Hey, KiwiSteve - thanks for the great feedback. Here's how I see things:

1. I wasn't completely sure I understood your point? That a human civ declared a war without the human player making the decision?

DoW's are a bit tricky. For the most part, they're handled by the game's internal Diplomatic system, which doesn't behave well in most scenario situations. It's designed to manage relations covering the millennia and not month-to-month interactions. I can force DoW's, but if the internal system really didn't want that war, the parties will seek peace almost immediately. That's why there's a rather cumbersome "perma-war" mechanic going on in the background from the mod itself.

When the main war starts, there are 10 forced DoW's - the "classic" Axis vs Allies, if all of them are in the game. The mod also adds a "check if friends go to war" function that happens any time a mod-forced DoW occurs. For example, if Germany goes to war with UK, then anyone who has a positive relationship with Germany has a chance to go to war (defensive pacts with Germans means a higher chance. Open borders a bit smaller chance, and DoF's have a smaller chance than those). If any civ has a bad relationship with the UK, there's also a chance they'll join the war. Those relationships are based on previous denouncements or a negative assessment from the game's internal Diplo system. I plan to add a "have they nuked us before" or "do they own our original capital" to this mix eventually.

I suppose I could at a test for these forced wars to reverse the "attacker vs defender)" roles for aesthetics, but it would screw with the warmongering tracking the internal Diplo system uses, making the cure worse than the disease. You could just chalk it up to "sometimes a country's population demand a war, even if the government doesn't...?

2. The League mechanic is broken for some reason. The way the databases are set up, you can make a simple change to delaying the start of the "United Nations" to the Cold War/Information Era, it "breaks" these extra votes in a way I can't control. It must be something hard-coded in the game itself, as there's no way I can fix it through the database. I'll need to research a way to fix the vote problem via LUA (using a dummy policy probably), but that will take a bit of time. Probably will have it in the next fix, though, as it's a really good find on your part.

3. The Waffen SS Infantry can start spawning once Germany discovers Operations research. Armor appear after discovering Modeling and Simulation. Once they discover Rocketry, all SS unit spawn stops. The mod checks to make sure Germany doesn't have too many units out of supply. If over 15, then no units well spawn. Except for every 4th game turn. On those turns it's possible SS units will spawn no matter how many units are already out of supply. I did this since there were many test games, I never saw an SS unit spawn at all.

Originally, no SS units would spawn unless Germany was in a war against another non-city state civ. For some reason, I took that out. IIRC, not too many units were spawning at all. I'm wondering if that requirement should go back into the mod?

The Unique Units mod spawns these units. It doesn't check for Oil supply before spawning armor units. I suppose I could add a test for Oil supply before spawning armor units, but I'm wondering how accurate that is historically? We know that Nazi Germany build many air frames in the last year of the war, even when they knew that most of them would barely get off the ground due to a lack of fuel. With so many units requiring oil right now, I've noticed in my test games I'm always low on fuel, and using the location of oil to govern much of my strategic planning. It's one of the reasons I changed how much oil spawns on the map. Often, there will be areas of massive oil deposits, making them quite valuable real estate. As it was in history. I kind of like it when civs run low on oil, as it forces them to deal with the same problems civs did during the actual war.

4. I agree that AI Germany gets too many SS units, human Germany seems to be more like it. I nerfed the spawn rate 3 times during testing to lower these amounts. I will probably nerf it one more time, but the number is getting closer to where it probably ought to be. I like the idea that AI Germany is hard to conquer, and gifting a rather large number of decent units in the second half of the scenario accomplishes this fairly well.

I'm currently finishing a test game on a small map (testing the fixes for the problem you found earlier with the constant crashing). I focus primarily on unit production of all types, with lots of artillery and FLaK units, as well as max paratroopers (12) and infantry/tanks too. Right now, I have about 10 SS units out of about 80 major combat units total, with 9 units out of supply (which means it is technically possible for additional SS units to spawn). Oh, and 0 oil, of course...

