Total War 1941 -1945 ToT scenario released

THIS SCENARIO HAS BEEN UPDATED TO V1.02 ON THE SCENARIO LEAGUE WEBSITE

You can find the game zip files and screen shots at http://sleague.civfanatics.com/index.php/Total_War_1941_-_1945

Check out post #62 in this thread to review the latest changes.

GAME INTRODUCTION:

"
News Flash - December 7th, 1941, Washington (AP)

Japan has launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and has declared war on Britain and the United States.

America's isolationism has been forever shattered and the nation thrust into the greatest conflict in all human history. As its Commander-in-chief can you build up your armed forces and reverse the Axis tide and lead your people to ultimate victory?
"

The scenario encompasses the global conflict of the Second World War. The game lasts from December 1941 to September 1945 with each turn representing one month.

Though the scenario includes all the major protagonists of the war the game has been designed to play ONLY as either the Americans or the British empire.

There are a number of house rules and game concepts, all designed to enhance the scenario experience, that the player should familiarize themselves with before beginning to play. As such, please read the scenario's ReadMe PDF file first.

The scenario has been designed and tested on a 64-bit PC computer and should therefore work on both 32 and 64-bit platforms.

If you have a 64-bit computer you will need to run MastermindX's "Civ2XP64Patcher.exe" patch after starting the Test of Time program but before loading the scenario. I have included the patch and instructions on how to use it in the zip files. If you prefer, you can also download the patch from the CivFanatics forum http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=193215.

I hope you enjoy the game as much as I liked designing it.

For those of you who may be familiar with some of my previous work (available on the 'Scenario League' website), 'Total War 1941 - 1945' was actually my first real attempt, over three years ago, at designing a scenario. I never released it prior to now, partly because I always felt it was incomplete. After revisiting and significantly updating it recently I decided it was ready to share with the Civilization community.

I hope you enjoy it.

Tootall

Yay! Downloading.

I've had a chance to play a couple of games; once as the Brits and once as the Yanks. I soon realized it had all of the challenge and complexity of other Tootall scenarios. It's tough to win, and I'm now on my second try as the US. Carefull planning is key.

I would say it's not as polished as your other scenarios. For example, better units are often the same cost or even cheaper than the older ones they replace. One instance is that a Sherman tank is cheaper than a light tank, and there are a number of other examples.

Deleting the mobile units of the Neutrals would improve the scenario. In one case, after I captured Casablanca and Algiers to cut off the Afrika Korps, Neutral (Mexican?) artillery attacked and captured Houston.

Adding British units via events to the US player (and vice-versa) is a nice touch, which adds to the realism and enjoyment of the scenario.

Like your other scenarios, this one has me coming back for more, trying to beat the game which is both interesting and challenging.

Excellent work, and nice choices of units and themes, given CIV2 notorious limitations on scenarios of this nature and era!

The ee-wah-show command sound you used for the Japanese marines is actually archaic Mandarin. I originally found it in a Chinese game and used it in Warlords of China. It apparently means "give me blood."

I think the Japanese war cry, "Banzai" would be more suitable. I've attached the wav file I used for the Japanese infantry in WoC for your consideration.

Hi Techumseh,

techumseh said:

I've had a chance to play a couple of games; once as the Brits and once as the Yanks. I soon realized it had all of the challenge and complexity of other Tootall scenarios. It's tough to win.

Click to expand...

I've always felt that the most important aspect of the design process is to strive to make the scenario challenging for players. That's probably why 30 to 40% of my design time is spent on testing.

techumseh said:

I would say it's not as polished as your other scenarios. For example, better units are often the same cost or even cheaper than the older ones they replace.

Click to expand...

Though it may seem counter intuitive for stronger units to be cheaper this was actually done to represent the superior productive capacity of the Allied powers (America and Russia in particular and Britain to a lesser extent). It's no secret that once the Allies set up their production lines that they were able to mass produce vast numbers of tanks, planes, trucks by concentrating on a relatively limited number of designs.

techumseh said:

Deleting the mobile units of the Neutrals would improve the scenario. In one case, after I captured Casablanca and Algiers to cut off the Afrika Korps, Neutral (Mexican?) artillery attacked and captured Houston.

