Orb & Crown 0.9: Fantasy warfare mod for Strategic Command: WiE

[Beriand]

Anyone here who would like to play the mod? I could take any side, and possibly more than one game. Preferably someone experienced in SC, or with this mod knowledge (so either way he knows what is doing, to some extent). As this setting looks quite interesting, I would very much like to try PBEMs.

[El_Condoro]

Version 0.4 of Orb and Crown is ready to play

It has been uploaded to the Dropbox link found in the OP.

This version has many changes, some major, most minor but its main feature is a (limited) AI for playing as the Allies against the AI. It is not the complete AI yet but there is enough to play through 2400-2402 and gain a Minor Allied Victory. There is still a lot of testing and development needed to get the rest of the Adversaries AI finalised before the Allied AI is tackled.

If you have any questions or find problems with the game, please post here or on the Discord server, also linked in the OP.

I hope you will enjoy playing.

[basilstaghare]

This looks to be like a fascinating mod/campaign. Is there further development on the AI planned or in progress? thanks.

[El_Condoro]

I am in the final stages of completing the Adversary (Axis) AI (player is the Allies) and plan to release it as version 0.5 within the next couple of weeks. The Allied AI (player is the Adversaries) shouldn't take as long but will still not be available for some months yet. There are many hours of play time in the Adversary AI game and it is certainly a challenge (at least for me) in the early turns.

[basilstaghare]

I am in the final stages of completing the Adversary (Axis) AI (player is the Allies) and plan to release it as version 0.5 within the next couple of weeks. The Allied AI (player is the Adversaries) shouldn't take as long but will still not be available for some months yet. There are many hours of play time in the Adversary AI game and it is certainly a challenge (at least for me) in the early turns.

Outstanding! I listened to much of your youtube 2nd playthru today in the car. Very interested to play it.

[basilstaghare]

I have been studying the manual and watching the introductory youtube videos. An Impressive amount of work has been invested in this mod.

One question: The Tribal League are supposed to have 3 hexes in Red which must be protected against the Andanian Raiders. I have not been able to locate these hexes or perhaps they appear later?

Thanks for all the work in this cool mod.

[El_Condoro]

Thanks for your encouragement - my timetable has been shot by illness but I should b back at it soon.

Yes, like a few things, the manual is not up-to-date with every change. I removed the red hexes and made the presence of Andanian ships the determining factor in affecting the Tribal League's production. That way, the TL have to send out scouts and find the raiders, rather than know exactly where to find them.

[basilstaghare]

Thanks for your encouragement - my timetable has been shot by illness but I should b back at it soon.

Yes, like a few things, the manual is not up-to-date with every change. I removed the red hexes and made the presence of Andanian ships the determining factor in affecting the Tribal League's production. That way, the TL have to send out scouts and find the raiders, rather than know exactly where to find them.

That makes sense. Hope you have recovered and thanks for your work on Orb & Crown. Thanks.

[El_Condoro]

Orb and Crown 0.5 released - link in OP

[jjdenver]

Hi, we have started and the first thing I noticed is that the main game screen now has a different background. But there is something "funny" happening because in my regular scenarios of WaW the flags from your mod are appearing at the top left where country MPP shows up and also when I go to production I see your mod country flags instead of JP, GE, USA, etc. Then in your mod the regular flags show up instead of your mod flags. I'm posting here screenshot.

orb-crown-screenshot-2.JPG (476.23 KiB) Viewed 1146 times

Also in the game some countries show up with what I think are the graphics you intended like this:

orb-crown-screenshot-3.JPG (77.68 KiB) Viewed 1146 times

But most show up this way which I think is not your intent:

orb-crown-screenshot-4.JPG (331.65 KiB) Viewed 1146 times

I exited the game (PBEM game) and when reloading I tried to choose from mod settings to use the map with text & terrain i get a lot of errors and game crashes (map failed to initialize etc etc). Then I go back to text only map and still get errors so I think I can't load the PBEM game again. Then I try again and it works with text only map.

orb-crown-screenshot-5.JPG (46.64 KiB) Viewed 1139 times

There are little exclamation marks (red & blue) on the map but I have no idea what they mean.

As a new player it's impossible to understand the political landscape at all. For example as Mul'Kan are my neighbors Guartenheim and Middleheim enemies? friends? Can I sail my entire army to defend Angnord? Or is one of my neighbors weak and I can declare war and march straight through? Questions like this pop up.

EDIT: I have been watching vids and just saw a vid that says there is a manual. I'll seek that out to learn more about the game.

[jjdenver]

Mixing up the country names (using Earth names like Japan, Kenya, etc) makes it very hard to keep track of who's who in the game. There are many places that Earth names appear instead of orb & crown names. This is only one such place:

orb-crown-screenshot-6.JPG (51.46 KiB) Viewed 1134 times

And it messes up my other PBEM game like this, makes it almost impossible to play a regular game.

orb-crown-screenshot-7.JPG (244.94 KiB) Viewed 1133 times

A comment on balance. I'm playing "allies-good-guys" and it feels like bad guys are huge and have a lot of full strength well developed units while I have no money and a lot of half-strength weak units. There is no extra money for diplomacy or tech or even supply/HQ to bring units up to strength. This feels like Russia without the "time and space" variable involved that helped Russia since the bad guys are already so close to my capital, etc. But let's see how it goes.

