Matrix Games Forums

Sorry, I have been away for the past three weeks. Just to let you know that this is not a dead project, and is still under construction, but is getting close. I have three play testers helping out, and they have been wonderful, giving feedback on issues, etc. So, several of the issues you pointed to have been resolved (#1 had to be present due to 1 city start). The issue you bring up for the terrain hadn't been identified, and I have a fix for it. It was not all that simple, and required a new terrain for tropical cities. The fields and paddies have been changed as well to make them have less contrast. I will PM you the dropbox link if you are interested in giving it a whirl.

I am, at long last, releasing the updated version of the Four Seasons Mod. As is clear from this long thread, this is something of a rework of the ATG system for random games (new terrain graphics, SFT's, etc.). It can be found on the Scenariobank. It requires three downloads (and installed this order): [edit: sorry got the links inverted!!!]

FourSeasons-3.3-AllGraphics.atzip

GeneralsProject-v1.11.atzip

and

FourSeasons-at2-v3.0.atzip.

This MOD also makes use of my NATO SysytemsGraphics as well, but this contained in the FourSeasons-3.3-AllGraphics.atzip file, so no separate download is required.

There is also manual (pdf format) that can be found in graphics/FourSeasons/Manual.

This is a rather big reworking of the Four Seasons system with some improved gr

aphics, and a rework of the models, and SFTypes. It is meant for random games and as a core for historical scenarios.

The scale and action point costs are based on the GDW Europa series.

Map Scale: 16 mi/hex (26 km/hex)
Turn length: 14 day/turn (5 day/turn option)
SFTypes:
Ground units = 1 company (equivalent)
Artillery = 9 guns
Airunits = 1 Squadron with ~ 12 planes
Naval = 1 ship

Division-sized units are intended have 60 stack points.
For example, an infantry division would comprise:
27 Rifle and/or SMG
9 Machinegun
3 Mortar
3 Infantry Guns
3 Anti-tank guns
6 horses (or motorized transport)

There are nine variants that you can mix-and-match:



1. Start with diplomatic block: Tensions are running high and regimes are engaged in a period of frantic diplomacy. Thus, regimes cannot declare war for a random period of time.

2. Use Models: Human players use models for tanks, fighters, and dive bombers. Models are used only when this option is selected.

3. Limit AI Factories: Slows down AI construction of factories, eventually stopping altogether.

4. No Factories: No regime can build factories.

5. Weather with storms: Weather, in the form of storms, occurs during the game, limiting air operations (air operations are permitted during "mud" turns without storms).

6. Build only roads: With this option, engineers cannot build railroads, just paved roads.

7. Random Rail Type: The mod supports two types of rail systems: wide and narrow gauge. The rail type for each regime is determined randomly, except when there are only two regimes, then each regime has a different rail type.

8. One Week Turn: Instead of two weeks, each turn is shortened to one week.

9. Partisans: When a side has been at war and lost approximately 50% of its territory to an enemy faction, partisans will appear at random in occupied territory.

A "new" feature is weather with storms. Storms pop up randomly during the seasons impacting air operations and bringing the changing seasons. Air operations are allowed during the "mud" turns of spring and fall, but cannot be conducted in hexes with a storm. This can be "annoying" as it can affect plans for an offensive as they also occur duing the summer months.

Looks great! And great innovation

The most changed feature is models. Their use is similar to ANewDawn (and earlier versions of Four Seasons). The biggest difference is that a model cannot be upgraded from Level N to Level N+1. They can, however, be improved with technologies. For tanks, you now have to research gun types to reach certain Levels, and you can up-gun an earlier model up to the limit available. For example a Medium Tank I can start with a 35 mm L/45 gun and can be steadily improved with 35 mm L/55, 50 mm L/40, and 40 mm L/60 guns. There are also some armor improvement that you add. But, this is the end of the line for this model. When you research Medium Tank II, you start with a new model. That said, the SFTypes in units can be upgraded in the standard way.

