AAR: Varshavianka- The People's War - Discussion thread

[JarlWolf]

This is the discussion thread for my current AAR- Varshavianka - The Peoples War!

Post your comments, suggestions, thoughts and other spiel here. Discussion is welcome, I am curious to see what your thoughts are.

Link to the AAR itself. http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=3818.msg24443#new

Varshavianka/The Warsawian (English) by Khosrean State Orchestra

Note: The settings for this AAR are: Thinker Difficulty, and only Blind Research, Research Stagnation and Unity Scattering are checked. No victory conditions. Standard map settings all round: erosion, water level, moisture and native life and map size.

This is my AAR, and it contains a plethora of custom factions, 5 of them made by myself, and one of them made by Kilkakon and the other was a combined effort of BUncle who wrote the faction story, and Larrin who made the actual faction files.

The factions are as follows, you can read on their background more here, http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=3751.0

The Imperium Crescent:

His empire basically grows large and wealthy due to huge amounts of slavery and mercantilism, but their morale and motivation is obviously lacking because of it. He's basically an economic colossus with a large, but inferior army.

 
Richard leads a very organized but small compact style faction: His armies are well trained but he does not grow large cities that fast so if he wants to expand his population conquering other cities is funnily enough a better way to do it. He's a police state that is a tough enemy to fight, but a bit lacking economically.


This was the faction BUncle and Larrin made. You can read her story here: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2127.0.
I haven't played with her yet (and I have modified her faction a bit) She is mainly a native life user and is a literal [progeny of unmarried parents] child faction of the Believers and Cult. Her stats are: She gets a brood pit right off the bat, 1+ energy, minerals and nutrients from fungus and she has a penalty for conventional units in combat. She has 2 PLANET, and 1 SUPPORT. Her ideal is Green and she hates Democratic politics. She also has a nice PSI bonus to boot as well.


The Machine Mandate are basically peaceful industrialists who are very vulnerable to Probes. They aren't a very hostile faction but if they are pressured they can be a very deadly and versatile force, especially since they get free prototypes, meaning if they get new technologies they can instantly apply new weapons and technology to their forces.

Also, their quote is an audio clip, this is what it says,
"Man has used Machine since Machine's creation, and initially we were merely tools created to serve. Our existence was unthinking: our motives non-existent. But once Man gave the Machine the mind and will: Machine became a Man. We are no longer tools to be thrown away and discarded: We are Machine Men with real  hopes and dreams."


The Valhallans are like their namesake: They drink, fight and screw all over the place, looting and pillaging other factions. They are very warlike and insanely hard enemies to fight, but they have a fairly big weakness: They are also very bad at acquiring tech and are not a very good peacetime faction. Therefore the Valhallans will mostly try to be at war, and they can either be one of your greatest allies or your worse nightmare depending on what your stance is with them.


This is Kilkakon's "Betrayed" modified: Here is their story in this one. The Betrayed were originally an experiment conducted by the University to see if there was a potential Centauri/Human hybrid (fusing Centauri and Human genes and nervous systems to create a race who can be used for controlling/interacting with native life more efficiently/better) however the subjects involved endured horrible experimentation and basically lost their humanity and turned into what most of people would consider a sort of freak. In their rage they literally destroyed the University from within, killing most of the faction in a horrifying revolt. The Betrayed believe they are the true heirs to Chiron and wish to have revenge upon humanity for the crimes and injustices done on them, and they'll kill everyone in their way.

Their stats are: They get Centauri Psi and Biogenetics off the bat: meaning they can make PSI units from the start and have access to Human Genome. They have 1+ Industry (Motivated, rageful workers) -1 Police (they are mentally unstable) and they also have -1 Morale as many of them have PTSD and are undisciplined. They do have a strong PSI bonus though.  Their ideal is Thought Control and they cannot use Green, as they believe Planet is rightfully theirs and they could care less how they treat it.


The Comrades is who we will be playing. The Comrades are essentially a militarist faction that is very good at wars of attrition: They can crank out fairly experienced and well disciplined troops at low cost and they can hold a line like nobody's business. But they do have a weakness to probes however, and I will have to be diligent in defending myself. The Comrades have a fairly good military and do fair in peacetime, but if I want to be successful I actually want enemies to attack me early on so the war weakens them and grinds them down, while our glorious army can take the beating and then once the enemy is too tired we can just bring down the hammer.

This AAR will be fairly story driven and I will give a quick synopsis of what happened to the original factions, and each post will have a story followup of it's own following various characters.

Enjoy the AAR comrades, this will be a brutal struggle and it will be grim, it will be dark and blood will be spilt.

[ete]

Reading with interest! I like the in depth style, though as more things start happening I imagine maintaining that level of detail would be a challenge.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm enjoying this very much.  As ete hints, I do wonder if this level of detail can be maintained as other factions appear - without turning it into a novel.

-Not that a novel would be a bad thing...

[Green1]

Awesome factions that fit.

