than 5 new active faction flags would require. I imagine the size and position of the window CAN be edited, but this seems to be too complex a scripting operation for me to figure out.

Also look out, even minor errors in the code can cause the game to crash. Do NOT leave any lang code line empty after the equal, as this will crash the game on startup and the log will say something about a serial number mismatch.

Make backups of the whole scripts folder with everything you edit, probably numerous backups with names that will help you identify what was done when. I can't stress this enough. Check the log each time you encounter a crash to see what is the reason.

DanielHerr wrote:The small garrisons didn't have an upkeep until 1.6

Also, why do you think there should be a moral penalty for disbanding a dreadnought?

Yeah I know about the small garrisons in 1.6. I would prefer them to be free to avoid gamey-tactics of disbanding them for cash savings. What is making me think twice about it is the Russian income which would be pretty high otherwise.

I want to keep a penalty for disbanding dreadnaughts to avoid gamey tactics for counties (in particular Austro-Hungary or Russia) disbanding these for cash savings again. These should suck up some upkeep, in turn making the player think of actually using them to some sort of sensible end.

Countries getting rid of their costly, long-built and valued battleships in WW1 for some measly upkeep gains is just not very realistic and feels too gamey for me.

Been recently distracted by a different game (grand naval wargame 1900-1925 by a different studio, so won't mention it at lenght here out of politeness).

But I'm still working on the mod. Currently, I want to express my plans plan to include some random alternative events to spice things up a bit and make the game less predictable.

These will be events that did not happen historically (scares that failed to materialize etc), or alternative variants of events that did. These will have a relatively low chance to fire (x< 20%). Main goal is to add some level of unpredictability to the game.

So far I'm planning for the following:
1. Turkish call for Jihad unusually effective. Turkey gets a free arab garrison in Syria and an Arab cavalry unit in Iraq.
2. Von Spee makes it to the north atlantic. A german light crusier appears on the south edge of the map.
3. Exploits of the U-28 in March 1915 have a deeper impact on Dutch policy than they did historically. The Dutch become more pro-entente and may even enter the war on their side later on if the war is going badly for the CP.
4. Socialists worldwide take a more anti-war position than historiclaly, ending up with strikes in late 1915. Germany, Italy, Austro-Hungary, France and Britain all lose some PP as a result.
5. Turkish battleship purchase goes through, Turkey will start the war with 1 dreadnaught unit.
6. Major Boer uprising in South Africa. Britain loses a substantial amount of PP (to send supplies, raise troops in South Africa etc) - this may happen only if the war is going poorly for the Entente.
7. Rebellion in India - similar to the above.
8. The Swiss war-scare as a result of the Grimm–Hoffmann affair proves to be the real thing. France invades Switzerland. Can only occur if both France, Russia and Germany are still in the war, with Russia close to collapse.

That's the ones that come to mind currently. I'll hopefully expand the list later on.

One more thing: I've been tired of the end-game stalemate situations where USA is the only Entente country left standing and neither the US nor the Central Powers have the means to strike one another across the Atlantic.
As such, I will be introducing an event which will fire if the US is a part of the Entente, but neither UK, Russia, France, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands or Spain are fighting for the entente. In such case the US devoid of European allies will sue for a white peace, as pacifists and isolationists dominate the political landscape.

Hi

Your work is looking great. Can't wait to test it!

I haven't been very far in the game yet (but I'm a Great War afficionado: I did the big Paths of glory variant available here: http://www.banquetdesgeneraux.com/rubrique4.html)

Is the Senussi campaign included in the events?
also Bread riots and strikes for Austria Hungary when it starts reaching very low morale.

BTW, I also found shore bombardment way way overpowered. At this scale - we're talking armies - and over the surface covered by an hex, it makes no sense. The only occurences I would keep it would be against coastal fortresses ( where big guns do help indeed) and, but that might be more complicated, in support of troops that landed amphibiously.

Was considering the Senussi campaign, but the game's engine makes campaigns away from major supply points tricky. I had to jump through some hoops to make the Mesopotamian campaign feasible from the british side.

Bread riots and strikes for Austria Hungary when it starts reaching very low morale.

Oh yes, a major part of the mod is a series of global morale-lowering events starting in 1917 and getting worse aas the times goes by.

There are also going to be events linked specifically to morale, that may have damaging effects on the nation. Austro-Hungary is going to be particularly vulnerable (If morale goes low, then things like the bread riots or national independence movements will start to brake the empire apart). Britain will have its fair share of troubles if its morale is low and its doing much worse than historiclaly. There may be an early Irish war of independance, or huge rebellions in India or amongst the Boers. Also a wafdist uprising in Egypt, which will be a part of the game - with wafdist units spawning etc.

Effects of naval and air forces on ground units will be lower. The time to develop bomber will be longer.

You seem very well versed in the matter. I'm looking forward to your mod, and will postpone my multiplayer plans with my pals until it's out.

Any idea when?

EDIT: Please make air effects non-cumulative ( not until very late) , to avoid air concentration strategies

Well, its taking longer than expected, mostly for 3 reasons:
1) I'm no pro graphic expert and the unit graphics for the new states took some time
2) testing takes longer, cause I'm just 1 person doing them and some of the scripts in the game are a bit wacky.
3) Its not like I don't have a RL job
4) I'm adding new states, new events, new commanders, changging some unit stats - it all takes both graphic editing and actual script testing.

So its a case of "coming when its done", but probably somewhere in October.