Click to expand...

That's actually a good idea. I don't know why it didn't occur to me when I was facing similar assaults from Mexico or Turkey. I guess I was a little too focused on reproducing the Vichy French 'resistance' to the Allied invasion of North Africa.

techumseh said:

Adding British units via events to the US player (and vice-versa) is a nice touch, which adds to the realism and enjoyment of the scenario.

Click to expand...

Since the British-American cooperation in the war played a vital role in the overall Allied strategy and ultimate victory I felt it was important to give the human player some degree of control over his British or American' s counterpart forces.

techumseh said:

The ee-wah-show command sound you used for the Japanese marines is actually archaic Mandarin... I think the Japanese war cry, "Banzai" would be more suitable. I've attached the wav file I used for the Japanese infantry in WoC for your consideration.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the clarification. I will review.

CurtSibling said:

Excellent work, and nice choices of units and themes, given CIV2 notorious limitations on scenarios of this nature and era!

Click to expand...

Thank you. I can honestly say that I spent many enjoyable hours playing the different versions of your 'Dictator' series. As I indicated in my ReadMe they were a source of inspiration for my own WWII scenario.

tootall_2012 said:

That's actually a good idea. I don't know why it didn't occur to me when I was facing similar assaults from Mexico or Turkey. I guess I was a little too focused on reproducing the Vichy French 'resistance' to the Allied invasion of North Africa.

Click to expand...

Making the easternmost parts of Mexico - squares 35,51 & 36,52 - desert would prevent units from marching north.

Fantastic scenario so far.

I find that as the war progresses and the US builds a large military, it loses considerable momentum because of the unhappiness that large numbers of units create in a democracy. At a certain point, I have to choose between slowing down my research progress dramaticaly, or leaving large cities in disorder, thus losing their production each turn.

Is this needed for play balance? If that is the intent, it's too difficult for someone with my meager skills. The New Deal wonder (Women's Sufferage) doesn't make a huge difference. Historically, the US was fully mobilized, with massive armies, fleets and airforces, yet morale on the homefront remained very high. Perhaps a Republic would work better. Just a thought.

The US could certainly benefit from the tech that allows the building of Courthouses.

techumseh said:

I find that as the war progresses and the US builds a large military, it loses considerable momentum because of the unhappiness that large numbers of units create in a democracy. At a certain point, I have to choose between slowing down my research progress dramatically, or leaving large cities in disorder, thus losing their production each turn....
Is this needed for play balance?

Click to expand...

I will admit I'm not an expert on the subject but I do believe, as the war progressed, that the American people did experience a certain degree of war weariness. I don't think it necessarily affected their overall commitment to the war effort or desire to see it through to the end but at the same time I believe the cumulative effects of war rationing, continuous war bond drives, heavy demands on the work force to keep the industries running at full throttle exacted some degree of fatigue. In that sense, I felt it was important to reflect those kind of factors when dealing with a democratic society.

On my part, I didn't generally experience large scale unhappiness in my American cities during my testing partly because: 1) I always pursued a vigorous Freight unit building program (as you know large city trade combined with increased Luxury rate equals increased Happiness), 2) I maintained a 20 to 30% Luxury rate and 3) for the large cities built oil refineries. It doesn't mean I never had cities in revolt but rarely more than 1 or 2 on any given turn, primarily because that city might be supporting too many bombers (each bomber produces one unhappy citizen) or because too many of that city's ground units were in transports on the ocean.

At this point, I'm not yet ready to make a change to America's form of government as I feel it helps to make the game more challenging. In the meantime, players who feel this is too much of a burden can always use the cheat menu and grant themselves the 'Military Censorship' advance (this tech allows the 'Republic' form of government along with the 'Courthouse' building).

My strategy has been to build lots of B-17s in the first half of the scenario, as they are the best offensive weapon available near the beginning, so that explains much of the unhappiness. I don't usually do a lot of trading when I play, which may be part of the problem. Do folks find that lots of trading in a fairly short, war scenario gives them enough gold to rush build as many combat units as they could otherwise build?

techumseh said:

My strategy has been to build lots of B-17s in the first half of the scenario, ..., so that explains much of the unhappiness

Click to expand...

