Fortress Europe

Hey McMonkey,
I painfully find out that the U-Boats are...

And I found Strategic Bombing can be very cost effective as long as...

McMonkey,
There are also some flaw among the ground unit designs, I feel.
You gave most German ground units "Ignore City Wall", however this does not only apply to a city seige, this flag also applys to Fortress, the Stackable Terrains! I wonder if you have tested it before, but a unit with "Ignore City Wall" does perform much better than those without, when attack targets in able Terrains. As a result the Mortarised Infantry become the over-all best unit, good in attack, denfense, and mobile.
I understand it's not easy to balance in a Stackable map. However you may recall that, someone released a modified Civ.exe for TOT which disabled stack kill. I tested it, and test it again with Fortress Europe, it works fine. So I suggest to undo all the Stackable Terrains.
Also, the Light/Midium/Heavy tanks don't seems to be very different from each other. Even the Heavys have same defence as Lights, this is very unaccurate.

The flag 'ignore city walls' does only that. It doesn't cancel the defense bonus of forts or anything else.

techumseh said:

The flag 'ignore city walls' does only that. It doesn't cancel the defense bonus of forts or anything else.

Click to expand...

Really? I just did a test:
I entered Cheat Mood, creat 10 German Infantry on 2 stacks, each has 5, owned by Nazi AI.
Then I created 5 British Light Armor and 5 German Light Panzer, next to the above 2 stacks, owner by me.
As you may know, British Light Armor and German Light Panzer have all same stats, except for Germans have 'ignore city walls'.
Then attack. The result is:
All 5 German Panzers survived, one was damaged to red, other 4 were only yellow.
All 5 British Armors failed. Their rival Infantrys are damaged to 3 red and 2 yellow.

McMonkey,
I've played Fortress Europe for more than 20 turns, it's the best large scale WW2 scn that I have played. Some scns, like Tootall's D-Day, are also great. But Fortress Europe is the only one that have a good portrait of Battle of Atlantic, North Africa, Strategic Bombing, all these interesting factors of westen front all together. Also I like the "defence terrain", and special use of infantry on such lands.
Thanks for the great job!
Besides all the greatness, however still I think there are some room for improvement. Suggestions or questions are:

1, There are tooooo many U-Boats... They fill the ocean so much that Adolf can walk from Brest to New York without wetting his shoes. I think half the number would be still a decent threat.

2, Escort fighter can be researched around 1942 winter, or even more earlier. Very soon Luftwaffen posed no threat over German homeland. Perhaps it's better to move the escort fighter tech downward, cancel some U-Boat spawning events, and make more Luftwaffen fighter spawning events.
And there is also a problem for strategic bombing: to keep the economy running, it needs only a few bombers to take out factorys every a few turns, so I can use most of Allied bomber fleet to hunt U-Boats. This is not very like the history. Perhaps the number of factorys should be doubled, and bounty for each factory cut in half, so more bombers would be needed?
And also don't forget to add a House Rule: only attack Factorys with Bombers or land units, not Figters/Fighterbomber/GroundAttacks. Or else it would be too easy after we can mass produce P-51s...

3, I don't get why you set Fighters being 3h2f, Fighter Bombers being 3h3f, Ground Attacks being 2h4f? Fighters have better A/D, however Fighter Bombers's better F may compensate it. It dosen't seem 3h3f is better fitted for anti-ground while do not improve the anti-air ability, thus the units don't seem to be very different from each other. Same goes for Ground Attacks, I can't tell what's the difference.
Consider that the CIV2 engin doesn't differ AA and AG attack value anyway, I'd rather give all them same H/F, same A, keep their current D, cut FighterBombers movement, give Ground Attacks one more range but further cut its movement. Advantages in this way are:
a) you would prefer to use FighterBombers/Ground Attacks in attack roles, then Fighters to cover protect them. And unlike current version, FighterBombers/Ground Attacks won't perform almost as good as Fighters when defending citys.
b) Ground Attacks with 3 Range would be better to provide continue air support close to front line, and Range of 3 does not change its combat radius so it cannot be used to escort strategic bombing (you need even number to go back home!), while FighterBombers better for deeper strike but less persistence.

4, Ignore Wall issues, said above. And also I don't understand why you give Allied "Heavy Tank" in early to mid war, as they are graphically also Sherman, and the stats don't differ a lot from Medium Tank anyway. Heavy Tank should be something that can make a difference, and only available to Allied in late war.
I tried to fix the "Ignore Wall" by change some units stats as following:
Infantry: 7a, 7d, Ignore Wall.
Light Tank: 15a, 5d.
Medium Tank: 21a, 7d.
Reasons:
a) the lack of "Ignore Wall" cut Tanks attack in 1/2 in open ground, and in 1/3 when attacking a city.
b) Tanks should have 3 times Attack than their Defence, so it would be a fair fight if a tank attack a Fortified same class tank.
c) Compare to infantry, all tanks including even the Light Tank should have more attack value in open ground.
d) Medium Tanks like Pz4, M4 Sherman, T34 should be able to challenge Fortified Infantry in open ground, and no less defend power. Light Tanks should have a fair chancec to attack unfortified Medium Tanks.
e) Mech Infantrys and Heavy Tanks are not listed but alse set in likely manner, and twist a little for different nationnalities.

