                   



                             ***THE UNITED IRISHMEN v1.0***
                             by our_man (our_man@space.com)


-INSTALLATION-

First of all, you MUST have FW (i.e. v2.78) to play this scenario.  I'm sure most of the people out there are familiar with how to install a scenario, but just in case...  Create a new folder in your Civ2 scenario directory and call it "United".  Unzip all the files in this archive into the new folder with the exception of the sound files.  That's it.

This is a scenario which uses multiple events as well.  Before beginning run united.bat and follow the instructions to set up the first part of the scenario.  You'll eventually be asked to run the united.bat file again in the scenario.  Follow the instructions to load the second phase of the scenario.



-BACKGROUND-

Ireland in the 18th century was a pretty bad time to have a religious denomination other than Protestant.  The Treaty of Limerick of 1691 ended all Catholic involvement in the Irish parliament and allowed the Protestants to impose a "popery code" to keep the Catholics in a state of permanent subjection.  These Penal Laws were 'justified' by the persecution of Protestants in European countries.  In these countries however the persecuted sect formed only a small minority;  Ireland was unique in Western Europe due to the fact that the persecuted formed the majority of the population.  Draconian land laws reduced Catholic ownership of land from 14% at the beginning of the 18th century to less than 5% at the end of it. The cries of the persecuted Catholics, and to a lesser extent the Presbyterians, went unheard throughout most of the 18th century.

This was to change however with the American War of Independence.  Henry Grattan as Prime Minister of Ireland sought to assert Ireland's independence while at the same time retaining integral links with the British Empire.  Some minor relief bills were introduced for Catholics, however they still lacked a voice in parliament.  This was also the age of the Volunteers movement, brought about in case of a foreign invasion while most of the British army was tied down fighting in North America. Both Protestant and Catholic groups were formed, although most of the latter were not dedicated to defending the country from invasion, rather they concentrated on harassing Protestant groups.  Tensions continued to rise between them, and the stage was set for a rebellion.  The Catholics however lacked one crucial factor - organization.  They found this with the formation of the United Irishmen by Theobald Wolfe Tone.

Tone was a protestant barrister who believed that Ireland was independent of Britain in name only, and that the only way to counteract British influence was with the combined efforts of the Catholics and the radical Protestants.  In October 1791 he founded the Belfast directory of the United Irishmen to acheive these goals.  A Dublin directory was founded in November.  Tone was greatly influenced by the French Revolution and wanted above else to acheive an Irish Republic free of religious persecution.  He also believed that this could be acheived only through violence.

By 1793 Britain viewed war between herself and revolutionary France as inevitable, and aware of the growing Republican sentiment in Ireland which if taken into account together with the large number of armed Volunteers constituted a major threat to British security in Ireland.  Further acts were passed to relax the Penal Laws, but at the same time acts were passed to disband the Volunteer movements and to forbid certain assemblies expressing Catholic public opinion.  This government crackdown caused concern amongst the United Irishmen, who began to organise themselves along military lines and prepare for a rebellion.  Tone informed the French government that a French invasion of Ireland would be welcome and in 1796 left for France to further press his cause.  In December of that year the French sent an expidition of 14,000 men to Ireland. Bad weather however scattered the fleet, and the few ships that made it to Bantry Bay were unable to land.  That the French came so close to invading Ireland came as a huge shock to both the British and Irish governments.  The alarming growth of the United Irishmen movement despite strict laws against it convinced the government that more ruthless measures were needed.  In 1797 General Lake was given orders to raid the province of Ulster for arms.  Strict curfew laws were also intoduced.  Lake was without mercy in his rounding up of revolutionaries;  his men engaging in lynching and tarring;  in short, cold-blooded murder.  By terrorizing the population of Ulster, he hoped to cow any sentiment of rebellion in the province for good.

The United Irishmen realized they had to act soon or lose the upper hand to the government, whose extensive intelligence network had compromised the entire Leinster directory of the United Irishmen, the leaders of whom were arrested in March 1798 with the exception of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who evaded capture that day.  Fitzgerald was an experienced soldier and completely dedicated to the revolution, so when he was finally captured, mortally wounded, some weeks later it left the United Irishmen bereft of experienced leadership, with the exception of Tone, who was still in France and unable to influence events.  A few days after Fitzgerald's death, the rebellion began.


-OBJECTIVES-

Scoring in this scenario is done on an objective basis.  You already start off the scenario with 15 objectives and there are a total of 121 objectives.  I have tried to organise the objective scoring in such a way that for each of the four provinces you take, the assessment of your acheivement goes up by one.  To give you an idea:

Control Connaught - Marginal Defeat
Control Connaught and Munster - Stalemate
Control Connaught, Munster and Leinster - Marginal Victory
Control the Entire Country - Decisive Victory

For a marginal defeat you must also still hold the counties of Wexford and Waterford as well as Connaught.  Another feature of this scenario is that your success in taking certain areas can generate both a positive and negative response.  As the rebellion spreads more and more people will join your forces, but do not expect the government to turn a blind eye to your victories!  The security of Ireland is extremely high priority to the British Empire and should the situation grow worse, expect them to flood the country with troops to augment the government forces!


