Western Russia

[Recoup]

Say hello to western Russia! Here we will follow the great Russian Empire from her initial dabbling with railroads in 1841 until the Soviet Union's last push to modernize in 1985.

Altogether I am pretty happy with the terrain and balance! The scenario is in its final version and the objectives have been balanced for difficulty and expansion, I think. Time moves 20% slower than a normal map, so it should give players more time to plan out their excellent Russian railroads.

NOTE: From now on I will upload the latest version of the map here at the first post, to keep from soaking up too much of the forum space with each consecutive addition.

[karsten]

The "style" of city depends on the city-XML, check out Lama's recent map for an interesting minimalist variation. You can change the settlement size with a right-click in the editor, or directly in the XML code. Cities that do not receive deliveries tend to shrink over time, which makes sense.
If you are ambitious, you can reskin some of the Euro-type building models to give them a more "Western Russia" flavour. You may want to check out Jancsika's "Green Mars" for ideas.
Good luck!

[Recoup]

Haha, not sure I would be skilled enough to design the buildings myself, but I might think about it!

And when I said the cities shrink I mean in the editor they do. It's just really weird because after I save the map or lay something down, suddenly all the cities on the map have gone down a size. Then they go down another size until everyone is a village. Do you know what causes this error in the editor?

EDIT: Here is a shot of the map. Geography is nearly done being laid out, with just a few touches remaining. Been looking at a slew of topography maps trying to get the elevation right, but its a real challenge - Russia is so big, and the space between cities is eyeballed at best on my map!

EDIT 2: And by done being laid out I mean the elevation. Obviously the textures haven't been placed yet.

[karsten]

I can only hazard a guess you may not have clicked all the required save buttons as shown below.

[Recoup]

I did click it, unfortunately. Its just as I am editing this happens rather than when I come back to it. It was rather annoying when I tried play-testing the map but found none of the 'cities' had anything to offer, as they were all villages...

I also had a question - how can I slow down time? Like, make it so the game doesn't blow through the years so quickly? That'd work really well on this map. Perhaps I could even increase the difficulty beyond Robber Baron? I find this game too easy...

[karsten]

Have you tried Universum`s Utah map on Robber Baron difficulty? That should give you some good ideas on how to make a map challenging to experienced players.

[Recoup]

Another update!

As you can see by the layout I have most of the geographical features in place. Russia is a very forested land, with wooded plains to the south around Tambov and Lipetsk, stretching to Saratov. Meanwhile the space between Moscow and St. Petersburg is a deciduous forest orgy. The same can be said of the terrain east of Yaroslavl stretching to the Urals.

The tree placement looks boxy in this placement, but I assure you it's not that boxy in the game. I guess it hasn't updated the look? No idea.

Either way, working on getting it sorted. The cities are STILL reverting down a size, which is annoying. However, everything else is coming along nicely.

[Recoup]

Here is the Beta for the map. I just wanted you guys to get a look at it and see what you think.

I must warn you, though - the map crashes after about 10-15 minutes of playing. I have no idea what's causing this, so I thought maybe if some of you took a look you could give me some feedback.

This being my first map, I expect criticism and advice to the fullest. Don't be shy about letting the noob have it.

Standard procedure - unzip the files into your UserMaps folder. I'm not sure if you need the "Russia.SMR_Scenario" file, but I included it anyway just in case.

Let me know what you think!

[Rodea2007]

CTD when run first with AI's, but after tried a few times successfull run this map with 3 AI's..
to attention..
you have goods such as Manufactured Goods, Arms, Automobiles but no cities need those goods
Check RRT_Cities_Russia.xml !

[Recoup]

Ah, forgot about city demand, thanks!

So you are saying it didn't crash after a few more tries...?

[karsten]

I like the scenery, the hills (in the north) could be a bit more dramatic. Starting with eight advanced cities may mean that passenger and post incomes quickly dominate the scenario. The main challenge is now to write an interesting scenario, but Russia's history should provide more than ample material!