When you choose the Four Seasons Mod at startup, the screen will give you three Four Seasons options (as well a vanilla ANewDawn3). Selecting any of the “Four Seasons-US”, “Four Seasons (European)”, “Four Seasons (Southern Hemisphere)” buttons will take you to the random game generation screen. The differences being that in “Four Seasons-US”, US based regimes are generated instead of British/Anglo. In “Four Seasons (European)”, random maps are generated with just European based regimes. Finally, in “Four Seasons (Southern Hemisphere)”, random games are generated with the weather system inverted, so that winter first appears on the southern edge of the map and occurs in June. Note that for “Four Seasons (Southern Hemisphere)”, the weather system is inverted (including deserts), not the map (this can’t be done with ATG events).

I hope you find it enjoyable, and do check the manual. There are some instructions how to build roads on top of other road systems.

And some acknowledgements:

This work, like all others is based on the input from many sources, and help from many people in many ways. The inspiration of this mod occurred when I was trying to make scenarios with the original Advanced Tactics, and found that it had limited terrains. This started an effort to learn about graphics and map making. Of course, Advanced Tactics Gold was released with much better map graphics, but I had gotten too far to turn back. So, this is the result.

I have to acknowledge the web site The Cartographer's Guild (https://www.cartographersguild.com/content.php)
where I learned many tricks. This developed into a complete rework of the graphics, and the introduction of four full seasons into the game. And, eventually full-fledged weather.

For the operational aspect of the game, my inspiration was the successful Europa Series produced by Game Designer's Workshop many years ago. Drang Nach Osten being one of the first that I played in the series way back in 1982. Reworking the subformation types is modeled after the Decisive Campaigns series.

Many thanks to Gary Childress for allowing me to use his 3D-model graphics for SFTypes, and giving me the idea to explore 3D-modeling, which is the basis of the airplane graphics here.

Thanks to many in the ATG community for playing, including Tac2i/Webizen, LJBurston, and CaptainBeefHeart, and CP DeYoung, and cpdeyoung who have helped with play-testing. Thanks for being patient while I tracked down bugs. And, thanks to ernieschwitz for many helpful discussions.

Lastly, a shout out has to go to Vic for supporting this game for so long and for introducing so many new features. Almost all the capability to make models was introduced in the last two years.

Ormand: Just wanted to let you know I fired this up last night and so far, so good. You did very good work on this mod and I'd encourage everyone to give it a shot.

Cheers,
CB

Some minor complaints or bugs.

Using Models. New additional gun research does not seem to get to the tanks. Researched 30mm gun but the light tank model II still has old 20mm gun. The modify model shows only adding or subtracting armor.

Maybe related to prior "bug" but model tank with supposed improved gun does not get better stats than standard non model tank improvement.

The new ammo does seem to get added to newly built tank model.


The only thing I changed in the events programs was to make the HQ appear in every city and changed the name of the new HQ to " Corp".

EDIT>BTW: Really like the mod so far.

Thanks for kind words CB! And the help debugging

Larry -

Actually the gun thing is not a bug. This should be on the research card, but maybe it is not that obvious (it is in the manual), but the 30 mm guns don't go with Light Tank II, but are required for either Light Tank III or Medium Tank I. In addition, once you have researched the gun, you need to "improve" the model in the model designer. The manual shows the matrix for guns and models. Note that Medium Tank I will only tank up to the 50 mm gun. When you research the 75 mm guns, you need to research medium Tank II and make a new Medium Tank model. Your MT I model is essentially obsolete. You cannot upgrade the model to MT II (but you can upgrade the SFTypes that are in the units). Tonight, I'll copy it and post. The same goes for the armor improvements, after you have researched the tech, you need to "improve" existing models. New models, however, will have improvements automatically applied to them. Some techs, however, lead to an alteration. For these, you need to actually apply the alteration before producing the model (this is an ATG rule).