PS - I worked professionally in quality testing for software and PC games back in the day. Otherwise I'd probably wouldn't even try modding this game

EDIT: Please make air effects non-cumulative ( not until very late) , to avoid air concentration strategies

Not possibe within the game's engine AFAIK. Every attack whatsoever takes down 1 efficiency of the attacked unit. I've set the starting "ground attack stat" of fighter units to 0. So they can attack, but all they will do is lower efficiency and not do damage, at least on low tech.

I have also changed the research time of Bombers to be longer, so it will take more time to have bombers available. (On the other hand, rail guns will now be researched faster).

These elements combined will not entirely remove the "air unit cumulation effect", as it is not possible. But they will diminish the effects of air units attacks on ground units.

Also, cruisiers now have just 1 ground atatck (50% of the original value) and dreadnaughts just 2 ground attack. So while they may cause 1-2 damage at times, their dmage dealing is significantly reduced and their main role will be to lower efficiency.

Every attack whatsoever takes down 1 efficiency of the attacked unit

Isn't it possible to make it at least non-automatic? Three air units (Two German and one Austrain) + one Zeppelin on the Western Front in 1914 will reduce the target's effectivenss by 4 (!!!) every turn!!! Regardless of entrenchments or Fortresses !!! this is Stukas at their best!

I may consider removing the german fighter in Prussia from the 1914 scenario then. I will be reviewing some starting unit numbers at the final stages of the mod.

In other news:
- Two new cities (Lodz and Lublin) in the Polish territorries of Russia (Magnitogorsk removed, central Russia PP cities altered,, Tsaritsyn lower in PP for example), which as a whole shifts the economic ceterpoint of the empire more west. Now there will be a good reason to defend the Warsaw salient and losing it will proportionally have bigger repercussions for the Russians. (as historical, the western areas were one of the most advanced and industrialized in the empire).
- Going to add a chain of events regarding Italy. If the CP are doing much better in 1915 than they did historiclaly, Italy migth stay neutral. In the worst case scenario then if France falls, there might be chance that Italy will even enter the war on the CP side.

Ok, more info on new events, this time about neutrals.

1. If at any point in 1915 Italy is neutral, but Paris is occupied by the CP, there will be a 50% chance that the conservative government in Italy will collapse and the new government takes a pro-german stance.

This will be rare, the event has only one chance to fire and if it faills the 50% RNG roll, then it will never fire. So if the CP want Italy to change sides, they need to capture Paris before Italy joins the war and even then they get just a 50/50 chance it will.

2. There is a 10% chance that Russia will start ww1 by a sneak attack on the Swedish fleet at anchor. This was actually proposed by the commander of the Russian Baltic fleet in reality, but the plan was shot down by the government due to beeing too damaging politiclaly. The event has 10% to fire and when it does, Sweden will lose its navy, but find itself in the war on the side of the CP.

3. Spain will have a random chance to join the CP if Britain is doing poorly, France is near collapse and the US has not joined the war.

4. There is a small random (10%) chance that the GrimmHoffman affair will leade to war between France and Switzerland. For this event to fire, France must be in the war, Switzerland must be Neutral and Russia must be very close to collapse.


All in all the chances for the ahistorical entry of neutrals into the war will be random, small and/or dependant on a frontline situation in teh game which was different than what happened historiclaly. Still, these may add an element of unpredictability and help to increase variety between subsequent playthroughs.

Other than that, added some events that make Austria-Hungary more brittle. When things start to go particularly badly for the AH (or the war is dragging on very long with no clear results) and AH morale drops low, AH will enter a downward spiral ending with dissolution of the empire itself.

So if its already 1919, the war is in a stalemate, the CP are not winning the war and AH lost a lot of men, then chances are it will collapse even without the Entente occupying too much of its territorry.

A similar (though less decisive) chain of events may occur for Britain. If British morale goes very low, there will be uprisings in the distant parts of the empire (India, South Africa) as well as in Ireland, which togather will bring the morale even lower. If things are going very badly, the UK may sue for peace even withour german boots on British soil.

Overall the plan for the event chains regarding morale will be that if you are still fighting in late 1918 or in 1919, then most countries will be more "brittle", more exhausted and it all may end up a cas of which side collapses first. Things like manpower losses (I've added some events related to that) may tip the scales.


Next I'll be lookign into balancing the starting navies as well as the forces of neutral nations, plus scripting and testing the Egyptian revolt. If all goes well, the mod will be released next week.

What about Belgium? My mod used to let Central players choose whether to attack Belgium.

And can you put everything your mod changes in the initial post in this thread?

Well, have you found a way to make sure the AI DOW Belgium as the CP? I hate to end up with a lame AI that fails to follow basic historical events. Also, I hate to nag but I know you had a way to display hex coordinates on clicking? Any chances you send me the code for this, could speed some stuff up.


I will make a full changelog once I release the mod. So far, there is still things I'm tweaking.

Speaking of tweaking, after testing various issues with smallgarrisons and upkeep, I have settled to leave the smallgarrison upkeep at 1 PP, but disabled the ability to disband smallgarrisons. It is a bit of a heavy-handed solution, but frankly its the ones that works best.

Leaving smallgarrisons at 0 upkeep made Russia, but also Turkey overpowered. Leaving them disbandable allowed for gamey tactics and still left Russia overpowered (it could disband them in rear areas safely and then overpower the CP with production).


One thing I'm still working on is the deployment of newly built units for the new facdtions (transcaucasia etc), as the game by default allows deployment only by cities where the country was the ORIGINAL owner of the hex. I so far found no way to change the original owner by event scripts, which is troubling.