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Post by galagagalaxian on Nov 18, 2016 17:22:52 GMT -6
Is it possible to change the world map at all? I really want to do a South-America centred game. Brazil, Argentina, Chile probably- maybe throw in a couple others further north if I can be bothered, but focused on those three. It'd work a lot better with different zones to the default in the game, but I have no idea if that's possible. Yes and no. Editing the actual map (say to change landmasses) is almost impossible AFAIK. Editing the map file to add new territories and possessions is possible, but requires extensive work. Creating new nations is easier if the appropriate territories already exist. Having never edited the map file myself, I am unsure if the actual map zones can be rearranged. Conveniently, several "unused" and normally invisible home area are already defined in the map file. My Ottomans use Turkey for example. Lucky for you the unused home areas include Brazil and Argentina. Chile is not included AFAIK, so you'd have to edit it in if you wished to include the third part in the South American naval Arms race. I could see a South America game working quite well, especially if one is willing to entertain some alt-history: 1. Great Britain (I cannot imagine a set of nations which does not include her, as the terrible titan whose wrath must be avoided excepting grand ambitions, plus she'd be useful for foreign construction purposes) 2. United States (similar to above, a great power to be wary of and a potential source of ship building) 3. Brazil 4. Argentina 5. Chile (if one does not mind adding the hard work of editing the map file to include Chile as a region) 6. Germany (especially if Chile is included) 7. Wildcard - Perhaps an alt-history resurgent Spanish Empire as an antagonist, maybe an Alt-History American Confederacy, or maybe France?
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Post by parrot on Nov 20, 2016 21:49:59 GMT -6
Is it possible to change the world map at all? I really want to do a South-America centred game. Brazil, Argentina, Chile probably- maybe throw in a couple others further north if I can be bothered, but focused on those three. It'd work a lot better with different zones to the default in the game, but I have no idea if that's possible. Yes and no. Editing the actual map (say to change landmasses) is almost impossible AFAIK. Editing the map file to add new territories and possessions is possible, but requires extensive work. Creating new nations is easier if the appropriate territories already exist. Having never edited the map file myself, I am unsure if the actual map zones can be rearranged. Conveniently, several "unused" and normally invisible home area are already defined in the map file. My Ottomans use Turkey for example. Lucky for you the unused home areas include Brazil and Argentina. Chile is not included AFAIK, so you'd have to edit it in if you wished to include the third part in the South American naval Arms race. I could see a South America game working quite well, especially if one is willing to entertain some alt-history: 1. Great Britain (I cannot imagine a set of nations which does not include her, as the terrible titan whose wrath must be avoided excepting grand ambitions, plus she'd be useful for foreign construction purposes) 2. United States (similar to above, a great power to be wary of and a potential source of ship building) 3. Brazil 4. Argentina 5. Chile (if one does not mind adding the hard work of editing the map file to include Chile as a region) 6. Germany (especially if Chile is included) 7. Wildcard - Perhaps an alt-history resurgent Spanish Empire as an antagonist, maybe an Alt-History American Confederacy, or maybe France? I don't think editing the actual landmasses would be necessary - Latin America is already there, after all. My question was about the Zones. I think splitting 'South American East Coast' up into at least two smaller areas would work better for a South American game. Maybe 3: Argentine Coast, Brazilian Coast, and La Plata stuck in the middle (plenty of opportunity to fight over poor, little Uruguay!). It's useful to have Brazil/Argentina already in the files, but I guess I'll need to take a look at how to add more; as mentioned, I'd like a Uruguay possession, because what's the point of an Argentine/Brazilian war if you can't even take la Banda Oriental? GB/USA would be the obvious non-Latin American powers to include. Maybe I could make the tech/dock-size situation so terrible at the start of the game that you have to order your ships from overseas? I've played the vast majority of my games as, at best, second-rate powers, but it'd be cool to have a game where your enemies are also very limited in their capabilities. Maybe I could throw in Mexico, or Peru, for the really masochistic among us? In any case, Argentina and Brazil would come first, and hopefully Chile after that.
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Post by galagagalaxian on Nov 20, 2016 23:04:29 GMT -6
I actually wouldn't reccomend splitting up the sea zones further because when nations don't share home areas with access to the same sea zone they don't actually use the WarInfo file scenarios you can set up and instead use generic ones based on various holdings. This is why wars playing as the US (and to a lesser extent Japan) are less interesting because they lack a "home" rival.
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Post by parrot on Nov 21, 2016 0:27:18 GMT -6
I've created Argentina/Brazil, got a warinfo file for Argentina, and ships names for both. After playing around a little, I think I agree. In fact, I'm not entirely sure why I thought It'd help to add more! Now I just need to figure out how to add possessions. Also, when I select them in the 'New Game' screen, the flags of Argentina/Brazil don't come up right - The blue in Argentina's and the Green in Brazil's flags are just coming up as white, but they're both fine when you're actually in-game. Not a huge problem, but a bit weird.
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Post by galagagalaxian on Nov 21, 2016 15:58:00 GMT -6
For the flags, are you saving them as bitmaps? If yes, it might have to do with which color format you're saving them as.
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Post by parrot on Nov 21, 2016 19:14:56 GMT -6
Yeah, and I tried saving them to 16 colour, but still the same problem. They show up fine on the map, at least.