Yes there definitely is a penalty for democracies that build bombers in the game so you need to build them in cities that can support the one unhappy citizen per bomber effect. Re-homing them to other American or conquered cities can also help alleviate the effect.

techumseh said:

Do folks find that lots of trading in a fairly short, war scenario gives them enough gold to rush build as many combat units as they could otherwise build?

Click to expand...

It's almost impossible to anticipate the different strategies players may decide to pursue though I believe rush buying is a favorite tactic of many players (including yourself and Agricola). Units in this game can be very expensive to buy. A new battleship can cost over 5000 gold pieces (that cost is reduced by half as soon as the unit has accumulated at least one production point). In this scenario rush buying units is unlikely to be a very successful strategy without the constant influx of gold generated by your freight units.

Personally, it's never been a strategy of mine as I don't find it very realistic to be able to buy units and very rarely use the tactics in any scenario I play. I do on the other hand often use the gold to help rush buy city improvements and as I indicated it has the additional benefit of increasing your happiness.

I’m up to July 1942 and have been playing the US as follows:

1. Tax/Sci/Lux = 0/80/20 from the start.
2. Regular deliveries (freighters protected by bombers throughout their voyage) of 3-4 freights to London began in April ’42.
3. Including the July deliveries, ~7700 gold has been received from freights.
4. This has been enough to rushbuild 13 Ammo Plants, other necessary city improvements, build the Central Pacific RR straight from Salt Lake City to Chicago as well as extend RR’s to cities like New Orleans, Denver and Omaha.
5. 7 science advance have been made in the first 8 months. In another 5 months, the US will be able to go on the offensive with its best possible veteran air and ground units.
6. The Japanese fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor proceeded to Los Angeles where the survivors were destroyed by American naval forces. There has been no further Japanese activity in the eastern Pacific.


However, some interesting but very ahistorical things have happened.

In June, the Germans captured Plymouth. This did not bother me because the US would be able to get an extra base in Britain once it recaptured the city.

However, in July, it was not so good when a German Battleship, newly launched in Hamburg, killed the defenders in London and Fallschirmjaegers took city. Historically, this seemed to me to be more than unlikely, although I was grinning from ear to ear at the thought of acquiring yet another base in Britain.

Meanwhile, there were good British fighting units doing nothing in Brirminham, just north of London. The AI really is an idiot.

When I replayed the end of the US June turn, the German BB did not manage to wipe out the defenders.

In either case the German BB was immediately deep-sixed by a vet US BB, newly arrived in European waters.

May I suggest that some kind of fix is in order, possibly by adding Bunkers in British cities like there are in German coastal cities.


MINOR PROBLEMS

Why did you depart from the vanilla Civ2 practice of calling mineral occurrences iron, coal, copper etc. and use iron mine, coal mine etc? This is confusing because it implies that a mine already exists and using engineers to actually build a mine is unnecessary. Also, the icon used for a built mine looks like a Stone Age cave rather than an actual mine with a head frame, conveyor and ancillary building.

The US has been well served by transcontinental RR’s since the late 1800’s yet there is no sign of either the Central Pacific or Northern Pacific routes. Also, the road and RR icons are bloody inconspicuous and could well use much more distinctive colors.

Manila, not Manilla.


OVERALL

This looks like a rather nasty scen to play as the Americans, mainly because of logistical and unhappiness problems. Good work.

I’m going to continue play with Plymouth in German hands and London still a British city. Any suggestions?

AGRICOLA said:

I’m going to continue play with Plymouth in German hands and London still a British city. Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

In the cold light of dawn, I decided that the above approach is not the best way to test the scen because in events you have considered the possibility that the Germans may capture London. Consequently, despite some misgivings, I'm going ahead with my original results.

In the games I've played (1 as Brits, 2 as Yanks) the Germans have been able to capture Portsmouth. It's a problem for the US, since it's usually the British who retake it, so the Americans can't get it back. I have since learned to add an AA unit early on, since it's usually air attack that empties the city.

