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French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Mod

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Second Lieutenant
May 13, 2006
110
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I've often been thinking of making a napoleonic era mod with the HOI2 game engine. I've several concept ideas but suck at event making and AI making.

The game starts in 1795 and could end in 1825. 1795 is the year where France starts extending its power across her borders and Napoleon makes his debut. 1825 is when the Decemberist Revolt happens in Russia, and Latin America is completely breaking off from Europe.

Major players would be:
The French Empire
The Austrian Empire
The British Empire
Prussia
The Russian Empire

Playable Minors would be:
The Holy Roman Empire
French liberated areas (Duchy of Warsaw for example)
Confederation of the Rhine
The Spanish Empire
The United States
China
Japan
The Ottoman Empire

Theres other nations out there, I'm just too lazy to list them all here. Also there would be a lot of releasable nations too.

My idea would be to utilize tech trees and ai, to make the world historically balanced as it was. For example, non western nations can't use units with the same calibur as the west, basically stuck with tribal or feudalish units. I've other ideas, but i'd like to hear what anyone has to think.

A major problem is finding a political world map of those eras, as the world was being discovered. Parts of Asia and Africa could be blocked out, other places could be given low infra and tribal confederations(like the American West) Since the year span is 3 times as long as a normal HOI2, a key part of the game would be to reduce the amount of IC's, nations, amount of viewable and accessable areas, and the size of armies.
 
Your greatest problem is that it's impossible to stop the AI from fighting front wars. During the Napoleonic wars most campaigns were based on single battles, while WWII (and thereby HOI2) were fought with wide fronts. The AI cannot, as far as I know, be stopped from fighting WWII-like battles, and that will look very strange and ahistorical in a Napoleonic Era mod.

Further more you have the problems of the Suez and Panama channels which did not exist at that time. I can't say if they can be fixed though.

These were the reasons why we (the team behind the "Napoleonic Wars: Birth of Modern Europe" mod) stopped work on our project app. a year ago.
 
You could make the AI concentrate troops into one area or several areas, (i.e group Divisions together) and make them be more likely to march in line towards capitals and key areas, however attack other large bodies of troops if in the middle of nowhere, but disavow the idea of encirclement for the most part. Also using impassable terrains and low infra in areas would help as well.
 
Ok I've just realized some things after playing for awhile and doing some historical readings.

1. If we limit the amount of resources and manpower, we would indeed have an effect on the strategy. The AI and Players tend to go for key objectives anyhow if they have limited time , resources, or troops. For example, going for Paris as the Germans to deal a knock out blow.
2. Terrain, fortifications, vunerability to certain weapons/troop types, may help in concentrating troops.
3. Western Europe is pretty small(which leads to small fronts anyhow historically, check up on the Peninsular and Italian wars.
4. Europe would have lower infra in a pre-industrial time, and the terrain would be different (more trees, marshes, etc). In HoI2 in Asia you'll see that you can't really do much for fronts, single battles can decide things (such as in Tibet, which is hella hard to get into)
5. You can script AI to avoid areas (marshy areas), or concentrate in certain regions or border areas. (North Africa, French-German Borders.
6. Advanced diplomatic manuevering for the game, would represent several coalitions being in and out. :p Also when everyone declares war on france, it turns into a front anyhow.


Theres a many of ways to help simulate Napoleonic and Pre-industrial fighting. I don't know how to do all of this technically, however, but I have seen it done. Anyone interested in talking about this?
 
i can help you in making the countries(but need some informations about the african and asian countries)+ i can make the situation of the Romanian states very historycal
 
Christensen said:
Further more you have the problems of the Suez and Panama channels which did not exist at that time. I can't say if they can be fixed though.
Click to expand...

Maybe these could be given to partisans, who would not let anyone pass through. I don't know how the AI would handle them, though. Would it keep trying to attack, or?
 