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Post by steveh11 on Nov 22, 2016 4:15:31 GMT -6
I'm watching this with interest: a South American game could be an awful lot of fun. :-)
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Post by Fredrik W on Nov 22, 2016 13:31:24 GMT -6
I've created Argentina/Brazil, got a warinfo file for Argentina, and ships names for both. After playing around a little, I think I agree. In fact, I'm not entirely sure why I thought It'd help to add more! Now I just need to figure out how to add possessions. Also, when I select them in the 'New Game' screen, the flags of Argentina/Brazil don't come up right - The blue in Argentina's and the Green in Brazil's flags are just coming up as white, but they're both fine when you're actually in-game. Not a huge problem, but a bit weird. The top left pixel will be treated as transparent. Note that the original flags have a grey pixel there.
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Post by ccip on Nov 22, 2016 14:24:12 GMT -6
I actually wouldn't reccomend splitting up the sea zones further because when nations don't share home areas with access to the same sea zone they don't actually use the WarInfo file scenarios you can set up and instead use generic ones based on various holdings. This is why wars playing as the US (and to a lesser extent Japan) are less interesting because they lack a "home" rival. Hmm, can you expand on that? I was actually thinking of creating a mod with the opposite concept (eliminating shared home areas) in order to reduce the game's reliance on instant blockade and increase the role of raiding, conquering possessions, and building up support capacity in non-home areas. Aren't the generic missions technically structured the same way as the home-area ones?
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Post by galagagalaxian on Nov 22, 2016 16:37:39 GMT -6
I'm not entirely sure, but basically if a nation doesn't have home areas in the regions you have home areas, the WarInfo file isn't used at all. Instead the MapInfo scenarios are used. I haven't examined them thoroughly, but I assume (possibly incorrectly) that they're rather lacking in variety.
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Post by ccip on Nov 22, 2016 19:06:00 GMT -6
Hmm, well I'm really curious now - and in some sense, fewer files to worry about actually simplifies the task. I had always thought that most battles were area-based anyway, with home-area battles being the exception for things that the area mechanic does not account for well (e.g. combat between Russians and other powers in Northern Europe taking place in the Baltic and Black seas, harbor attacks by Japan vs. other powers, battles at specific choke points like etc.) I didn't think they were all home area vs. home area; I've played Japan more than any other power and found the game always doing a pretty good job with wars in the Far East even though they're technically all alone out there. In fact one reason I've always found Japan fun to play is that except for the inevitable clashes with the Russians, blockades were pretty rare. I'll have to dig around in any case! And just for the record, I think a South American Naval Arms Race mod is a great idea and I've been thinking of it for a while Sadly at the moment I don't have time to work on that at the moment. I've toyed around for a while with the idea of significantly expanding the number of map areas in the game and basically rewriting the campaign from scratch to make the strategic dimension of the game a little more varied and challenging. So far in my small-scale tests I haven't run into any hard limits (which doesn't mean they're not there, but so far... fingers crossed) - I've been able to change and add map areas, possessions, home areas, links to other map zones, etc. The only thing I've not seen as editable are the rules for canals (Panama and Suez) - those seem to be hard-coded into the game. So in theory it should all be possible - with a bit of work. The war editor does actually help immensely, even with that (because you can pull coordinates out of it readily). The only obvious downside is that this kind of mod overwrites the global map data. Then again, with something like JSGME it's easy to swap versions in and out, and saves don't get affected (as long as you're loading them with the right version of your map data).
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Post by parrot on Nov 29, 2016 23:12:24 GMT -6
Quick update on how my South American work is going: Brazil, Chile, and Argentina added as playable nations. Chile and Uruguay added as possessions. All three have ship names filled out, mostly with historical ship names, with some liberties taken in terms of classes - there's also overlap with some types of ships (BB/BC especially) which shouldn't be a problem as I've made it pretty hard to operate enough ships to fill out the names in any category. All three are identical at the moment in terms of budget, tech, and dock size. I played through a couple of games as Argentina: in the first I ordered all capitals from Great Britain, and usually built smaller ships at home, then sent them over to be refit with better fire control. The second game I built literally every ship in Great Britain, and only focused on tech not relating to building ships (eg, fleet tactics). I strongly recommend playing with Historical Resources, and I'm considering dropping the budget further, to the point that it'll be a strain to operate even two BBs. Argentina and Brazil each have a reasonable warinfo file for facing each other, and against Great Britain, but I haven't done anything with Chile's yet (I just copy-pasted the Argentina file, and re-added Argentina as an enemy). But if Chile doesn't share a home area with anyone else, the warinfo file isn't used (except to define enemies), correct? And I have to give thanks to 'Director' - I've shamelessly stolen your AMC ship names from your South American Union file! SA.zip (109.83 KB)
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Post by galagagalaxian on Nov 29, 2016 23:31:47 GMT -6
Brazil/Argentina Warinfo files for Britain will be ignored unfortunately, since their home region is in North Europe Sea Zone.
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Post by parrot on Nov 29, 2016 23:44:05 GMT -6
Ah of course. The Falklands Las Malvinas aren't a British home region. I've also forgotten to add Chile as an opponent for Argentina and Brazil. I'll have that fixed, and some more possessions added sometime this evening. I'm going to add a bunch of South American countries to fight over (meant to represent gaining influence/economic privileges/friendly governments than actually annexing the countries). Edit: Updated files here. All three countries should be good-to-go. Argentina, Brazil, and Chile all have each other as opponents. The other four, for all of them, are Great Britain, USA, Germany, and France. Spain isn't included, and the USA has Panama/Guantanamo/Puerto Rico. I've also added Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador & Nicaragua (one possession in North American West Coast), and Guatemala & Honduras (one possession in Caribbean) to fight over. As with before, I recommend historical resources. SA.zip (111.48 KB)
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Post by director on Nov 30, 2016 8:59:41 GMT -6
No problem - I think I stole them from some list of merchant ships, myself.
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