I'm adding a variable Settler spawn amount in the next version - it's a good idea. On the smaller maps, there are simply too many under-employed Settlers. Just not enough good sites for cities, I guess. On the huge maps I usually test on, however, the number of extra settlers seems more on target. I wanted the AI to have much more than enough, to encourage them to settle more often and hopefully make therm more of a challenge. I'll probably still keep the human player numbers low, though. Did you feel like you had the right amount starting off?

Hey, KiwiSteve - thanks for the great feedback. Continuing the discussion....

5. I personally checked the database for every single naval melee ship in the game, and all of them have the "No Capture" promotion assigned. The Sov's use the main WAW Corvette unit, and it definitely has the promotion. In fact, all Soviet naval melee ships use the standard WAW units. There must have been something else at work - perhaps an embarked land unit took the city? Not sure what's going on, but if for some reason the game is ignoring the No Capture promotion, there's not a lot on my end I can do to fix it.

6. No, there is no extra oil from conquered civs. While it's possible to accomplish programmatically, the starting oil bonus is just to help civs get started when creating a wide empire literally on the first couple of turns. Early in the WW2 scenario development, I noticed some civs didn't have enough oil on the map, leading to their air and sea units being taken out quite easily. The bonus was awarded just so those units could fight at full strength early on. If a player wanted to expand on those units, they'd need to find the additional oil to accommodate that.

This rationale followed into this mod for largely the same reason. Especially for major combatabt civs (USA, UK, Germany, Japan) - I was trying to give them an early game dominance over other civs (it's actually a "difficulty scaling" issue: some civs are quite easy to win the scenario with, others tougher). So, the UK gets a large navy, USA too. Germany gets a little of everything, while Japan gets a bunch of carriers and Zeros. The extra oil is a gift simply so those units can fight in the early turns without a penalty due to lack of strategic resources.

Using buildings like Coal Gasification and Biofuels seem historically valid, as much of Germany's fuel came from these efforts, especially after Romania dropped support for them. It's something I try to do when pressed for fuel, although it means many conquered cities get no Factories, and therefore little chance of supporting the late war effort. Generally speaking, however, I pick my enemies throughout the scenario largely based on the presence of oil on their lands... ;)

7. There are hoards sitting around, but I do have functions that try to issue movement directives every time a war is declared in the mod. The function looks at all the attacking and defending civs' cities, then determines which 2 cities are closest to each other. It then directs all land and sea units in a large box around the attacker's city, and issues a "push order" to them directing them to move to the defender's city. It "kinda" works, but the push order method in the API is buggy and often overwritten on subsequent turns by other features in the game's internal processes. At best, these movement directives are "suggestions" to the AI, and work as intended about half the time, and the other half of the time they work with varying degrees of success.

AI civs will still have a lot of units close to home, as I've adjusted some of the settings so they'll keep more units close to cities and even more near the capital - just to make them harder to conquer. It's still not quite balanced yet, but so far I'm pretty happy with the challenge it can be to fully knock out an AI civ.

8. You can negotiate peace at different times in the scenario, but the rules vary widely. For the first 3 years after the main war starts, the "permanence" flag is removed from all major civs (except USA, Spain, and Turkey - they need special events to join the war). This means that those civs can DoW at will. There is a function that fires every turn (during the human player or player 0's turn) between War Start + 6 turns and War Start + 35 turns that looks at current wars. If those wars aren't permanent, there's a 75% chance it will change them to permanent wars, meaning no peace negotiations are possible. This was added because the scenario forces wars to start the "main war" on the civs in the game. However, according to the game's internal logic, those civs don't want to be at war, and often made peace within just a few turns. It felt wrong that Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria would declare war on Poland, the UK, and France, then 6 turns later, half of those civs would make peace. It just broke the scenario's diplomatic logic. It takes a lot of adjusting to get civs to act even a little like they're in a total war situation in Civ5.

