New Project On The Horizon · 2:48am Jan 17th, 2023
So I'm not dead, and I'm bullying myself into writing again.
I'm happy enough with All Quiet On The Equestrian Front, and with me not being an active part of the EAW team anymore, I'd like to go ahead and let it sit as it is, complete enough for my tastes. I may go back to it at some point, but for now, consider it tentatively complete.
In other words, I have spent a FULL WEEK of my time modding and editing Grand Tactician: Civil War, to be horse friendly.
That includes a full 216 Ponies (canon, personal/friend OC, and EAW OCs) and Artwork of said ponies/birds/etc. to fill out an entire command structure, as well as a full list of 200ish Confederate Ponies so that the maps look nice.
In short, I'm going to be playing this game - which is effectively a Total War Series game on crack cocaine, and building an entire narrative around it.
I will be playing as the Union - since uh, that's the only Campaign I've actually been able to win thus far, despite a couple hundred hours into the game now (yes, it is a difficult game.) with the following rules:
1861 Spring Start = Prewar start, I can raise small units prior to the war's outbreak, but most of what the early start lets me do is get a head start on civilian and military policies. Armies cannot move prior to outbreak of war, cannot gain readiness, and cannot earn any experience.
Fog of War will be OFF = While I have gotten close to winning campaigns with FOW on, I really dislike having to deal with it- the current iteration of the AI works on a similar method to the old INTSYS AI that could be found in Advance Wars and Fire Emblem; namely, they cheat, and know exactly where you are at all times. If they get to see where armies are going, so do I. It's not gonna help me that much in the end, unfortunately, the AI is VERY good at maneuvering units about the campaign map.
Feuds will be ON = Feuds are Officers that despise each other on a personal or professional basis in Grand Tactician. That means delayed order carry outs, rash actions, and the like. Should be very amusing considering the narrative story I'm building here.
Order Delays will be ON = As one might expect in real life, Orders take time to travel back and forth. In the Civil War era, this meant runners, telegraph stations, and bugle/drum/fife calls. Grand Tactician replicates this rather well, and I quite enjoy the setting being on.
Readiness System will be ON = High readiness, high movement, better morale, etc. Low readiness, you can't even march into Confederate (or Union, for that matter if you're playing as CSA) states.
I'm going to try and force myself to write at least 1000 words (hopefully more) every couple days at worst, as I play through the Campaign. Each Chapter will have an accompanying blog post like this one (which will have a link posted in the Chapter's Authors' Notes) discussing the period of time covered in a specific chapter (as the game moves on an hourly timer instead of turn by turn, including battles that can last for DAYS, and keep your armies busy on the map concurrently. It's a cool system).
I'm not going to go out of my way to kill anyone's favorite pony during the game, but as a warning, not even Army Generals are safe - this is the era in which Officers lead from nearby enough to their lines that orders can be given at a glance, meaning that I can lose a Three Star General as easily as a Captain.
A few final notes:
Firstly, obviously Pony Horse Land does not, never did, and never will, have slavery, which was the main reason for the outbreak of the American Civil War. I have thought ahead at a hopefully tasteful replacement for that, which will begin to be relevant as the story begins, but please, keep any comments or discussions about these sorts of historical matters unbiased, in good taste, and not gross. Slavery is a pretty horrible subject, I'd like to keep it out of my giant horse war story, thanks.
Secondly, attached to this blog post (and to be linked in the closing notes of every chapter of the story) will be a list of Art Links on a Google Docs page; this page contains each and every available art link that I have, barring a few OC characters that I or some friends who were kind enough to lend to me, as well as the many OCs I sourced from the Equestria At War Mod (So that I don't go literally insane trying to fill out 200+ ponies for a dumb video game mod) although I have linked the EaW wikia, and the images from EaW CAN all be found in the mods' files. Please let me know as soon as possible if an artist has concerns/ would like me to remove their art/ etc. The modding I have done to the game is NOT open for sharing, and is very much simply for my own personal usage, nothing else.
Finally, I hope everyone enjoys, and has fun on this wild ride I'm getting ready to embark on.
Tempest (Formerly Das Panzer)
Art Source Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J5Y65TP0Mla7fhXuSSTMvSby3j24oIF4HhLUw1ApRJ4/edit?usp=drivesdk
Tempest lives? Pog?
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Yes
Do you have a version of the mod for public use? I’ve always wanted to ponify Ultimate General: Civil War but 1) visuals aren’t really moddable in that game and 2) I had literally 0 idea what I was doing lol
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I do not have a public Version unfortunately, sorry, though I COULD make one probably. I'd just have to remove a few NPCs, and figure out how to properly add Naval Officers (I accidentally deleted all my navy folks, uh, whoops?)
As for Ultimate General; Yeah, unfortunately that's compiled in Unity and doesn't have many mod tools. If you download the J&P Rebalance mod you CAN edit the localization (I've renamed all my guns, have a ponified name list, etc.) but the visuals aren't all that editable without decompiling the game.
Modding Grand Tactician is actually pretty easy, it's all done via excel spreadsheet that you export into a readable game file, and stick in the campaign folders. You can't change the map at all, but you can edit just about everything else, which is cool.