Making History Gold Scenarios

[Rachelle Kun]

Making History Gold Edition provides an extensive modding framework, allowing players to build their own scenarios. Over time, many player created scenarios have emerged. Making History Gold Edition actually includes a few player created scenarios out of the box.

Due to the longtime community following, many user-created scenarios scenarios were created. Most of these were uploaded to the forums at making-history.com and were freely available for other commuinity members to download, play, and leave comments. Unfortunately, when making-history.com went offline, the plethora of scenarios, artwork, guides, and other information disappeared with it.

Below is a list of the old scenarios that I found in my backups. As mentioned, these were freely availble on making-history.com before it went offline. I have given a description of each scenario as accurately as I could based on memory, which may or may not be accurate. Where a README file, an author, or other description information was presented, I have also provided that information.

From Narva on the Baltic to Odessa on the Black, from Vladivostok on the Pacific to Baku on the Caspian Sea, the Soviet Union casts its red shadow on Eurasia. After years of strife, the Politburo has announced its "support for international workers against the scourge of capitalism, wherever it may threaten them." The USSR has thus begun a massive economic and military mobilization campaign, even going as far as dramatically limiting any purges of the Party or military in order to prepare for an upcoming conflict.

These developments have alarmed many on the Eurasian landmass and beyond. In Europe, the new nation-states fear a potential Soviet reconquest of the traditional imperial Russian spheres of influence. In Asia, China was unable to stop a Soviet "intervention" in Sinkiang in 1935: will the Soviets officially fight the Nationalists, or will they turn south against British India? Already the Soviets have concluded an unholy alliance with fascist Japan: what could each nation's motivation be?

Meanwhile Germany, in the grips of a nationalist upswing under the newly-elected Nazi Party, has indicated its desire for territory in Eastern Europe. The Fascist Italians want to dominate the Mediterranean and the Balkans: already, in 1934, they seized control of Albania. What will each nation do, though, in the face of an ideological conflict with their hated Communist enemy?

All of these moves are watched with great anxiety by London and Paris. Will the Allies and, though isolationist, the United States fight back against the expected Soviet expansion? Will the non-Communist states join together to fight the Soviet menace?

Japan has occupied Chinese Manchuria since 1931. Italy recently conquered Ethiopia. Nazi Germany has resumed military expansion and marched into the Rhineland, officially a demilitarized zone. Focused on economic troubles, Britain, France, and the United States have done little to protest these aggressions. Formerly shunned as a Communist threat, the USSR has grown popular as a potential counterweight to German power.

It's 1924. The Great War has ended with the defeat of the Central Powers and the signing of the treaty of Versailles. For now the world can recuperate and rebuild what it lost; but this time of rest won't last for much longer. New, radical ideologies are beginning to take hold of Europe, nations are rebuilding their shattered armies and the Great Depression will soon grip the global economy; dark storm clouds loom during these years.

Since 1934, Himmler's personal project, the SS Paranormal Division, is working to create the Ubersoldaten by using occult rites in the Castle of Wewelsburg, considered by the Nazi cultists as the Center of the World. These experiments failed to develop super soldiers but lead to the creation of ravaging, highly contagious and uncontrollable zombies. Now that the Soviets are overwhelming the German armies in the East and the Western Allies are ready for a massive disembark in France, the Nazis' last chance is to unleash their dark creatures. Maybe the National Socialists can survive the Zombie Apocalypse. Or maybe they can bring death and destruction to their enemies as well.

As of patch 2.03 players are able to play as any nation that had international recognition from 1936 to 1945, although players are encouraged to select from one of the more powerful entities of the era, namely Nationalist China, France, National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States or the Soviet Union.

The game has been successfully marketed by its developer as an educational tool, with the game described in a December 2007 Newsweek article as "already part of the World War II curriculum in more than 150 schools".[2]

On July 30, 2008, Muzzy Lane released the Gold edition of the game. This edition introduces a new "Rise of the Reich" scenario starting in 1933, new combat concepts including separate combat forces for units in attack or defense and the ability for partisans to launch insurrections and liberate unannexed conquered territories, along with numerous improvements to the economic system, such as increasing the supply and price of oil and reducing the cost of food.

Both versions are distributed through the Steam platform, with the first one being the cheapest, and reaching the price of 0.49 dollars during sale season. Also the Gold edition can be found on the page of the current distributor, Factus Games, the studio responsible for the latest installments of the series.

In Making History players control the nation of their choice through a period of World War II and the years preceding it, as defined by the scenario selected. Included with the game are scenarios which start in 1936, 1939, 1941 or 1944, each crafted to reflect the historical situation at that time, while players may design their own scenarios using the either included scenario editor or SQL programming.

Combat in Making History is resolved through a random number generator and the arbitrary chance to hit, inflict damage and absorb the damage of various unit types. The chance to hit value can be further Modified by supply level, technology, and terrain. Each unit involved in combat is given the chance to attack an opposition unit during each turn of combat.

Units are further broken down into land, air and sea classifications, and the chance for a specific unit to hit an enemy unit is different according to the unit type. A fourth classification of "city" is used to allow the game to simulate medium and heavy bomber raids of industrial infrastructure without the strategic bombers being excessively powerful against military units.

In-game diplomacy with allied non-player controlled (NPC) countries is generally fairly arbitrary, with each scenario programmable to offer the non-player controlled nations ("NPC"s) one or more war plans to select from at random at the start of the game. Each NPC war plan can be customized to be immediate or in-game event/date-driven; thus in the scenario The Limits of Peace an NPC-controlled Germany is almost certain to attack Czechoslovakia, the NPC USSR will attack Finland, NPC China will attack Communist China and NPC Japan will attack China regardless of any player actions.

Aside from the war plan each nation is programmed to implement the diplomatic system with NPC controlled entities does not lend itself to much use. Relations with NPC-controlled nations are not easy to influence in a positive manner at a meaningful rate and will often only offer or accept alliance propositions when fighting a mutual enemy or facing destruction.

The game has drawn some criticism on its allocation of the conquered territory when conquered by multiple allied forces, with the engine programmed to assign ownership to whichever force arrived first. For example, this can lead to Romania, Hungary or Bulgaria "conquering" and controlling large swathes of the USSR as allies of Germany, despite only contributing minor forces.

Making History features an economic management system that forces players to consider the economic cost of military buildups and waging war, as well as the diplomatic consequences on trade. The game includes a penalty system for controlling the production in regions with an assigned culture different from that of the controlling nation and the ability to liberate annexed countries (thus maximising this production under a new independent but allied entity).

Each region has a population, and from that population figure, the game creates a workforce, or Manpower Units (MPUs). MPUs are required to run factories, mines, oil fields, or to create new military units. Spare MPUs in each region are automatically assigned to food production, and regional food production is heavily influenced by the amount of labor available in the form of these MPUs.

Each region has food, fortifications and transport rating between 0 and 4, with 0 totally undeveloped and 4 fully developed. Improved food infrastructure increases food production, fortifications add air defenses and give defensive combat modifiers, and transport infrastructure improves mined / oil resource production and the movement speed of land forces passing through that region.

The game includes a basic technology tree, with some technologies requiring prerequisites be completed first. Base technology starts at a post World War I level and progresses through to Jet Fighters, "Advanced" units representing historical late / post World War II technology, nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles (such as the German V2).

The game supports up to 8 players playing multiplayer over TCP/IP internet connections, however, offers no formal matchmaking/game lobby systems. Players must arrange multiplayer games privately and manually connect. The multiplayer game is also turn-based, with players making their orders simultaneously and each player's orders being processed at the end of each turn as is normal in a single-player game.

c80f0f1006