Other events limit peace making as well. At War Start + 36 (3 years), some minor combatants have their permanence flags removed, on a random basis (10% chance), so they can now at least try to make peace. This function fires every 3 turns until War Start + 71 (~4 years), giving minor combatants a chance to make peace more often as the war drags on - still at 10% chance for each minor combatant every 3 turns. Major combatants cannot change permanence this way, as it makes no sense for Germany to quit the war in the middle of 1942...

On War Start + 48 and + 60, the permanence flags is again set off for all minor combatants and for any "protected" civs. A protected civ is USA, Spain, and Turkey if they have NOT joined the war already. These events allow minor combatants at war to make peace, but they also allow civs to DoW against those protected civs, if they're still on the sidelines.

On War Start + 72 (6 years, usually mid-1945), the permanence flags are removed from all civs still alive, so it is possible to DoW or make peace on everyone at well. Except...

If you have previously declared friendship with a civ, it is often still not possible to DoW against them, as the game's internal logic doesn't allow DoW's against friends. You have to denounce them first (which doesn't fix the problem), because this will often make them denounce you in the next turn or so. After they denounce you, it seems like it almost always allows you to DoW them afterwards. It doesn't work 100% of the time, but it does seem largely consistent.

I need to look at the Leader Head UI to better understand when the Make Peace/DoW buttons are disabled, but haven't had time yet. Generally speaking, however, in 96 short turns, there is only time for a few major wars, and on the larger maps, there are too many enemies to allow time to take on former allies.

So, the bottom line is: making peace is carefully restricted, tied to the length of the main war at the time and the combatant status of the enemy. These artificialities were added simply because the game's internal Diplomacy system does not let civs behave like they're involved in an existential fight.

9. The capturing of Great Persons is a legacy from the main WAW mod. I added that, as there are many instances in history where captured elites were put to work for their erstwhile enemies. I left GG's and GA's out, even though there are a few historical examples (Hannibal, no?) where a general joined the other side, just to avoid unemployment. However, I can't think of many examples of the personalities managing the WW2 effort where this would have been the case. So, those units still die when captured.

The units I typically target, especially early on, are Settlers. Since Happiness is nerfed, there is every incentive to go wide, so you have a larger military-industrial effort supporting your cause. I've even started a few wars simply to capture a few poorly-protected Settlers. It provides a massive boost early in the war, but I've also kept a few Settlers lurking near the capital, so if I needed a city to protect a vulnerable part of the empire, or more likely to grab a lucrative oil tile, I can quickly found a city when needed.

Of course, I usually only play on huge maps, so the need to Settlers NEVER goes away, even in a 96 turn game.

Also, the "Civilian Attack Priority" on ALL civilian units (except workers) has been set to "High" now, so the AI will make an effort to attack any civilian units you have out there. And in recent test games, the AI does seem to chase after these units if they're not too far away.

10. I don't think there's any score boost from Doctrines/Religion. It does add to culture generation (quicker border expansion), more Faith, and Gold, as well. Earlier in development, the victor wasn't decided by game score, but a rather complicated formula tied to many of the items in the Demographics UI. But I noticed that generally speaking, the same winner was determined using either approach, so I dropped the alternate victory calculation in favor of the more coarse, but generally similar game score.

I am (sorta) inclined to revisit that approach, but that will take some time, a new UI, and I was actually waiting to see if this mod had any interest before I started that efforts - since UIs tend to be time-consuming in development. A recent mod of mine (Lord Mayors) took several weeks to build (UI heavy), and yielded about 250 subscribers. Just too much effort for that little response.

11. I've seen land-locked unit spawn before. From the mod, no naval unit is supposed to spawn in a body of water less than 100 tiles large. Unfortunately, there's a buggy method in the API called "JumpToNearestValidPlot" - it's the game's way of moving a unit it's supposed to placed on a specific tile and there's no way to place it there (usually because there are already too many units there already). If it tries to place the unit without the Jump method, the game crashes. Then the Jump method fires (because there's no valid way to place the unit in the desired tile), some bizarre game logic kicks in, and man that thing can show up anywhere, even halfway across the map. I've put in several hacks to "help" randomly place the unit and limit placement to a specific tile, but that doesn't always work as well as I'd like. However, it's the best I can do, as leaving out the JumpToNearestValidPlot method introduces too much instability into the mod.