The German battleship attacks and paradrops into British cities are both unlikely at this stage of the war. Instead of adding more fortresses, I suggest a couple of altrnatives:

1. Battleship bombardment strength be reduced. They are about right against forts, but too strong against other ground units, esp. those without benefit of being in cities with the coastal fortress improvement. Given the high movement factor, one battleship can destroy several ground units in one turn.

A lower AF can be offset with a higher # of hits, so the unit will reliably be able to destroy one or two ground units, but will suffer enough damage that it can't attack further until repaired. This reduces the risk of them being destroyed while attacking.

2. German paratroops were largely destroyed in Crete in May '41 and were not dropped in large formations after that. I'm sure you'll hate this one, but perhaps take the fallshirmjaeger units away from the Germans.

Or you can just leave it the way it is. It's challenging and fun, and some unlikely events are probably inevitable given the poor AI we have to deal with.

Hi Agricola,

AGRICOLA said:

Including the July deliveries, ~7700 gold has been received from freights.

Click to expand...

Did you mean you had received 7700 gold pieces in payoffs since April 42? If yes that would mean you had built and delivered roughly 12-16 freight units in those 4 months (I assume you followed House rule #4 which forbids rush buying or re-homing of Freight units). Hence 7700 gold divided by 12 or 16 freight units equals between 480 to 640 gold pieces per freight unit which sounds about right if they were all delivered to London (I believe the maximum amount I ever received for a single freight unit was around 1100 gold pieces from Sydney to New York).

AGRICOLA said:

7 science advance have been made in the first 8 months. In another 5 months, the US will be able to go on the offensive with its best possible veteran air and ground units.

Click to expand...

I don't know that I will ever be able to design a scenario that's balanced and equally challenging for all players. You bring a skill set, particularly in the economic/scientific aspect of the game, that's beyond my ability to counter without having to make it so arduous that the scenario would be too difficult for us mere mortals.

AGRICOLA said:

However, some interesting but very ahistorical things have happened...In June, the Germans captured Plymouth...

Click to expand...

In the numerous games I played as the American one of Plymouth or Birmingham did on occasion fall to German assaults but were usually quickly recaptured by me as the human player (in the case of the British cities I usually had my American forces kill the German defenders and let the British AI player walk into the empty city (Britain plays right after America)).

I obviously made Portsmouth an American city to serve as a base of future operations against Nazi held Europe. It only starts with one A.A. Battery and it's the human players responsibility to send additional forces to defend the city as quickly as possible (when playing as the British player the American AI starts with 3 A.A. batteries in the city).

With regards Plymouth and Birmingham the British AI cities start relatively well defended and contain the anti-tank defenses and coastal battery improvements. Unfortunately even if I double the number of units there's no way I can control how the AI behaves, i.e. it can easily decide to move them elsewhere, thereby reducing the city's ability to resist an invasion attempt.

AGRICOLA said:

However, in July, it was not so good when a German Battleship, newly launched in Hamburg, killed the defenders in London and Fallschirmjaegers took city,

Click to expand...

This DOES surprise me. In the roughly 10 full test games I played, London NEVER fell to Germany.

AGRICOLA said:

May I suggest that some kind of fix is in order, possibly by adding Bunkers in British cities like there are in German coastal cities.

Click to expand...

I tried this kind of tactic but the AI has the VERY nasty habit of CONTINUALLY loading the bunker units on Freighters and transporting them to other cities. I had the same problem with Germany and Japan (and as you may recall also had the same issue in 'A House Divided'). In the case of Germany, the only solution I had was to remove all Freighter units from its OOB (except in the Mediterranean).

You have to believe me when I say that after 'A House Divided' this game was the most arduous in terms of testing. The event files ended up being a major source of frustration requiring multiple revisions to make some of the apparently most simple logical events trigger. I had to come up with a myriad solutions to 'defeat' the unpredictable behaviour of the AI. As I may have mentioned to you previously, what I thought was going to be a simple 2 week job back in December ended up taking almost a full 2 1/2 months of hard testing to get the game to the level it is.