As for being different than the base model. There are two reasons for this. First of all, the base models are ONLY available to the AI if models are used. The AI can't use models, and the AI wouldn't really know what to do with the guns. The base model represents an average of what you can get with the model system. So, the models you start with will not be as good as the base, but if you keep up the improvements, your models will actually be much better! To compensate for the improvements, I did make the techs a little cheaper for human players to help balance things a bit since you will go through many more models. On the other hand, in general the AI is beatable, so this is one little advantage it gets that can help balance it out.

The other thing is that the models are not monolithic. There is a bit of variation (just as in ANewDawn). Some models will be just a bit different with the same tech. It isn't huge, but it is for variability. And, well some models are just better. I am pretty sure Patton might have preferred some PzKpfw IV or V instead of the Shermans, but that is what he had to work with. It would be help create General envy between human players.

There is one small quirk with the models that is rather minor. If you research Level N+1, you will still the Level N model concept is still available when you go straight to the model builder. This is a quirk that you can't make a model obsolete with a setting. It will, however, become unavailable as soon as you make a Level N+1 model. It will disappear from the list. This is by design. The models have a secondary tech that is required, and I take that tech away for the Level N model when you make a Level N+1 model. Just can't do it in a simple way that makes it so that you never see the two of them together.

HQs, that's OK. For the most part though, the AI tends to have several units assigned to them, so they get wasted. Also, the radius is about 3 hexes, which more or less lets them support 6-9 units. You might want to consider keeping the HQs in roughly every third city as armies and assign the corps to them. I think this can be done.

Here is a list of tank guns and level:

Here are tank alterations and improvements:

Here is a description of how to use the "Remove Rail or Road" Action card, which is needed to build over a paved road or a rail of different gauge.

I just uploaded version 3.1

FourSeasons-at2-v3.1.atzip

which fixes two bugs:

1. The more consequential of the two and it only affects the AI with random railroads variant on. Since the AI can't switch from one rail gauge to the other with engineers, I made an event to replace the "wrong" rail gauge with the proper rail in all territory owned by the AI regime. This happens roughly every 10 turns (probability of 10%). The bug caused the AI's rail & road to be converted to just a paved road.

2. I neglected to change the description for the "Increase(Decrease) Armor" alteration for tanks. Instead of informing you that it "decreased(increased) speed", it was supposed to be "increase(decrease) raw used for production". The action was correct, just the left over description. Instead of making them have less range, I made them more expensive in terms of raw.

Edit: For Larry. If you want to copy in your modified event to put HQ's everywhere, beware that when you copy an event from another file, and then move it down to where you want, you could mess up the AI autobuild for factories. These use events # 18 and 19 before and after the call. If you move an event below 19 this will offset this counter (it is the only object that I know of that this happens to) for each buildable factory (tank, guns, and aircraft) and mess things up. You'll have to reset these manually. This probably happens if you delete any event below them as well.

ORIGINAL: Ormand

Edit: For Larry. If you want to copy in your modified event to put HQ's everywhere, beware that when you copy an event from another file, and then move it down to where you want, you could mess up the AI autobuild for factories. These use events # 18 and 19 before and after the call. If you move an event below 19 this will offset this counter (it is the only object that I know of that this happens to) for each buildable factory (tank, guns, and aircraft) and mess things up. You'll have to reset these manually. This probably happens if you delete any event below them as well.

I did not change the order of events. All I did was edit the event so it did not check for every third city it just added the HQ. I also edited the event which set up the diplomatic hold on war...I was getting war on the second turn every time. This was too early I think. All I did was edit the starting size of the multipliers to a smaller number...I will experiment to get war starting soon after the start of the game but not the second turn. I kept a copy of your mod separated and named my mod copy to "4Seasons MyUSA.*"...in the scenario folder--just in case I needed to correct an error. I edited in two new "factories"...supply only center and recruitment center (replacing the Mercenary and Research Centers)--limiting them to urban areas ONLY. Not sure how to make the AI build them so I did not edit the AI build factory events--although it would be nice if the AI could build the supply centers.