As I've said in the past on this idea, make it into a battlescenario type situation. Since alot of the world wasn't really involved in this time line (Interior Africa and parts of Asia and America) you could make these areas blacked out. In this way you can also edit out the Panama and Suez Canals, since they wont be made for many years....
 
The Turtledove/Settling Accounts mod fixed the Panama Canal problem by severing the connection between the relivant sea zones. The same would work for the Suez. When you click on the sea zone, the connections appear as a red X, like ones would see in some Saharan or Tibetan land provinces. I'm not sure how this was coded. You'd have to ask there.
 
I've been tinkering with the idea of doing a mod along very similar lines - I've been doing a lot of research on the era for my degree & it only seems natural to put this information to use in the form of a mod - though whats stopped me (other than the overwhelming nature of such an undertaking) is that I don't really know anything about industrial capacity of the powers. Event scripting, leaders and the map shouldn't be a problem, but without accurate information on things related to IC, manpower and resources I came to the conclusion that this would have to be a battlescenario (something I've always found to be less interesting). I've also had the thought that Victoria seems best suited of all of the games for a Napoleonic Era mod - EU2 doesn't have enough of a military aspect for it and HoI2 doesn't quite fit either (for a couple reasons someone mentioned earlier) - though I think that HoI is better than Eu2 for covering the conflict... I don't know, once the school year is over at the end of the week I'll probably give serious thought to making this my summer project, so I'm very interested to hear what sorts of concept ideas you had - maybe we could work together on this project (I don't want to commit to anything right out as it is quite an undertaking), but I'd still like to hear more of what you have in mind...
 
well if you can find my old thread

You're welcome to use the info there... I've been wanting to do a HoI2 Doomsday Napoleonic mod but it never really took off. Hillsdorf's got the right idea though, it should be a battle scenario rather than a campaign to eliminate the Panama and Suez canals... too bad only Vicky can block those out.

Good luck!
Richmond516
 
In any case

A Battle scenario would be good because you could also then block out the deeper unexplored parts of Africa that would be irrelevant to the conflict, though of course there are parts of the global situation that would be great to include - Australian colonization, India and the Mahrattas, etc.

Cheers,
Richmond516
 
Richmond516 said:
A Battle scenario would be good because you could also then block out the deeper unexplored parts of Africa that would be irrelevant to the conflict, though of course there are parts of the global situation that would be great to include - Australian colonization, India and the Mahrattas, etc.

Cheers,
Richmond516
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, colonisation cant really be simulated in HOI2 like it can in victoria, so Im not sure how that would be implemented.
 
not actual colonization

Well not the actual colonization but mainly management of the colony including the incidents with the 'Rum Corps' and captain Bligh of Bounty fame. Like if the Pacific becomes an important theater (as the Dutch and Spanish are Napoleon's somewhat reluctant allies) these things can be critical.

Richmond
 
Im suprised people finally replied to this thread! I've been busy but I am interested in making the mod still for Hearts of Iron II Doomsday, but don't the finer points of the game mechanics (most events I make are glitched).
 
I think Events would be the last thing made for the mod. I'm much of a noob as this would by my first attempt at a full blown mod.
I know a fair deal about the Napoleonic Era, and can formulate ideas on how it would look like in the game, and gather music and other nice tidbits, but I'm totally clueless on all the game mechanics. Also, I don't have EXCEL so i can't make spreadsheets. I have the doomsday editor , but I heard that doesn't work so well.

If anyone wants to talk about it PM me and I can give you my AIM, MSN, or yahoo IDs.
 
I think i've solved the colonization issue....

We could form a Nation called the Aborigines,,,,,or what their homeland was called.

Each time britain expands into australia , an event fires, seceding the aboriginal lands to Australia. To show that people move there, you could simply add a manpower point.

The Aborigines will have no techteams of course, be full isolationist, and no leaders. Also can certain countries be modded to not require any resources or have no IC, or at least 1 IC point? I wouldn't want the aborigines attacking the British Empire when they most likely will not station troops in Australia and have such a high belligerence rating.
 
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