Unfortunately, I don't believe there is a solution to this one other than to say the more ground, naval and air units the American player deploys to Portsmouth the more 'active' they can be in defending the British Isles from German aggressions. Though, if I remember correctly, I don't remember losing any of the cities after 1942.

AGRICOLA said:

Manila, not Manilla.

Click to expand...

I doubled checked and the city is spelled 'Manila' in the game.

AGRICOLA said:

Why did you depart from the vanilla Civ2 practice of calling mineral occurrences iron, coal, copper etc. and use iron mine, coal mine etc? ... Also, the icon used for a built mine looks like a Stone Age cave...

Click to expand...

I don't believe I spent too much time thinking about this one. I just used what seemed to make sense and looked good on the map.

AGRICOLA said:

The US has been well served by transcontinental RR’s since the late 1800’s yet there is no sign of either the Central Pacific or Northern Pacific routes. Also, the road and RR icons are bloody inconspicuous and could well use much more distinctive colors.

Click to expand...

I can't remember if this was an oversight or intentional. It's possible I just wanted to give the American engineer units an additional task to take care of in the USA.

I know we constantly have a difference of opinion on all my scenarios with regards the road/RR graphics. I personally like the more subdued, natural looking icons. But any player familiar with Paint can easily replace the road/RR game graphics with any set they are more comfortable with.

AGRICOLA said:

This looks like a rather nasty scen to play as the Americans, mainly because of logistical and unhappiness problems. Good work

Click to expand...

I know unhappiness in the American cities isn't entirely historical. As I mentioned to Techumseh, it was done primarily to help make the game more challenging and in that respect from the feedback I've received from both of you it was successful.

Hi Techumseh,

techumseh said:

In the games I've played (1 as Brits, 2 as Yanks) the Germans have been able to capture Portsmouth.

Click to expand...

In my play testing, as the American player, I did lose Portsmouth once. Having learned my lesson the hard way, it never happened again, though it might have come close once or twice, because I always strive to reinforce the city as quickly as possible.

You might say, why not simply load the city with American units to start with? Again to make the game more challenging. The US starts the scenario with a limited number of ground units and as its commander you have to make tactical decisions about where to best employ them.

techumseh said:

The German battleship attacks and paradrops into British cities are both unlikely at this stage of the war. Instead of adding more fortresses, I suggest a couple of alternatives:

Click to expand...

I'm very reluctant to make changes to the values of the battleships. These combat values weren't only designed with shore bombardment in mind, but versus other warships and aircraft. To make changes would require another round of testing that I'm very reluctant to undertake. I also wanted to keep giving Germany the ability to build battleship as a permanent possible threat to the Allies Atlantic transports. The German U-boats can be a constant irritant but there is nothing more alarming them seeing a German battleship suddenly appear in your shipping lanes, particularly when you don't have any battleships of your own nearby.

I'm well aware that after the battle of Crete German airborne operations essentially came to an end (with the exception of a few minor operations). Nevertheless, I kept their airdrop capability active because I DON'T want the human player to feel SAFE! They should always be wary of unexpected attacks and try to prepare for all possible eventualities. As both you and Agricola reminded us, the AI can be utterly idiotic, so the last thing a designer should do is remove elements of the game that helps make it more challenging, even if that means you have to be a little ahistorical at times!!

I can certainly relate to playtest fatigue. There are a couple of my own scenarios that I hardly ever play, basically because I'm kinda sick of them. So, no changes to Total War, but the tradeoff between attack factors and hits is still worth a discussion.

High attack and firepower and low hits make a unit dangerous, but unpredictable eg. missiles in regular civ. It will probably win, but could still lose. If you reduce the attack factor somewhat, and increase the hits, the attacking unit will be more likely to win it's first attack, but more likely to be damaged and unable to keep attacking.

I like this combination for powerful offensive units so that:

1) the probablilty is higher that they will destroy the first (and perhaps second, depending on movement allowance) unit that they attack.

2) there is lower probability that they will lose in the first attack

3) they can only attack once or twice before having to withdraw.

These units increase the predictablity of offensive units - if that is the objective - and reduce the damage that units with high movement factors can do in one turn.