New Project: Estonian War of Independence Campaign

[jtrinc]

The wait is finally over; I've decided as my first foray into modding to finally create perhaps the most anticipated campaign one can think of: The Estonian War of Independence!

In all seriousness, if I am going to devote time and energy into making a mod, I'd rather it be one that people would actually be interested in, so I'd like to get a feeling of the interest level in this project. I'm hoping that a more obscure topic is a good fit in this instance, as if I duplicated existing work I'm sure I wouldn't be able to create a better product than anyone else, and this offers me the opportunity to make the best Estonian campaign in the Panzer Corps community, no matter how terrible it ends up being.
Even so, the Estonian War of Independence is quite an interesting conflict, with Estonian/White Russian forces coming within miles of Petrograd at times and being on the offensive at many points, which hopefully will make for some more interesting gameplay as well as a couple alt-history scenarios.

Here's a short and interesting video giving an overview of the war for those interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBA0xDHZjko&t=518s

Update:
0.01:
Added scenario Battle of Narva in addition to the test scenario Estonian Counteroffensive. Battle of Narva should be played as the Allies, but Counteroffensive as the Axis.
A few more units were added and stats were changed around for balance, though this may mean that Estonian Counteroffensive is a little harder now as it was balanced for stronger Estonian units.
Edit: Battle of Narva has been slightly rebalanced to make the scenario more challenging in the later stages, hopefully it's not too hard now, I'd appreciate feedback on this.
Battle of Narva has also been modified with clearer instructions on what the core mission objectives are.
Hotfix: Added terrain to a tile that lacked it in the Narva Battle Scenario
Battle of Narva slightly rebalanced because I can't make up my god-forsaken mind.

Installation Instructions:
GME is highly encouraged

1. Extract Zip file
2. Open the resulting folder and keep opening folders till you see 2 folders named "Scenario" and "Est0.01" in the same nested level.
3. Open GME, then click on tasks, import mod, and select the Est0.01 folder that is nested on the same level as the Scenario folder.
4. Paste the "Scenario" folder to wherever your installation of Panzer Corps keeps that folder. In Windows 10 it will probably be thispc/documents/mygames/panzercorps

Edit: The download folder itself has been renamed to Est0.01download, but the mod folder itself is still called "Est0.01"

I don't yet have a timeline on when the next scenario will be released. I'm pretty busy right now, but by early August I should have much more time on my hands to dedicate to updating the mod. I'll probably still work on creating new assets to help create the future scenarios in the meantime.

Still no progress on fixing the ghost attachment issue. Just download the version embedded in the text itself, that one should always be up to date.

Est0.01downloadhotfix.zip

(841.16 KiB) Downloaded 92 times

[cw58]

Hi jtrinc,

Enjoyed your humor and your mod sounds intriguing. It will be interesting to see it take shape.

In regards the disappearing nations, I had the exact same issue when I tried to add a nation to a mod. I eventually solved the problem but unfortunately I cannot remember how I did it. I doubt this is the problem but I did notice what appears to be a couple missing tabs in your nations file. I'm assuming you modded it with notepad/wordpad; I recommend using a spreadsheet to mod files, when possible. Best of luck with your mod.

nations.jpg (168.91 KiB) Viewed 4628 times

Edit: I did a quick test plugging in your nations and strings files into my game. The Bolshevik Russians worked correctly while Estonia continued to disappear. It did not seem to help when I fixed the tabs in the nations file. If I ever remember how I fixed my own problem, I'll be sure to let you know.

[Turtler]

Hey. It's nice to see another modder take their first steps into the field! And I will confess that I've been greatly interested in this subject as well; I still have fond memories of playing the Estonian Campaign that came out for PGII and Open General, so if you're looking for inspiration I'd suggest that.

