Tutorial: Simple scenario creation 101

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Tutorial: Simple scenario creation 101

In this tutorial i will take you by the hand and show you how to make a simple scenario. With a simple scenario i mean a scenario that uses the generic.masterfile instead of a scenario in which you want to use different rules then in the default ww2 masterfile.

Lets say i want to make a scenario about the german invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940. How should i do this?

First i browse through google to find a suitable map picture of the Netherlands.

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Then i start in the main menu by pressing the create scenario button. I decide to make the map 22 by 20 hexes. The editor screen is opened.

I now first go and select an overlay. I do this by going to the settings subscreen (a) and clicking on the overlay button (b).

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I select the picture of the Netherlands that i found. and click on the map button to go back to the map.
I now see the map of the netherlands overlayed over the hex map. (you might want to turn on the raster grid in prefs)

All the hexes are so far set to plains, i will now start with painting the sea. I do this by selecting Landscapes (a) in the listbox and then selecting sea in the second listbox (b) and then selecting the actual sea sprite in the last listbox (c).

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I will now paint the sea hexes.

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As you can see there is still a big blob (a) of land hexes there that should be sea. Instead of painting them one by one i will fill the are by selecting the paint tool (b). After selecting paint i click on one of the hexes in the blob to fill it.

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After succesfully filling that blob i now deselect the paint tool by clicking on the arrow (a). After clicking on that i dont have to be afraid to paint anything on the map by accident anymore. (click (b) to go back to painting one hex at a time)

I will now fill in the forests, which works the same as painting sea, except that i have to select light/heavy forest in the second listbox.

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Now i will start painting the rivers. And it is a good idea to pick a map on which the rivers are clearly indicated, i really have to know where they are on this overlayed map to see them. Anyway after selecting rivers (a) and selecting a specific river type (b) you can draw the rivers by first right clicking a hex and then left clicking a neighbouring hex. That will paint a river in between those hexes. So right click a hex, left click a neighbour. After painting the first stretch of river you can keep left clicking on neighbouring hexes, but if you want to move to a different spot on the map you have to right click again on a hex first.

If i want to remove a river, i'll try to paint over an existing river, that will remove it.

Now i will add the towns and cities for this scenario. I do this just as i would paint sea or forest hexes.

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I select locType in the first listbox (a) and then select the type of location i want to put on the map in the second listbox (b). Then i just click on a hex to put the town there.

If you click on a hex a pop up will ask for a people#, just put in 0. (for universals). we'll get back to this later on in this tutorial.

Oh... and dont forget to save your creation now and then through the prefs button (with a small pc and monitor depicted on it)

Lets now make the regimes.

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First we click on the Reg button in the menu (a) and then we select the only regime that is in existence at the moment (b). This will become the Netherlands. I think the orange colour is fitting (its the colour of the royal house), but i will change the name of the regime (c) and the naming of its units to Division and HQs to Army.

Then we will click add regime button to setup Germany (f). We will set the same for Germany, except we will also change its colour to steal grey. this is done by clicking on the button next to the empty counter (g).

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We will now click on the map button again to go back to viewing the map. We will now paint the Netherlands on the map. We do this the same way as painting sea, forests or towns. Only we now selected regimes in the first listbox (a) and then select the Netherlands (b) in the second listbox. If we now click on a map hex the ownership will change.

I will now paint the Netherlands and Germany on to the map. After i have done this i go the settings menu and click on the Overlay button again. But instead of selecting a graphic file i will now press cancel. This will unload the overlay. After i have done this i return to the map.

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I will now draw the roads by selecting roads from the first list box (a) and the type of road from the second (b). The process of drawing roads is identical to drawing rivers.

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We see a lot of red crosses after drawing the roads. That are the lack of bridges. We will draw those bridges in the same way we draw the roads, but you have to select bridge as a pencil.

Oops and almost forgot to put in the only real fortress the dutch possesed at the entrance of the "Afsluitdijk".

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A fortress is a locationtype, so click on loctype (a) and then selected fortress (b). We put it on the hex at the start of the dyke (c).

Anyway you can add as many details as you want, but we have to continue this tutorial. The next thing we have to do is make some peoples. I need to do this because i dont want the germans to be able to produce anything in dutch (inhabitants of the netherlands) towns and the other way around.

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First we have to go the settings menu (a) and then click group names (b) and then scroll down and select people group 0 (c) and set its name to "Dutch" by clicking the button next to the listbox (d).
We set people group 1 to the name "German".

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Then we go to the peoples subscreen by clicking on People button (a). We then select the existing Universals people and change that peoples name to "Dutch" (c).

Then we add a people by pressing the add button (d). And set the name of that people to "German".
Most importantly we have to set the german peoplegroup to "German" too. dont forget to do that.

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Then select the dutch people again. And click on owned by German people group (b) to set the prodmod for that occurance (c) to 0. Setting the prodmod to 0 will mean production is multiplied with 0. Or in other words no production will come out of dutch towns occupied by a regime that is german.
(also do this for german people ownded by dutch peoplegroup)

Which brings me back to the regime subscreen.

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Click on the Reg button (a), select Germany (b) , click on the statistics tab (c) and then click on the people button (d) to select the German people for Germany.

All towns we placed earlier where all set to people #0, the Dutch people. So we have to manually change the only german town Duisburg to German.

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We do this by clicking on a location in the map. Then selecting the hex button in the menu (a), clicking on the people button of that location (b). In this case we change the people of Duisburg to German (c).

We also change the Victory Points of Duisburg to 15. And we will set the Dutch cities Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht and The Hague to 5 VP too. The other Dutch cities will be set to 2 VP. Bringing the total VP to 49.

Lets go to the settings menu again to set the victory condition for this scenario.

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Click the settings button (a) and then click the VP Win button (b) to set the victory condition to owning 39 Victory Points.

And now we are there set the scenario name (c), the designer (d) and the scenario description (e).

Also we will have to set an alternate round system (e). The start date will be 5-5-1940 and the turn increase will be 1 day.

There are also some loose ends left for the regimes...

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Click on the Reg button (a) and then click on the Netherlands (b), click on the research tab (c), select any field(d) and then press the set research to level button (e). Set research to level 1. This will automaticly set all level 1 researchfields for this regime to true. Do the same for Germany.