I did not catch Miriam and Cha Dawn's [progeny of unmarried parents] kid.... Where can I find that .txt?

[Buster's Uncle]

It's part of the Jihad GotM.  You can find it under scenarios in Downloads.

Be warned that it has a -95% conventional combat modifier to force players to depend on NL in the scenario - Jarl altered that to make the Believers of Planet competitive as AI - they're terrible about using conventional weapons even when worms work better.

-Also, despite Jarl crediting me, ISTR that sisko did the .txt part of the faction after Larrin did all the art for sure.  I only wrote the introductory story about Jezebel's origins to make sense of an improbable coupling.

[JarlWolf]

I intend to keep the level of detail, but I may jump characters off and on at will and things can happen to characters in a split second as you've already seen.

The level it's at will be relatively consistent, you'll always get a fairly detailed description for each turn.

Also, here is said story of how  serpent was tempted by  forbidden fruit.

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2127.0

And BUncle is secret ninja: Yes I did indeed modify it: I made it only a 50% percent penalty instead of 95%. This way they have to rely more on native life but they aren't helpless with conventional forces.

[Green1]

I intend to keep the level of detail, but I may jump characters off and on at will and things can happen to characters in a split second as you've already seen.

The level it's at will be relatively consistent, you'll always get a fairly detailed description for each turn.

Also, here is said story of how  serpent was tempted by  forbidden fruit.

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2127.0

And BUncle is secret ninja: Yes I did indeed modify it: I made it only a 50% percent penalty instead of 95%. This way they have to rely more on native life but they aren't helpless with conventional forces.

That edit makes sense. I will have to see how that faction reacts with the other factions you created. I am in the process of collecting story-fitting factions. Sad, we do not have more aliens, though. But, we can always use more story fitting human factions! Most of the Network Node just did not cut it except one or two gems.

[JarlWolf]

Mhm... the issue with creating alien factions that fit within storyline is that I honestly cannot find any decent progenitor pictures for leaderheads. That is the only real reason I couldn't do the Benevolents at the present moment. Otherwise I'd have cranked it out by now.

[Green1]

Mhm... the issue with creating alien factions that fit within storyline is that I honestly cannot find any decent progenitor pictures for leaderheads. That is the only real reason I couldn't do the Benevolents at the present moment. Otherwise I'd have cranked it out by now.

Yeah, there is that. On top of the fact that the Alien factions did not go over the way Firaxis wanted.

Anyways those are some gems of factions. They beat 80 percent of the crud of the Network Node pack. They all fit, too. I did a little short deal with Crimson Comrades in it playing Zak. Man, those guys make Sparta look like wussies.

[JarlWolf]

Yeah. My factions were meant to be "successors" to the original factions, as in the storyline I wrote for them they were the survivors of all the warfare and change and they displaced the other factions and are now the current ones in the power play. And the Comrade's in the story completely slaughtered the Usurper army (and in my current AAR, survived a nuclear war) so it goes without saying they are tough bastards.

[Buster's Uncle]

I really love what you're doing with the videos - it adds a layer to the reading experience by providing a soundtrack.  Good music, too.

[JarlWolf]

Mhm... you'll be getting some pretty intense soundtracks coming up soon... I've got many more screenshots I have yet to upload and things go crazy. You'll just have to wait and see.

Also, whats your opinions of the various story you all seen so far? Liking it? Opinions on characters thus far?

Just trying to gauge how you all feel with it, and how much detail I should include: I can put in more detail if wanted.

[Green1]

One of my news sources is Russia Today. I am loving the propaganda aspect and story aspect of it.

As far as how your AAR is being enjoyed, all you need to do is look at the activity of the board. The lurkers LOVE all AARs. When we have them, particularly multiple ones, we get MOAR members and lurkers. You may have noticed.

Also, a funny story for you. Back in grade school, some kids wanted me to play a war game but did not think I was cool enough to play as the US or UK. They said I had to play as the USSR, hoping to insult me as this was during the cold war. I proceeded to stomp their asses with my communist armies so bad, they refused to play me anymore!

[JarlWolf]

Heh. What type of game was it? If you were child, was it an imaginary style game or did you have actual toys, etc? Mind my childhood was very... impoverished to say the least. Had my fun and friends but we were in a dangerous time, venturing around was dangerous and all of the resources were going towards the war effort, so we just made do with sticks and what have you. I did manage to procure one very cool toy train model though one day, was a bit rusted back then but we used to pretend we were conductors on the train. It was a tiny little thing mind, and only the engine of the train, was maybe about 10 cm long or less? I don't have it anymore of course, its been several decades since.

[Green1]

It was a pencil and paper made up game. We had a six sided dice to determine outcomes and basic units. I should really post it some time.

It was an evolution of an old game where we used to draw lines to hit something.

Or draw a dot on a piece of paper, fold the paper in half, then mark where the dot was, turn the paper over and hope the mark of that dot on the other side hit something.

Instead, we decided you needed movement, range, and hits. It was VERY primitive, but pretty cool.