-STRATEGY-

You start off in a bad situation.  You control the counties of Waterford and Wexford, and you also have a large group of rebels near Antrim.  The British attack will be quite fierce in the first couple of turns in the South-East, so try and weather it.  Most of the British reinforcements will be arriving in Ireland via Dublin, so attempting to attack Leinster first is probably futile.  Your best bet is to try and capture the city of Cork and free the rest of Munster.  Another reason to go for Munster ahead of Leinster is that most of the events are geared towards this part of the country during the first stage of the scenario.  Expect some aid from the French during the first few turns of the scenario, but I'm not going to say where they might arrive...  You should also be able to capture Connaught by the end of part 1.  For part 2 you should have a large force amassed for the invasion of Leinster.  Don't underestimate the British however, they should become very tough once the Treaty of Amiens has been signed, allowing them to divert their forces from Europe to Ireland.  After Leinster the only area of resistance should be the North-East of the country which has to be taken for a decisive victory.  Hopefully this is next to impossible.  It's been over 200 years since the 1798 rebellion and Northern Ireland still remains part of the United Kingdom.  In other words, don't be disappointed with a marginal victory.  The men of 1798 themselves suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of the British, and in 1921 one could say that the IRA only acheived a marginal victory over the British.


-RESEARCH-

The tech tree has undergone a lot of changes for this scenario.  In fact, there are now two tech trees - one for the British and one for the Irish.  There are some advances which both can research but others are completely unique.  In the case of the Irish there is an advance that can only be researched after a certain city has been captured.  Other advances cannot be researched by either side but serve as triggers for troop allocation and movement.  Research in the scenario proceeds at a 40/10 rate.  'Military Exercises' is only there so that certain unique unbuildable units will show up in the Civilopedia.  There is no way to acquire another Civ's technology in this scenario as negotiations are forbidden and spys cannot be built.


-IMPROVEMENTS-

There are a lot of improvements that cannot be built in this scenario, and a lot of the ones that can have been renamed, so remember to consult the Civilopedia.  All the WoW in the scenario are new but most of them have already been built.  Some of them are already obsolete and are their just to add a little atmosphere.  For most of them there is a desription provided in the Civilopedia.  Throughout the scenario the happiness wonders of the government will become obsolete to represent the strife their actions are causing, and they must build other wonders in order to try and restore order.  The United Irishmen can eventually build one new wonder.


-TERRAIN-

When you start the scenario you'll probably be immediately aware of the changes in terrain.  Most of these are relatively minor, but here's a list of the terrain changes.

Moorland = Plains:  produces 1 food;  special resources - Cattle, Horses
The Burren = Desert:  produces 1 food, 3 shields and 3 trade;  defence 50%
Forest:  produces 2 food, 1 shield;  special resources - Game, Fruit
Hills:  produces 1 food;  special resources - Silver, Coal
Mountains:  produces 1 shield;  defence 200%

I've also tried to create the strategic importance of naval power at this point in history.  Ship movement has been increased dramatically and the map has navigable canals to facilitate extremely fast inland troop transport.


-MISCELLANEOUS-

1.  Boston and Paris
These cities were placed on the map in order to represent the Irish abroad and the role they played.  The cities are completely sealed off from the rest of the map, and their production is so low it isn't worth building anything there.  All they do is contribute money, science and the effect of two wonders to your cause.

2.  Historical Accuracy
Not a very historically accurate scenario I'm afraid.  The rebellion was defeated before it could pose a significant challenge to British rule, so I kind of made a lot of the events up as I went along.  These are mostly to do with capturing certain cities.  All of the events that occur at a certain time are accurate however such as the two further French expiditions.  The size of cities during this period of time has been grossly distorted as well.  I didn't really want to give an accurate depiction of the cities population's (if this were the case half the cities would be too small to be on the map).  Rather I gave them enough population to represent their economic importance.  Come to mention it, the city placement is awful as well. Most of the coastal cities have been placed with dome degree of accuracy, but the further inland you go, the more distorted a cities position becomes.  Cartography isn't one of my strong points. On top of this, I'm pretty sure a few of these towns weren't even in existence at this time.

3.  The Map
The map is my own work and personally I think it turned out pretty well.  If you want to use it in a scenario (not that I'd imagine there's a large number of people that want to make Irish scenarios out there!) you don't have to ask permission, just give me credit for it in the readme.  I also designed a normal version with no canals or special terrain.  If you're interested in obtaining a copy of this unmodified map, e-mail me at the above address and I'll be happy to send it to you.


-CREDITS-

First and foremost thanks to Grothgar and Case for playtesting this scenario.  Both playtesters supplied some great ideas and advice on how to correct some of the bugs which cropped up.  Thanks again!

Thanks to Kull for getting the title picture to work.

Thanks to Captain Nemo for info on batch files, I used the one he created for Red Front as a template for this scenario.

This is a list of where I obtained the various graphics in 'The United Irishmen' but does not not neccesarily mean that this is where a particular graphic originated.  If I made a mistake and gave someone else credit for your work, contact me and I'll rectify it for v1.1 (if there is one...).

TERRAIN
Silver           - taken from Jeus Balsinde's "Of Celts and Iberians"
Game             -   "    "    "       "      "Spanish Civil War"
Cattle           -   "    "   Michael Jeszenka's "Second Reich"
Coastlines       -   "    "   John Ellis' "Colonies"

ICONS
Capital          - taken from Nemo and Alex's "2194 days"
Church           -   "    "    "    "    "      "    "
Theatre          -   "    "    "    "    "      "    "
Grattan's        -   "    "    "    "    "      "    "
Brittania        -   "    "    "    "    "      "    "
Croagh Patrick   -   "    "    "    "    "      "    "
Well             -   "    "   Jeus Balsinde's "War of Cuba"
Mill             -   "    "    "       "        "  "   "
K. Castle        -   "    "   John Ellis' "100 Years War"
Chapel           -   "    "   Jesús Muñoz's "30 Years War"
Custom's House   -   "    "   Michael Jeszenka's "Second Reich"
Four Courts      -   "    "      "        "         "      "

The unit graphics were all taken from Microprose scenarios.  Any other graphics were taken from one of Harlan Thompson's collections.