It's bad luck when ships become useless in this circumstance, tying up precious oil for something that will never contribute to the war effort, except to be target practice for invading armies. Fortunately, I've only seen it a few times in all my test games, so let's call them "training ships" and leave it at that...

It's true with a lot of odd behavior you might observe in the mod - there's usually a game irregularity causing the problem, and many of my solutions might also seem buggy, but it's my attempt to mitigate the impact on the gaming experience. A great example of this is how the permanence flag applies to both war and peace. This makes it impossible for me to allow a civ to declare war at will, but also prevent them from making peace. A lot of the nonsense you've seen in item #8 above is an example of trying to work around inconsistencies in the game's internal engine.

Phew, big reply.
Using the same numbers: -
5. Just to check about naval melee ships capturing cities I sent a German Destroyer and it captured a Soviet city. I'll test it again if the opportunity arises in a game.
6. Yeah, I tested whether you got the starting oil of another civ, and you don't, which is fine. It's not like there would be this huge supply of oil just lying around. Plus the horror for you of having to decide where it is - the original capital, moving to subsequent capitals, or just being with the last city standing. Leave as is, it just vanishes.
9. Personally I would prefer that all Great Persons and Settlers die on capture. Capturing an enemy Settler and turning it into a LOYAL city with a population of 8 - really?
10. When you hover the mouse over the scores of civs it provides a breakdown of how that score is made up - population, land area, tech, wonders, etc. The last line mentions doctrine and it seems that only three civs have a score. I'll give it a closer look to see if it is awarding these points for the biggest Democracy, Fascist and Communist.

Now, to continue my war as Bulgaria fighting Finland in the middle of a desert!

Yeah, sorry about the text wall. When I get up in the morning, my brain is pretty worthless until I gulp down a couple cups of coffee. I used to read news on line to pass the time (I guess like people used to start the day with the newspaper!), but absolutely everything in the news depresses the crap out of me lately, so I stopped doing that! So, these days, until I can get my brain fired up for modding/coding, I try to catch up on posting. So, forgive me again, the kettle's still brewing... ;)

5. According to the database, it's simply impossible for a Destroyer unit to capture a city. I'm looking at the contents of the "Unit_FreePromotions" database, and clearly see the Destroyer has the "PROMOTION_NO_CAPTURE" promotion awarded, which prevents it from capturing cities. The main WAW Corvette definitely has this promotion as well. In fact, I've checked every unit in the database that has the "UNITCOMBAT_NAVALMELEE" combat class (the setting the game uses to understand how to use units) also has the NO_CAPTURE promotion awarded.

Is it possible you're playing a saved game from the previous version where the unit was already in existence? If the unit was initially created using the previous version, it wouldn't be awarded when the saved game was loaded.

I'm also a bit astonished why Germany would have a Destroyer, when they start the game with the "Combined Arms" tech already discovered, so they are able to build Corvettes from the start of the game. I've checked Free Promotions and see their unique unit (in Unique Unites, they have a 1936A type destroyer, or UNIT_WAW_WW2_NAVMELEE_1_GER in WAW terms also has the NO_CAPTURE promotion awarded. I have no idea how they'd have a Destroyer in the first place, even if you weren't playing with Unique Units enabled.

Just a thought, if you see a ship take a city again, could you hover your mouse over the promotions on the Unit Panel UI (in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, but the promotions are listed in the upper-right part of the UI, in a row), the "No Capture" promotion is a red arrow pointing downward, IIRC. I'm very curious if the unit you see capturing a city has the promotion or not. If it doesn't have the promotion, I'm stumped, but if it does have the promotion but can still capture, well, I guess I'm also stumped... X^(

6. Programmatically, it's actually no problem to award a conquered's civs initial oil award to the victor. It isn't tied to a city, it's simply starts their oil supply at a level higher than zero, so any other oil they obtain raises the count from this higher starting point. Personally, I look at the initial oil bonus as part of a civ's war stocks, the materiel they'd gather and store as they prepared for what was obviously a hazardous time in the mid-1930's. So, you'd start the war with a bit of oil saved up, after that, you'd have to find more if you wanted to expand.

