Fortress Europe

Fortress Europe Wiki page

Old Fortress Europe thread at Apolyton

I have started work on this project again after it stalled last year (at least I hope it was only last year!). I was inspired to get back on the case when John Petroski started a new playtest. I already had a long list of things I need to do, and John's feedback has added to this, but I can see there is a worthwhile scenario there if I just take off a few of the rough edges in the gameplay. Every time I start a creation thread I seem to jinx myself so I won't be putting any estimates on for completion. I really wanted to start the thread so that I can ask a few technical questions, so here goes.

My first question is more general than technical. Armoured Cars are the Allies scouting unit and they are in effect diplomats that can only investigate enemy cities. After every mission they disappear. Now I'm not normally to keen on one shot units as I'm a hoarder by nature. How do you guys feel about these units. Is the information they gather worth the loss of the unit? If I put them in the spy slot would they become too powerful being able to spy multiple times? What sort of price should I put on them considering they can only investigate defences? Your opinions are welcome.

Just make sure you make them a relatively weak defensive unit and the spy slot should be fine... If the Germans get it, it dies. Besides, in the beginning (Africa), how many cities are they really going to be able to reach, supported?

Use the spy slot.

I would also use the spy slot for this kind of unit. You want a recon vehicle to have some kind
of survivability, and the "spy was killed" text can be changed to reflect capture by the Axis...

During testing I have noticed that all Soviet cities are producing units while all Axis cities are producing taxes. They are both set as Aggressive Militaristic Expansionists and the Taxes 'Improvement' has no as a prerequisite. The Axis have Automobile, Electronics, Monarchy and Monotheism. I can't work out how to prevent the Axis producing taxes. Is this just the AI cheating or have I missed something blindingly obvious?

I have attached the rules file if anyone could take a look. At the moment the Soviets are a bit too strong for historical accuracy. I could reduce their event backup further but I think the Axis would hold their own in a much more realistic fashion if they produced units instead of cash they don't even spend!

EDIT 1: Obviously the Axis start off producing units and switch as the game goes on.

EDIT 2: Both Civs are Fundamentalist governments.

EDIT 3: If I take control of the Axis I cannot chose to produce Taxes which suggests to me its just the AI f*ing cheating

AFAIK, there is no way to get around this problem. I have tried everything including putting city productions on AUTO with the Defense Minister in charge, changing the name and the parameters of the tech, etc. etc.. The building of Capitalization appears to be hard coded in CIV2.exe.

From experience playing multiple games of Red Front 1.4 and RF 1.5, it appears that MGE does not begin producing units until German strength decreases to somewhere between 100 and 200 units.

However, in RF 1.4 TOT, played with Ely's unlimited units version of TOT, German unit production appears to restart when their strength drops to 500-600 units. This is much better than MGE but doesn't solve your problem with FE.

Have you considered making it a multi events file scen? That would let you do replacement spawning, the only way to keep a civ's strength constant or even increase it.

What do you envision the ultimate role of the Soviets being, McMonkey?

Seeing as how the Western Allies are the only playable civ, I think what you want the Soviets to do is either advance, hold, or lose based on how the Western Allies do.

Is making Soviet gains/losses dependent on Allied ones completely fair or realistic? Probably not (you could argue it was the opposite in fact), but I do think it's the mechanic you need for this game to give the Allied player what they signed up for.

I think the goal should be to find a balance where not too many cities change hands one way or another at first, but if the Allies do well, the Soviets start to do well, and if the Allies do poorly, the Soviets start to be hammered. Or, to simplify, you could ignore that and simply not allow the Soviets to go anywhere if the Allies don't.

A very simple solution for this (if you don't have event space/desire to add more flags) would be to have indestructable, non-disbandable German units in certain cities in Russia, but with home cities elsewhere in the world (Tunis, Messina, Rome, Caen, Aachen, etc., the choice is yours). You could also use flags to accomplish the same thing, but it would be more complex.

I'm just not sure you really want to let an AI "ally" spoil the game one way or another (either by losing it, or by doing what it is currently doing - killing Germany relatively quickly), and I certainly think you're setting yourself up for some major headaches trying to get the perfect balance only by adjusting how many units are built/given.

YMMV

@Agricola
Thanks for clarifying that. Obviously that news really sucks, but if I know there is no way to fix the bug I can get on with looking for alternative workarounds. I think I still have a fair bit of room with the events to sort something out.