The crashes are caused by a missing random events file, which is allowed to contain only references to goods that are included in your scenario. (You can confirm this by looking at the last line of the log following the crash, see attachment). I suggest you start with a simple crash-proof event file like this

RRT_Events_Russia.xml

<RRTEvents>
<Event>
<szTitle>GLOBAL_RECESSION</szTitle>
</Event>
<Event>
<szTitle>GLOBAL_STOCK_DECREASE</szTitle>
</Event>
<Event>
<szTitle>GLOBAL_BOOM</szTitle>
</Event>
</RRTEvents>

which is called in the scenario file like this:

<EventsXMLFile>RRT_Events_Russia.xml</EventsXMLFile>

Lastly, in your City.XML, you have a good Automobile demanded by a Metropolis. Moscow is a Metropolis, but Automobile is missing an "s". This will also crash the game. Picky, picky, SMR.

Good start so far!

[Recoup]

Thanks for checking it out for me, Karsten! I got the immediate crashes fixed, and it lasts a bit longer, but the game still manages to crash on me after about 10 minutes or so. I thought I'd corrected everything but it seems not...

I tried adding the Event file to the game. Can you have another look at her to see what might be causing it?

Also, I tweaked some of the towns to make it a bit more balanced - Tula and Ryazan are now villages and Vladimir no longer has a power plant. Kostromo has been deleted as well. Also took away the Food industry from Kiev and added a coal mine nearby for Mogilev to harvest from. It's still a distance away, so it shouldn't be too easy.

Also made the northern hills more raised, though much of western Russia is flat and the hills don't get very pronounced until you hit the Urals. However, for the sake of gameplay I suppose we cannot always stick to realism.

I guess I went into this scenario with the wrong idea. Most of the industries are based around Russia's actual situation, with almost every town having some sort of key industry. However what dominated most of the early Russian railway was passenger shipments. Also, by the turn of the 20th century there were huge settlements already in place, like St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, and Samara further down the line. Each one boasts populations well over a million, so I didn't want to under-represent them by making them towns. Perhaps I tried to condense too much of western Russia into a map? Maybe I should squeeze the borders outward a bit more and take Kazan and Samara off the map?

What do you guys think?

[karsten]

Recoup, slow down!

You are now making too many changes at once, so it is almost impossible to pinpoint everything that is crashing your map.

Firstly, you have a produce and a cask car, but no wine, no grapes. An ore car, but no ore, a gold car but no gold. A swine car, but no swine... and so on.

Secondly, you have a fishery, but no fish. A Cattle Ranch and Stockyard but no cattle.

Thirdly, the events file has to be referenced properly in the Scenario file, see screenshot.

The only possible solution at this point is to go back to your original files, which worked, and make one change at a time. Test, if it loads, make a backup copy and add the next change. And add only the stuff you will really need in your scenario, to keep things manageable.

Good luck!

[Recoup]

STABLE!

Thanks to the advice of wonderful folks like Karsten I managed to get my map stable and operational. And so, as a result, I made some gameplay changes that I noticed during a full game:

• Moved coal near Mogilev.
• Removed the village Rybinsk.
• Moved coal further from Moscow.
• Removed lone farm near Nizhny Novgorod.
• Removed Textile Mill from Kostromo.
• Made farms near Samara all small and moved some closer together.
• Removed Food Mill from Kiev.
• Removed Furniture Plant from Moscow, replaced with Textile Mill.
• Moved oil further from Tolyatti and made it small.
• Removed the Steel Mill from Moscow.
• Removed Lumber Mill near Tolyatti.
• Removed grain farm near Volgograd.
• Added Newspaper to Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod.

Planned changes include limiting the growth of some cities to not exceed certain sizes. Is there a way to do this or do I simply have to make different stages of city growth (small village, medium village, large village, etc.)?

I hope that in the next version I can begin laying down objectives for players. In the meantime, enjoy a single-player experience or, perhaps, a multiplayer one? Who knows!

Feedback is appreciated, as usual!

[Rodea2007]

As I told before I got CTD when run first with AI's but I have a trick in order to can play with 3 AI's, only need about 1 hour to finish this scenario ( investor, 3 AI's ) without crash...
look at to the picture below