I would also suggest you get in contact with BNC, because he did Kaiserschlacht/the WWI campaign. He made a lot of custom graphics that might be of interest to you, including for infantry (because the number of SMGs in the vanilla infantry look rather odd in this setting). While the Bolsheviks only had a cameo role, you could use the Imperial German units for Freikorps and the Imperial Russians for Whites.

Now onto your scenario:

Firstly, I'd suggest making the Estonians the Allied side; in the Russian Civil Wars they were by far one of the most loyal, heavily supported, and pro-Western Allied of the newly independent regimes. It kinda threw me to have them as the Axis side in this scenario.

But secondly and more importantly: *THIS SCENARIO IS SERIOUSLY BUGGERED.* Because both the Communist and Estonian flags present on the map at the start are marked as Allied, while the Estonian Player Character force is Axis. with the result that your planes can't refuel from the very airfields they start on. To say this is screwed up would be rather modest.

Please fix this.

On first blush the scenario seems pretty solidly put together, with good balances of forces. I'd be interested if you could name the units- especially the Estonian Armored Trains- but it looks fun, and the initial moves work well if not for the aforementioned control point problems.

I hope this helps.

Regards.

[jtrinc]

Hello cw58,

Sure enough, the problem was exactly what you pointed out. All I had to do was press tab instead of space before the numbers to get it working just fine. Thank you for finding that for me, I guess I'll try using spreadsheets from now on. And thank you again for the well wishes. That also seemed to fix the problem with the control points and airfields. I'll reupload the zip file with the new and improved scenario.

Hi Turtler,

I'm happy to see that another person was already interested in this specific conflict! I'll definitely take your advice about the unit models, and I hadn't found the Estonian campaign for PGII, so I'll be sure to check that out as well. Thank you for taking the time to review the scenario as well. Hopefully it will play a bit better now that the bugs are by and large fixed.

[jtrinc]

Tiny update on the unit models, I've tried to at least slightly alleviate the smg problem on the Estonian side by replacing the smg in the basic infantry with what I hope resembles a lewis gun, but I'm not entirely sure it's that obvious.

Estonian_Infantry.png (28.87 KiB) Viewed 4617 times

Estonian_Infantry.png (21.31 KiB) Viewed 4617 times

I decided to follow BNC's advice and whipped a cut and paste version with 3 rifles instead of the "lewis gun" Maybe if I can get that looking a little better in the future I could use it for a later version of the estonian infantry (ie. Inf 1918 vs Inf 1919) or some more elite formation

Estonian_Infantry.png (20.91 KiB) Viewed 4529 times

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Hi Jtrinc,

I would also suggest you get in contact with BNC, because he did Kaiserschlacht/the WWI campaign...

No need to seek me out, I still visit the forum from time to time and it looks like I've found something interesting It's been a couple of years since I last booted up PzC so I've doubtless forgotten a whole bunch of stuff, but hopefully something I write here is helpful

If you haven't downloaded it already, here's the WWI campaign: http://www.mediafire.com/file/7o0bvpi59 ... 3.zip/file
Most of the unit icons in there aren't actually mine but I listed in the credits page who did make them, AFAIK the original artists would be happy for you to use their stuff as long as you include their name in the credits of your own mod. Anything that I made you are certainly welcome to use! In the mod there is definitely a rifles-only infantry (thus getting around the SMG issue) for all of the major powers, so take your pick for the Estonians. I did make a map for the Russian Civil War so the Reds certainly have something but I'm not sure how useful that would be, there's some chance I just copied the icon from the base game. If those aren't suitable, what you can do is photoshop a rifle onto the Soviet model with the SMG (the Lewis gun
is an interesting idea but in game I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and a regular SMG). Add in the appropriate entry to efx.pzdat and your good to go - as long as the guns are in the same place then the animation from one unit icon can be copied directly to another.