[El_Condoro]

@jjdenver. Hi, and sorry that you're having issues. In my games, those issues are not there so I will suggest a few things to see if we can nut out what is causing them.

• The country names seem not to get loaded in multi-player games on the first turn. They should be the correct ones from the second turn on as the custom localization.txt file is loaded.

• The Orb and Crown 0.5 mod (and optional map mod) should only be loaded when you are playing OC - turn them off when you want to play vanilla games. The splash screen should be a giveaway as to which mod is currently loaded.

• As to balance, yes it will absolutely seem like you are overwhelmed but over time, you should be able to turn the tables. The Dreadwyrm will not move south from Watersbend, so that should give you time to deal with other threats before turning your attention to him. But that is as designed - I want it to be a real challenge. I remember the first (easy) scenario in Panzer General I many years ago and how long it took me to 'defeat' it - that's what I am aiming for but maybe I will do a few strategy guides at some stage.

• Diplomacy will be critical but it might not be affordable to start off. It will be about balancing a lot of competing needs.

• With the map error, it might be worth downloading the MODS zip file again - I'm not sure when you downloaded it but I had to change the folder names after the initial upload.

• The exclamation marks should give a message when you hover the mouse over them. Edit: The ones that have a city name below them will 'teleport' leaders and heroes to the named city.

• The political landscape is not easy to grasp - there is no historical framework like WW2 games. Your 5 Allied countries and any allegiants they can get through diplomacy will work together against the others. As to whether your enemies are strong or weak, you can either try them out or turn off fog of war and have a look. In the early stages, when you're trying to figure things out, that might be preferable. The manual does try to explain all these things.

[jjdenver]

Thanks. I still have this problem on turn 2.

"The country names seem not to get loaded in multi-player games on the first turn. They should be the correct ones from the second turn on as the custom localization.txt file is loaded."

Would a restart solve it perhaps? Maybe I didn't restart my WaW client before opening the scenario I think.

YueJin I'll resign our game and let's try a restart it's very hard to play the mod with everything loaded higgledy-piggledy as it is currently.

[El_Condoro]

Yes, it has been an annoying 'feature' but I hope you will find it does fix itself with a restart of the game. If it continues to be an issue there might be a workaround. Keep us posted!

[El_Condoro]

Version 0.6 of Orb & Crown is available in the link in the OP above.

Happy New Year, everyone!

There have been a lot of changes to Orb & Crown that are listed in the Strategy Guide. The most important ones to be aware of are:

• Mittelheim will not surrender (its 3rd capital is hidden and inaccessible on the map). This means that its production can be used for research for its allegiants. It also means its units will continue to operate until destroyed.

• Guartenheim will not surrender, either. This means its units will continue to fight on until destroyed.

• Guildford and Jummerock units continue in the war once their countries surrender.

• Various unit changes (listed in the Strategy Guide) but especially Heroes and Huge Wings (SBs) have been toned down.

• The AI scripts have been improved for the mid-game, so the AI will put up a better fight. I have been testing on Veteran difficulty level and have found the AI to be challenging.

The campaign has been tested using the latest version of War in Europe.

As always, I hope you enjoy playing Orb & Crown and please let me know of any questions, comments, or errors here. Cheers.

[HalfTauter]

Hi, first off all great mod, I'm really enjoying it even though I have no idea of what's going on . It must have been a lot of work, did you make up the world by yourself or is it an existing (DnD?) campaign? I'm a fellow world-building enthusiast so great job. Anyway I am teching up and waiting for the counterattack against the adversaries, who took the first capital but after that didn't really attack me anymore, except now they invaded Mul'khan (I was prepared for that though). Thinking of trying to unite the island of the Tribal League, by attacking the other nations lol.

The reason I post though is because the sprites don't really work. Some units have the custom sprites, but a lot of them don't. For example I think the veterans have a tank sprite, the dragon has a fighter bomber sprite (referring to NATO counters). Also nations have country icons like Germany, Great Britain and Japan. I saw that someone in this thread had the same problems, however the problems with me persist even after some turns, or restarting the game.

[Taxman66]

NATO counters only.

[HalfTauter]

Uhm, I do have NATO counters enabled. And some units do have their custom counters. But most don't.

It is not a big deal, it's a very enjoyable mod.

[El_Condoro]

Hi Halftauter. Do you have the Orb and Crown mod installed and enabled? Is it the only mod you have enabled?

[HalfTauter]

Hi, currently my game looks like this:

SC_Orb_and_Crown.png (3.54 MiB) Viewed 694 times

HQ's do have a custom sprite. However other units do not. I don't have any other counter mods enabled, do I have to download a separate sprite mod perhaps?

I took a quick look at the Bitmap folders of this mod and the vanilla version. unit_nato_flag_sprites contains the sprites for HQ's I think? The vanilla version also contains allied_minor and axis_minor maps which contain the actual counters. So perhaps the mod automatically uses those sprites because they are missing in the bitmap folder of the orb and crown?

(it's on my end somewhere because I see that with others it is correct)