Rule the Waves Mod - Coming Soon

[TheLand]

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://www.mediafire.com/?eg3hc6lwphwtlzg


What does this mod do?

It reworks the naval units and naval techtree. Contents currently include:-

- naval units modded to include: Ship-of-the-line, Frigate, Ironclad, Protected Cruiser, Pre-Dreadnought Battleship, Destroyer, Dreadnought, Light Cruiser.
- techtree redone with over 100 new or revised inventions

All the techs are based on extensive historical research. While you will never get a perfect representation of every detail of naval history, this is an awful lot better than the representation you get in vanilla V2. ;-)

What's the impact on gameplay?

There are quite a lot of problems with the vanilla naval techs. What tends to happen is that old ship models upgrade far, far too well as you discover new technology. For most of the game the optimal unit is actually the Steam Transport! Also, the benefits from technology research are very heavily concentrated in the Naval Engineering area of the techtree.

The new techtree rewards consistent investment in naval research. The most powerful ship models require 2 or 3 tech areas before they are unlocked and they are worth the investment. There are 3 areas of research which are about upgrading the ships and only 2 on doctrines. Those 2 areas of doctrines also have a higher number of inventions which impact on the Attack and Hull stats. There are more inventions and there are more inventions which have a long MTTH. So if you want a world-beating navy you will have to take a more serious strategic decision to build one.

The unit 'levels' are designed so that when a new class of warship is invented, it is between 1.5 and 3x as powerful as a teched-up ship of the previous generation (Ironclads are about 3x as important as a fully-researched Ship-of-the-Line, there is a smaller gap between Ironclads and Pre-Dreads and Pre-Dreads and Dreadnoughts). However, once a new type of ship is researched, future inventions only modify the new ships not the old ones. So an ironclad is nearly competitive the moment pre-dreadnoughts are invented. But after another 10 years of research they are obsolete.

The combat powers used to make these balancing judgements are based on a Lanchester's Square Law model of the game's combat system (see here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...d.php?t=494924).

When will it be ready?
The current version is here: http://www.mediafire.com/?eg3hc6lwphwtlzg

If you unzip this into your Victoria 2 directory, so that the files in the mod overwrite your game files, then the mod will install. It's a good idea to copy your Victoria 2 directory to create a duplicate installation before trying this (or any other) mod. The mod is not savegame-compatible.

To be clear on what this includes, the following things are in:
- the revised ship models
- revised naval techtree
- localisation text to explain all the inventions
- revised tech setups for the major naval powers plus Egypt
- the historical Brazil OOB is included

What is not included is:
- amended graphics for the naval techtree
- any new unit graphics - in the building screen and on the map, the new units look identical to the old ones for now
- revised historical ship names for ships you build - so if you build Destroyers currently you will get the defined Steam Transport names for them.

This is tested & stable, though obviously still under development. If you find any problems please let me know. Also your feedback would be very much appreciated.

Future versions will include:-
- increasing the number of ship models from 9 to 14
- more graphics
- impact of the Navalist Movement on politics
- a bit of work on some of the starting setups.

How does the AI deal with this?

I can't see any reason why the AI should handle this any worse than it does vanilla. It does attempt to build the new ships if it has researched them but there is no guarantee that the research AI is bright enough to research a navy, even if it needs one. However, playtest reports would be very helpful.

Here is a screenshot of the revised techtree showing some of the new inventions:

[TheLand]

reserved

[Sentinal 6]

Great concept.

Ready this weekend - WOW.

Thanks for the work.

[TekcoR]

Looks really intriguing and can't wait to actually not ignore the naval aspect of the game.

[Sentinal 6]

Are you on schedule to release on the 21st?

[TheLand]

Are you on schedule to release on the 21st?

I've just posted what you could think of as a beta version. Let me know what you think!

[Mozer]

How exactly do I install this, I don't seem to brains to do it myself

[Sentinal 6]

I've just posted what you could think of as a beta version. Let me know what you think!

Downloaded.

Unfortunately will not have a chance to play until tomorrow night.

[Sentinal 6]

How exactly do I install this, I don't seem to brains to do it myself

What I recommend & what I am going to do is copy the entire game to a new location - say my desktop. This will make a duplicate installation.


Naselus posted these very good directions in another thread:

Copy and paste your V2 folder to somewhere other than where it is currently.