9. I actually like the civilian capture, but it probably does represent an advantage to human players who can plan operations to capture them, in a way the AI simply can't. I look at Settler units as containing a heck of a lot more than people: all of the building materials, transport equipment, technical experts, engineers, etc., To me, the capture of a Settler represents grabbing that stuff, and as many of the people in the unit that want to join other people from your old civ that want to escape the war zone and head out for a new life elsewhere. It's not 100% accurate, but probably close enough in this case.

In the current version of the mod, I've tied excess free Settler spawn to map size, but I'm still testing that. In the future, unless the maps are large/huge, there won't be a lot of extra Settlers available, they're almost impossible to train normally, and incredibly expensive to purchase, so there will definitely be a shortage of them.

And if you've noticed, a new city won't stay at 8 population for long - not unless the site is perfect or you're prepared to purchase a large number of non-military buildings to maintain the pop. I've seen many, many cities with populations of 1 or 2 - and they've not been fought over at all. They're just in a bad spot, and the mod forces AI to prioritize military buildings and units when deciding what a city should build.

10. I'll take a look at the score UI. It's something I simply gave up on early in development, planning to possible come back to it later, if there's any interest in the mod.


Finland in the desert? It must be a desert close to the top/bottom of the map! Finland has an entry in the "Civilization_Start_Region_Priority" database, that forces the map script to place them in a Tundra tile. But, you've probably seen (especially on Continents/Pangaea type maps) that they can expand a great distance from the map edges.

It's part of the fun I've had when putting this mod together. Fighting WW2 over and over again, but always in a new, fresh setting. The diplomacy, relationships, units, etc., are all there, but in a completely new way each game.

As you might have guessed, this mod is a bit different for me: I made it because it's the way I want to play the game, when I play for fun. It moves like a freight train, and it's not difficult to complete an entire game in a single session (albeit an extended session). I suppose it's why I'm as motivated as I have been to respond to comments/suggestions: I really want to get this one right!

Your help in doing so has been spectacular, actually. The mod's current version is in much better shape than the released version, with many of the changes/fixes coming from things you've identified. I do appreciate it, even if it's probably starting to feel like studying for a class to you right about now! So, I'll stop for now. The coffee's ready, and I have a couple of new functions to write... :D

Thanks again for the replies.

New stuff first:-
11. When I was playing Bulgaria v Finland they had a Ski Troop unit (do they get faster
movement in desert?) but that is not a unit type for Finland. As I got my spies working I saw back from the front line a couple of half-tracks. My guess is they got the Ski Troop in their Turn ? gift of units. (Just my pedantry going Huh?).

12. Is it a pain to remove in which case don't bother, but Zeppelins?

13. I get enough income so I don't bother with Trade Routes. If income was tighter and trade routes more lucrative though ... But how to protect a Cargo Ship that is moved automatically without exceeding your unit allocation.

And the old stuff:-
5. I'm currently playing the US and a Japanese coastal city is next door. So once you make us go to war I'll use the navy given to me as the Turn ? free gift to try and capture it using my American Destroyer Escort which doesn't have a red downward pointing arrow.

Sorry, the German destroyer was just what I called it. I couldn't check as the Soviets promptly recaptured the city.

Now, for my breakfast and cup of tea. The coffee comes later.

Am currently wrapping up the latest cycle of changes to the 3 mods (working on 3 simultaneously is triple the pain...), and about ready to start the next full test game. A lot of changes coming, but mostly positive, I'm hopin'.

11. Finland has a unit override replacing halftracks with Ski Troops (so does any Civ that has a Tundra bias in the Civilization_Start_Region_Priority database. If they have a half track, I'm guessing they have units that have the Capture Unit promotion. I've built up a few good armies that way, with just 2-3 armor units with that promotion.