@JPetroski
The bunker idea looks like the perfect solution and I would go further and say that it will be a major enhancement to the game! So simple buy, hopefully, so effective.

I did not want a situation where the Soviets would win regardless of how well the Allies did. I think its fair to say there would have been a good chance that Germany could have beaten Russia if Britain (as a nation and as a US base) were knocked out of the war. I wanted it to be possible for the Germans to win in Russia, now I can make this happen too!

I think I will try out the simple option first (indestructible bunkers in Russia but homed in North Africa, Italy, France etc...) and see how this works out. I can always use the events to elaborate on this later, but my major concern right now is to get the scenario working. This option is much better for me as tweaking the balance and then spending ages playtesting would take forever. If I get the home cities right I can carefully co-ordinate the pace of the Soviets advance. If the Allies are not successful in taking the cities in time (and thereby disbanding the bunkers) I can have events for the Germans in those Russian cities to give them a good chance of gaining Ground in Russia. This will make the scenario far less predictable.

Thanks for the help guys. I have a lot of planning to do. This is an exciting development for me

Well I'm glad you're excited because as I've told you privately, this does have the makings of a fantastic scenario. I'd still be playing it if it weren't for the Soviets doing the entire job for me so soon!

Please email me or post the updates once they're done, and I'll certainly give it another shot! I'm looking forward to it

Thanks JP. I have a large list of things to do. Mostly minor changes, so they are relatively easy to tick off the list and things are progressing well. If it is OK I will e-mail you my list of 'completed changes and changes to do' to see if you can add any other suggestions. I will certainly send you the test version as soon as it is ready. I would like to get it as polished as I can as it is such a large game and keep restarting it could begin to get a bit tedious.

That would be fine - I agree that testing the first 30 turns *too* many times might get annoying

Just send it along when you're ready!

JPetroski said:

I agree that testing the first 30 turns *too* many times might get annoying

Click to expand...

That is one of the reasons, along with long AI turns, that I have slightly neglected playtesting. Its hard to concentrate on my strategy when I keep noticing things I want to change. Sometimes its easier for an external party to test thing as they don't get so distracted by these giggly details. I hope the next version I send will be as close as I can get it to a final release version rather than a half finished test version.

I was wondering if someone would be able to do a little hex edit for me please?

I just need the 'Defences' terrain placed on two city squares, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, to make them a less viable option for a bypass D-Day.

If you can help me please PM me your address and I will e-mail you the save file.

Ta

Send it to me. You have my address.

Thanks Agricola. I'm going to do some work on the game tonight so I will e-mail the file before beddybyes.

Thanks for doing the hex-edit for me Agri

Can anyone help here. I'm having an issue with the following event:

;6 Super Bunker in Rostov
@IF
CITYTAKEN
city=Rostov
attacker=Axis
defender=ANYBODY
@THEN
CREATEUNIT
unit=Super Bunker
veteran=yes
Count=1
homecity=Tripoli
locations
235,81
endlocations
@ENDIF

I have checked the co-ordinates, city names, unit names etc... At the moment Rostov is under Russian control but that shouldn't be an issue. The Report.txt says:

@THEN CREATEUNIT found
looking for unit=,owner=,veteran=,homecity=,[incapital],locations,endlocations,[count=]
found unit=Super Bunker (unit id=72)
found count=1 (integer 1)
found homecity=Tripoli
found locations
found location 0: 235, 81, 0 (map=0)
found endlocations
Illegal CREATEUNIT statement

The rest of the events seem ok and there is space left!

Also, I was trying to test if a tech advance gained=unit given event works by using the cheat menu and the Technology Advance option but nothing triggered. Is this because the event was not gained in the usual way? Is there a way to test these kinds of events? I know city captured events trigger as soon as the city is taken, so why not tech events?

The only thing I can think of is you are trying to create a unit in the square of the city that was just taken. Perhaps for some reason the events aren't liking that?

It seems like you're perhaps making this more complex for yourself than you need to. What's wrong with just placing some super bunkers at the start of the scenario?

As far as your second question goes - just edit the research progress of one nation to develop the tech the next turn and you'll get to see it in action (you might want to set up a separate "test" folder with much fewer units so you can get through test turns quickly for technical issues like this).

No Owner parameter.

Count parameter not required: the default is 1.