As for your scenario, I don't have the game installed so I can't look through it in detail, but based on what Turtler said I have one very useful piece of advice that will save you a ton of time when making future maps: set your nations to their side before doing anything with them. Go to that page with about 100 check boxes and click the checkbox for "Axis" or "Allied" for every nation you intend to use in that map.
This is because when placing a flag or something down on the map, the game reads what side the checkbox is on at that moment to assign the flag/unit/whatever to a side. So if you place a bunch of units for say Italy (which defaults to Axis) and then set the checkbox for Italy to Allied, then all those units will be considered as Axis unless manually changed. If the flags are playing up in your scenario, this is a likely cause.

Renaming units can be done by bringing up the unit specific menu. Pretty sure it was opened by shift-clicking the unit (could be wrong though, someone correct me if I am!)

Other than that, great work with everything you have done so far! I remember making my first map in 2012. Didn't have roads, terrain graphics (just the green and blue hexes) and units that were walking on the water for turn 1 because I couldn't figure out how to do transports. So adding new countries and units for your first mod is quite impressive! Let me know if you need anything, I'll do my best to help!

- BNC

[jtrinc]

Hi BNC,

I'm familiar with some of your work and it's truly an honor to have your interest. While I'll certainly reach out about getting access to the White Russian infantry from the WW1 mod, it looks like indeed the communists were just represented with the basic soviet infantry. Nonetheless, this just gave me an opportunity to create a Bolshevik Infantry model. I tried to fit on something that looks like a budenovka, I think it doesn't look half bad.

Bolshevik_Infantry.png (25.89 KiB) Viewed 4519 times

[jtrinc]

What is the proper etiquette for using someone's unit icons when they're no longer active? Halibutt's icons for the Russian Infantry and the Airco DH.2 would be especially helpful, but it appears they haven't been active since 2017. Would it be an overreach to just go ahead and use the unit icons and give Halibutt full credit for the icons?

Progress update: I've tweaked the scenario some more, but now I think I'm just going to leave it as is and concentrate on creating scenarios for the actual campaign proper. Depending on how busy I am this weekend I hope to be able to get at least a working prototype of the first scenario up sometime this Sunday the 15th. I'm almost done with creating/modifying and borrowing all the unit icons I need, though if time permits later on I might try to make a armored train unit icon and one for an Estonian armored car.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

What is the proper etiquette for using someone's unit icons when they're no longer active? Halibutt's icons for the Russian Infantry and the Airco DH.2 would be especially helpful, but it appears they haven't been active since 2017. Would it be an overreach to just go ahead and use the unit icons and give Halibutt full credit for the icons?

Use it and drop him a credit. Plus if he let me use it there's no reason why he wouldn't let you.

- BNC

[jtrinc]

Might have to move that Monday scenario release back a bit, I probably went a little overboard with making the actual terrain, the map is 85x50 hexes. Here's a preview, if anyone's interested.

mapimage.jpg (625.21 KiB) Viewed 4235 times

This is supposed to depict the northern part of the Narva Isthmus, from a little east of Narva itself West to Johvi. The scenario itself will feature trying to hold Narva for long enough to evacuate the garrison by rail to Johvi, in the face of Bolshevik flanking maneuvers, Red Estonian Partisans, and a naval invasion at the mouth of the Narva River supported by the Red Navy, with Estonian reinforcements (including an armored train) trickling in as the scenario progresses. The more core units the player is able to save, the stronger their forces will be in the defense of Tallinn (auxiliary militia units probably won't count).

Instead of plunging into filling the whole map right away, I might create a "training" scenario just cropped around the immediate vicinity of Narva depicting the Red Army attack on the 22nd of November that was successfully repulsed thanks to German troops still in the area.

[cw58]

Map looks good. Big...... but good

[jtrinc]

Another update: I've been pretty busy with my studies this past week, and it looks like that probably won't change for a month or so. However, I do hope to more or less finish the first scenario this weekend. Instead of trying to work with that giant map, which would result in a really long and complicated scenario that I'm not in a great position to put the necessary effort into, I've created a second map just focusing on Narva and its immediate surroundings, and have started to do a scenario just comprising the initial Red Army attack on the 28th of November, 1918.