12. No pain removing the Zeppelins. Probably a good idea, since AI tends to over build and by 1917 or so, they weren't much good except to hopefully confuse bombers.

13. Trade is hard to protect on the high seas. Ask the WW2 Japanese... ;) And Trade Routes are great - until the League of Nations embargoes you. Then you'll be hurting for gold the rest of the game... It's one of the reasons I complete the Honor Social Policy tree early on. At least can generate some gold while on the offensive.

5. I can't remember which promotion icon is used for the "No Capture" promotion, but will test that in the next game. I see the entries in the database, but I'd rather see the promotion in the unit panel!

Later.

My School Report of Recent Events

11. I played Finland and in my initial set-up was given two Tenders which upgraded to Half-Tracks when tech allowed. On Turn 8 included in my gifts were two Ski Units. But if you look at the help screen for the Finland Civ there is no Ski unique unit. The help screen for Units shows a Ski Unit but is only available to Russia and Sweden. Are you thinking of what was done in your WWII mod?

5. Several times Soviet Destroyers and Corvettes captured cities. Does WAW and Any Map have a contradiction between them and this is the result?

A. I had my first crash. I'll take the blame as when I wanted to start a new game I just Exited to Main Menu and started again. A few bits don't get cleared when you do this and eventually stuff goes wrong. Exit to Windows works fine.

B. I've enabled another mod called Krakatoa Fix as without it Krakatoa is turning up in the middle of the ocean. So far though since it hasn't turned up as a natural wonder, but it does work in other games I've played.

C. And my gripe from the WWII mod: - the quick moving UA's. Either extra moves during Golden Eras or ignoring terrain, they are a pain.

Sorry about the delay. That "real life" thingee... ;)

11. Valid point. I had the overrides for Finland, Norway, and city state Sweden commented out in the code, so they never took effect. It was a temp change when I moved the Ski Troop unit from this mod to the main WAW mod, but forgot to fix after that chance was made.

5. In the version you're running, this mod adds the "No Capture" promotion to all naval melee units, so it wouldn't matter what main WAW does, as this mod is forced to load (and change the database) after main WAW did all its changes. I'm sorry, but that error is one of those weird, buggy Civ5 things that I've seen often: many times they code is absolutely correct, but some minor problem in a completely unrelated area of the mod causes an externality that shows up as the error, even though it's not technically possible. Begs the question as to where that error is, but that's for another day.

All overcome by events, as I removed the No Capture promotion, and instead added a "city attack penalty" that reduces strength of naval melee units attacking cities by 33%. Seemed like a decent compromise, as the AI simply doesn't use naval melee units well, and will constantly attack cities that have defense left, eventually killing themselves. Represents toooooo much of an advantage to human players, so I thought the penalty was better than no capture.

The city attack penalty is only -33%, but I may introduce a new promotion that's -67% later on, but I need to test a bit more to see if that's balanced enough.

A. Sorry about the crash, but I've seen this a bunch in the circumstances you described. Main WAW, Unique Units, and this mod make literally thousands of changes to the game's databases that have to be undone when you exit a game. And we know this game's code isn't exactly the best written. Lots of these changes simply litter the databases, leaving the game vulnerable as the coders didn't do the best job protecting the program against anomalies in the databases.

It's one of the reasons I clear the game cache often when building a mod, but also about once a week when only playing. The game simply works better with clean databases.

B. I'll look at the code for Krakatoa fix, and may incorporate it into main WAW. IIRC, someone was telling me a long time ago that Krakatoa can cause crashes. Just can't remember why. Are you adding it for a reason like that or is it simply aesthetics?

C. I understand your complaint about extra moves, but perhaps it helps if you look at it as simply another way to give the AI a better chance at winning? I've player 27 complete test games so far, and only lost 2. On Immortal.... It's one of the things I'm working on today - trying to find ways to make the AI more competitive that doesn't include simple unit spam.

Overall, though, the V1.b version of the mod is basically finished, with quite a lot of changes made to all 3 basic mods, many as the results of our conversations. You've been a great help in getting this thing into better shape, and I really, sincerely appreciate your suggestions!