BTW, I survived Battle of Atlantic only because I half-cheated by...

BTW no.2:
I did a test:
Phase 1:
Put 1 Fighter and 1 FighterBomber in one stack, attack the stack, it is the Fighter, which have better A/D stats who stand first to defend. This means the computer thinks the Fighter is a better defender.
However the follow 10 attacks on each unit show that they perform no significant difference.
Then Phase 2:
Change Fighter's Firepower and Hitpoint to 1 and 1, a lot lower than FighterBombers 3/3. But Fighter still has a advantage in A/D as it has originally.
Then tests show that FighterBombers perform much much better.
Then, still put 1 Fighter and 1 FighterBomber in one stack then attack them, it is Still the Fighter that was pick by computer to stand defence the stack.

This shows that the program cannot judge the effect of Firepower and Hitpoint, it only judge by A/D values.
Thus I'd suggest be cautious giving different H/F to units that are supposed to have related roles.

Dear Monkey,
Though I wish to hear your feedback, I understand you may be busy. Just don't forget come back when you are available, because we have high expectation on your further works.
I think I've finished play test of Fortress Europe, as Allied is no longer seriously challenged anywhere, and Mr. Commander in Chief, have to back to work.
Fortress Europe is a brilliant scn by all standard, despite all my suggestions and dissatisfactions said above. Well, despite that I may have already bothered you so much with all those dumb words, this is indeed another, perhaps last suggestion:
I found Soviets would so easily push back until they crash with the German Strongpoints. And, I also found Strategic Bombing not that fun, nor that necessary after financial problem being solved. Also, as you mentioned before, Axies only build War Bonds later in the war.
I think there is a single method to fix all above problems:
1, Each turn spwan Heavy Panzers or other strong offensive units, as well as Luftwaffe fighters, in German homeland, on the "Industrial" tiles out side cities.
2, Use Moveunit event to guide the offensive units to Moscow, but left Fighters to guard German homeland.
3, These units should be able to keep a serious treat to Moscow. Also declear in House Rule that the lost of Moscow is equal to lost of Suez Channle, lost of War.
4, You can save the Soviet by holding your bombers over those "Industrial" tiles, thus preventing German units from being created. But the spawned Fighters would cause you serious trouble, because there are many "Industrial" tiles, you cannot cover all of them at beginning. However if you don't go into there, you risk let Luftwaffe build up strength every turn. Thus even if not for the Soviets, for your own sake, keep Bombing (occupying) those tiles!
5, These may need roughly ten events, may force you to delete or combine some current events. But I think it can be achieved: combine U-boat spawns, delete Soviet weaker unit spawns, and so on.
Finally, thank you again for Fortress Europe!

clightning,

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed Fortress Europe. I have copied all of your suggestions into my TO DO text document and will certainly go back to FE one day and see where improvements and fixes can be made. I wanted the Battle of the Atlantic to be tough and the Allied economy to be on a knives edge, but I really need to do more testing to check the balance. If you have kept your saved games I would be interested in seeing them.

When I have time to take a closer look at FE I will reply to your points in more detail.

Thanks

I think I will go back and work on Fortress Europe 2 once TheNamelessOne introduces 127 units and some other features. WWII scenarios, more than every other, will benefit most from the extra units!

The extra units patch is one I am very eager to try out too!

I somehow fear too many units will lead to some sort of... redundance and complexity and value charts.

Is there a way to display the units' values in the unit icon itself (next to the health bar or maybe within the triangles left and right below the unit - which you can't see in the game, but on the list (right-hand side).

I'm not sure I follow you Metro. Is this something for the ToTPP thread?

He, He, then let me show you. It's no big deal, I'll try to make myself sound clearly enough.
Just take a look at the picture:

The two triangle areas below a unit's graphics can't be seen when the unit is on the map, but it can be seen in the "viewing pieces" list on the right-hand side of the screen (outside the map) and in the summary pop-up window if you click on a pile of units (right there in the middle of the screenshot). I painted the left triangle of some units orange in your units.bmp file, do you see the effect? It can be used for giving some extra information on the unit itself without interfering with the graphics on the map, because neither the right nor the left triangle appears when the unit is on the map. The colour of the extra info however has to be another than the default pink/grey one, because those are both transparent - that's why you can't see them for the other units in the screenshot.

I've never seen someone using these units' triangle areas in a scenario. But it would be great to do so, because more units mean more values and more stats and more whatever. It could help to stay on top of things.

But now you mentioned it... a TOTPP mouse hover effect that would show a unit's values would be even better.

I have honestly never thought about this before. You could have Att/Def on one side and HP/FP on the other. I will have a play around with it!

A mouse hover would be a cool feature too.

Merely checking the civ-pedia too is useful!

Too lazy for pedia!

Well, if you cannot even click a menu...

You need at least four clicks for that, Mr. CurtSibling! Trust me, I know what I'm talking about.