NarvaDefense.jpeg (701.24 KiB) Viewed 4107 times

The goal here is to hold a gradually shrinking set of objectives while trying to avoid being cut off and surrounded by flanking attacks from both the North and South, and eventually retreating to the West before the Reds cut off the escape road from their amphibious invasion on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, in this scenario represented by events, messages, and the turn limit. Preventing the Reds from cutting the Tallinn-Narva railway will result in getting an extra artillery unit in the next scenario as heavy equipment is able to be evacuated by rail, unlike historically.

I'll definitely use the bigger map though, if not for the initial scenario then for a later one where Estonian forces retake the territory.

Thanks to McGuba for allowing me the use of some unit icons, including the artillery ones you can see here

[jtrinc]

The first scenario is now released: Battle of Narva. There's some complicated triggers and ai actions that caused me some trouble to make and I'm sure the kinks are far from being ironed out, but the scenario is in a playable state. Suggestions on balance, difficulty, or mechanics are highly encouraged, I'm still a little new to this so I'll take all the pointers I can get.

The latest release is now 0.01, which is confusing because 0.0.1 was already a thing, but bear with me.

[Turtler]

Hey. Will give more detailed feedback on the Counteroffensive Scenario when possible, but word to the wise: Narva crashes to desktop for me.

I can open it and pick my side, but shortly after the turn/status thing, it crashes. I imagine it's probably trying to deal with some of the scripting I saw. I don't know about the specifics as I am no modder, but I did crack it open in the Editor. I must say, it looks encouraging!

Regards.

[jtrinc]

I can open it and pick my side, but shortly after the turn/status thing, it crashes. I imagine it's probably trying to deal with some of the scripting I saw. I don't know about the specifics as I am no modder, but I did crack it open in the Editor. I must say, it looks encouraging!

Is it possible that when you imported the mod to GME, you picked the first or second folder you saw, instead of the one on the same level as the Scenario folder? When I tried that it produced the same issue you are having. Right now the folders are set up a little confusingly, the correct Est0.01 folder to import is the one on the same level as the Scenario folder, which might be nested 2 folders down from the initial Est0.01 folder that you extracted the files from.

I'm excited that you took the time to take a look at it, and I do apologize for the confusion. I hope that fixes the issue, because if not I imagine I'll have to do a lot of reworking.

[Turtler]

Is it possible that when you imported the mod to GME, you picked the first or second folder you saw, instead of the one on the same level as the Scenario folder?

Noep. I learned that after the first time I tried with the initial version. No dice.

[jtrinc]

I'm not sure what the problem is then, because it seems to work fine on my end.

[Turtler]

Alright, not sure what was up but I went down a level, from the top mod folder to the "Mod and Scenario" level, and then into the contents of the mod file and extracted them to overwrite the previous copies of the files in the mod, and that did the trick.

Will give feedback when possible, hopefulyl soon.

[Turtler]

Something is wrong.

The scenario started up fine the first time after I did the aforementioned "Scorched Earth" tactic, but after I exited out and tried again, it went back to being nonfunctional just like it was at the start. I imagine I'll have to repeat the process in order to get it to function again.

Edit: Can also confirm that the problem is Not- I repeat, NOT- happening when I attempt the new version of the Counterattack Scenario.

[jtrinc]

I'm just spitballing here, but maybe the problem is a tile I purposefully left without terrain in the Narva scenario. I've uploaded a "hotfix" (let's hope it lives up to its name) version with that corrected. All of the scripts seem to be working properly, and I can't think of any other differences between the Narva and Counterattack scenarios, so maybe this is the culprit.

I do apologize for the difficulty in getting it to work, hopefully the next scenario I put out will be fully functional on release so I don't have these issues. And I definitely appreciate the help in working this issue out.

Edit: to clarify, the hotfix only changes the Narva scenario, the actual mod file is the same