Hi S-Man
Yep, real life is important.

Re Krakatoa. It's just that in a few recent games it was one of the natural wonders and was always in the middle of the ocean. So, as I had this mod, why not use it. As far as I'm aware its never caused a problem.

Speaking of unit spawn I see you give me and the AI civs a free unit every so many turns. Can the spawn be limited to friendly territory only? It's just that every now and then an enemy unit will spawn well into my territory and can be very inconvenient.

Musicians. Except for the US and Broadway they are virtually worthless. I usually just delete them.

I played a game on a Greece and Aegean map with me in Crete on the bottom edge. Every winter units suffered the effects of Winter. Obviously just a thing where you've specified that x number of hexes from the top / bottom of the map are affected by winter (plus snow and tundra). Not worth spending time on but it will be strange if a map is used that isn't 'global'.

Looking forward to a standard sized game. Will it include code to make sure the big seven civs are always chosen?

I've added the fix for limiting unit spawn to the civ's own or unowned tiles. Am testing this right now, actually. If a unit spawns in a civ you're not at war with, it "magically" relocates the next turn (as you can't move it unless you have open borders). If at war, well call it a "fog of war" thingee. Seriously, though, I'm hoping this latest version eliminates the problem without crashing the game - again, the JumpToNearestValidPlot method is quite buggy.

Yep, no use for musicians at all, since culture doesn't make much difference. They're worth more for cash on deletion more than anything.

I could check map names to try and eliminate some of those winter warfare anomalies, but there are an awful lot of maps out there...

The "pecking order" for the civs is:

----- Duel maps include these (4 civs):
1. Germany
2. UK
3. USSR
4. Japan

----- Tiny maps add these (3 civs):
5. France
6. USA
7. Italy

----- Small maps add these (2 civs):
8. Poland
9. China

----- Standard maps add these (3 civs):
10. Yugo
11. Finland
12. Greece

----- Large maps add these (2 civs):
13. Norway
14. Hungary

----- Huge maps add these (5 civs):
15. Romania
16. Bulgaria
17. Czech
18. Spain
19. Turkey

Just the way it's all set up. Was trying to remove much of the burden in setting up the scenario - primarily along the way I like to play it. Much of the "custom game" code is simply a shortcut method of setting the game up in a way I previously had done so manually.

I am not a pedant; I am not a pedant; I am not a pedant, but ... Romania?

Don't waste any of your valuable time on the winter warfare anomaly. Think of it as a feature, not a bug.

Romania is 14.5 - I figured it out. And on the large map.

Sorry - I missed Romania when copying it over from the mod. Yesterday was a busy (and not in a productive way) day... The post is corrected now.

There's a bit of an anomaly on how Civ5 assigns player ID's (it's way of telling playable civs apart). The human civ that sets up the game is always player 0. So, you see the list above? If you're playing a WAW civ, then that player becomes player 0, and all the other civs move up 1 position. For example, if playing Romania, it becomes 0, Bulgaria becomes player 16, and so on.

So, if you're playing a standard map, Norway won't be on it if you're playing a non-WAW civ. But if you're playing one of the civs above Norway, it moves to position 0 and Norway suddenly is in the game.

I know it's confusing, but I wanted to make it possible to play any civ in the scenario, just in case anyone has a favorite. It's also why there's a "custom game" setup function, as it's not really possible to replace various aspects of the game setup UI - as it is cached when the game program opens.