I think the descriptions of the new tank models does not add the "true" size of the gun to the description...have not read the event so don't know if this is a bug or you just did not add that to the descriptions. I generally research larger guns than the current model can hold so the tank II, III, and IV are researched after the guns that they can carry.

Sorry for the somewhat late reply. Real life, aka work, got in the wat=y.

ORIGINAL: LarryBurstyn

ORIGINAL: Ormand


I think the descriptions of the new tank models does not add the "true" size of the gun to the description...have not read the event so don't know if this is a bug or you just did not add that to the descriptions. I generally research larger guns than the current model can hold so the tank II, III, and IV are researched after the guns that they can carry.

I am not 100% sure what you are refering to here. I think this is referring to the description of the research,. and I see that I was a bit sloppy. I only worked on the Light Tanks, and they were not quite correct relative to the matrix I posted. I have rewritten the description of the research. In addition, I added the caveat that it is for models. These descriptions should now be accurate relative to the matrix above (hopefully - note I had to copy it into three separate scenario files).

In addition, I did find a slight misalignment in the allowed guns for Heavy Tank IV. This is fixed as well.

Lastly, regarding the diplomatic block. I too found cases where it seemed to end too quickly; like turn 2 on a large map. This is a bit odd, but looks like it was just bad luck. The block was guaranteed for turn 1 and then the probability to end increased by 25% per turn. Hence, it was odd to see it end on turn 2 several times. Seemingly with a likelihood greater than one in four. I made a change to this event that increased the "dead time", that is how long the event block was guaranteed to stay (0 probability). You shouldn't make it too long as it then allows you to get a line in place,and the AI has a much harder time of it. The goal was to have the block be longer for larger maps since you have farther to go with your units. The goal was also to make the AI progressively more likely to declare war as time goes on.

The new version is FourSeasons-at2-v3.2

Also, regarding the order of events, what I was referring to is that if you wanted to save time and just import your edited event to replace mine, to be careful of that little trap. That's all.

Version 3.2 Bug.

Cannot research Heavy Artillery. Says you need Artillery 75mm with which you start the game. So don't know why I cannot research heavy artillery.

EDIT--->I looked at the research and noticed a difference between this research and others...Something called Category was set to 3 whereas on most research it was set at -1....tried it (changed it to -1) and heavy artillery research showed up immediately.<---EDIT

Some research cards seem to be truncated...some of the descriptions seems to be cut off--especially those that are models.



rubbing it in.....

What is work? Sounds like a bad 4 letter word. (heh heh--I'm retired.)

Yep, you caught a mistake that was left over from when I was blocking it (75 mm artillery blocked cat=3 research). This is fixed, and now requires Artillery 150 mm to research. Makes sense right? After all the Heavy artillery is supposed to be 210-250 mm.

I hadn't quite realized just how little space there is in the tech descriptions. I have modified these to make them fit. I also took off all the references to change in capabilities since this could change in the future, and it would be better to look them up. In fact what might be good, and complicated to do, is for Vic to make link so that one could click on the units from the tech screen. But, rather complicated. I think the category is something that might be very useful for sorting the research trees. Kind of what I did with the pre-label, but possibly with a new tab or something. Right now, it is useful to making other trees allowing a tech to block a whole category.

I also found an error in the Southern Hemisphere where I forgot to change the start month from May to November. That is is fixed.

It is now FourSeasons-at2-v3.3

Go ahead an rub it in. Next July for me. But, things will get worse as I will be an acting division leader until a permanent selection is made.

Edit: Sorry, two minutes after I uploaded and posted, I did a double check, and found a small mistake in the EU scenario file for the officer lists for one regime. Given all the changes to the tech descriptions, I had to rebuild the EU and SH files.