Rename the folder 'modded Victoria 2'.

Go into the folder and create a shortcut to Victoria 2 in there.

Rename the shortcut 'modded Vic 2', and then drag it onto the desktop

Then extract the mod's .rar file into the 'modded Victoria 2' folder, double click on the 'modded Vic 2' shortcut, and sit back and enjoy the game

[Gaius Marius I]

This looks promising, I might load it up and take a look at it for my multiplayer campaign. Did you increase upkeep costs or introduce fuel as a supply cost for the late-game ships by chance?

EDIT: took a look. In your history/countries files, USA still has battleship_column_doctrine and steamers listed as starting techs, which i assume are probably not meant to be there anymore. Also, there are more nations which start with naval techs in their files that will need updated tech names. Egypt should probably start with at least wooden shipbuilding, whereas in vanilla they don't have the equivalent (clippers) despite the starting navy and naval base at alexandria.

[Belegurt]

hope it will get out soon, can't wait

[frenchfrank]

Quick question: I'm a steam user, does that affect installation?

I'm not sure the installation description work in this case since it's part of the steamapps :S

[TheLand]

Will have another version (with a couple of fixes) this evening.

No idea about steam, I'm afraid!

[Gaius Marius I]

Will have another version (with a couple of fixes) this evening.

No idea about steam, I'm afraid!

Just edited my post with a cpl fix suggestions

EDIT: just noticed something else: would it be possible for destroyers to be given a transport ship designation ala the steamer transports they replace? otherwise you'll have players using clipper transports until 1936 which seems a bit counterintuitive to mod purposes....

[TheLand]

EDIT: just noticed something else: would it be possible for destroyers to be given a transport ship designation ala the steamer transports they replace? otherwise you'll have players using clipper transports until 1936 which seems a bit counterintuitive to mod purposes....

thanks for your comments! Am not sure that having redundant techs in the history file is a problem if the techs aren't defined then they are ignored. But I'm sure you're right about Egypt.

On the whole I don't mind having only one transport unit. I did meant to remove the word "clipper" though ;-)

The only problem that introduces that transports are always using Clippers rather than Steamers as a good.... so when I do the 14-unit version I will probably reintroduce a second transport type, unless I can find another way to handle it...

[Gaius Marius I]

In theory, the only thing preventing you from having a totally expanded naval unit variety (rather than being forced to reuse existing files and scrap units like the monitor, which hopefully makes it back in to the next version) might be graphics-wise with the interface in-game. Might end up being a bit more work than just editing text files and making new sprites....

I think it would be possible to set steamer convoys as a supply_consumption need without steamer convoys being available right away, and the game would simply start assessing that additional need once steamer shipyards are enabled via the relevant tech/invention as it is in the vanilla game by level 2 tech steamers now. keeping clipper convoys as a consumption need won't be a bad thing since it'll keep up a small level of demand for that good throughout the game.

[KonradRichtmark]

This looks very interesting.

I'd like to bring your attention to the Victoria 2 Realism and Rebalance Project, an extensive effort to improve both realism and gameplay. One of its long-term goals is to review and rework the military part of the game. The naval part of it is untouched with the exception of tweaking the supply consumption of ships. If your mod delivers what it promises, I'd very much like to integrate it into VRRP. And since you seem to know what you're talking about, I would be very willing to let you in as a team member in charge of the naval aspect of the game.

[TheLand]

thanks!

Obviously I'm happy for people to re-use/bundle my work - indeed my ambition is for this mod to become a kind of touchstone mod for the naval aspect of the game :-)

However I'm definitely going to wait for 1.2 before thinking seriously about which other aspects of the game I'd be interesting in modding, or taking part in any comprehensive mod projects.

[Gaius Marius I]

Was thinking more about it today, I wonder if perhaps any nation with a starting fleet of warships or a naval base should merit starting with at least wooden shipbuilding tech, rather than simply the biggest naval powers in 1836? Just a suggestion for the version release you're planning.

[TheLand]

I have updated the mod here:

Changes from the previous version are:
- a whole load of fixes of bugs in the first build (I had somehow used gun_attack in many places instead of gun_power so lots of inventions didn't work!)
- a couple of tweaks to techs
- reworked values for all the ships and techs since I had assumed Lanchester's Linear Law applied where in fact Lanchester's Square Law is more appropriate. :-)