So thos way, if you really want to, you can match up the Celts against the other civs in WW2 and see how they do... ;)

Hi S-Man
Great upgrades, so here is my report after a few days of thrashing it.

a) I don't really bother with the score. I know if I'm winning or not. But for those who may wish to be told they are winning then the Doctrine component of the score is a set-back if you are not Germany, Britain or the Soviets. I haven't seen any other country get one of these.

b) Some declarations of war have been a bit strange. In one game Germany was at war with the US, then both of them (plus two others) went and declared war on China at the same time. There have also been some interesting three way wars.

c) The free farms we get at the start can be forested. A bit if a nuisance if you've got an infantry unit two hexes from an enemy city and your attack fails because you didn't notice the forest so the attacker can't reach the city.

d) I've been randomly selected as a leader of the League of Nations every time.

e) Starting settler numbers: - I think we get at least one settler too many for every country to be able to fill up the world. Plus we can get gifted more of them.

f) And this one is an observation of Civ5. It seems each game has an Alpha country that creates lots of cities, is technologically advanced and just seems to be ahead of everyone else. Then there is the Zeta country that is at the other end of the line. Doesn't build cities even with land available and just sits there.

And I have a few more observations / thoughts that I need to test when I can just to see if there is something that may need 'fixing'.

Thanks, @KiwiSteave - I thought the newer version was much better myself. I hope the older version didn't scare too many players away...
a) Yeah, I need a better "victory condition" than basic game score. Those 3 civs ALWAYS get those doctrine home cities (unless they don't have a city founded before the doctrines are set up (game turn 2). In that case, there are alternate civs that get to found the doctrines.

Perhaps I should return to my "demographics-based" scoring system and use that to determine winner? It was basically who had the largest land amount and military power.

b) The DoW's aren't quite random. There are lots of "wars to support friends" going on. In your example, most likely Japan was already at war with China, and Germany went to war to support a friend. The China/USA is a little trickier, but I have noticed that China and UK don't always get a long very well, so it's possible USA DoW'ed China in support of the UK.

DoW's are also caused against civs who haven't participated very much in the war overall. In that case, there are many ways that other civs drag them into the conflict. But all of these wars are somehow related to the actual relationship between the 2 civs - and denoucements and poor relations between those 2 civs definitely have an impact. Intentionally, so. In early test games, it was odd to see only a few DoW's in the entire game in addition to the initial main war starters. That's why everyone is so belligerent now. Gotta make the mod a challenge!

c) Great catch. I've added it to my fix list for the next version.

d) You know, I've seen that myself in the 3 test games I completed after I added that feature. It seemed odd to me, but I didn't rigorously investigate it. The code is "correct" but something doesn't seem right. I may need to force a new random seed for each game.

e) You're not playing a Huge map, are you? Almost all my test games are (trying to put max stress on the game engine to see if it can handle it). Even with the latest Settler numbers bumped, there are vast areas of the map quite empty by game end. I don't mind this too much, but it usually leaves a lot of Oil unattended, that human players can easily place 2-3 cities there and solve most of their Oil problems - representing an unfair advantage over AI civs.

I toyed with the idea to have an AI-only "Settlers retire" event on or about game turn 12. To give every AI civ the chance to found a bunch of cities, then remove any Settlers still hanging around. They could still produce more later, if the internal logic told them to do so, but at least they wouldn't have a pool of Settlers that a human player could target if they wanted "cheap" cities. I still may add that in later.

f) City founding has some fairly straight-forward rules. If they can't find a good site for a city, they just site there. I've tweaked that fairly heavily so the AI will build cities quickly and quite close together. It kinda works. On crowded maps, this can sometimes be a problem. I've seen some odd congestion even on Huge maps. Part of the randomness I was looking for when building the mod, but sometimes this goes down a dark alley and doesn't find its way out.

I made quite a few adjustments (to National Promotions, National Economic Handicaps, etc.) to make a more pronounced difference between the Major and Minor Combatants in the mod. I'm hoping you'll see that more as you play, and that "most of the time" a Major will be the Alpha civ and the Zeta will be a Minor.

But, it mostly comes down to luck of placement of the "home tile" for each Civ. I've noticed that playing the "Small Continents" map, I haven't seen as much of the bad layouts for civ that I saw on the Pangaea and Large Continents map. When i usually play for fun, I most often play the Archipelago map, as I love the naval aspect of the game. However, this map almost eliminates the land component, which in a WW2 scenario, seems to me to be just plain wrong...

Thanks for the feedback. Am updating my "Planned Changes" post as we speak.