Suggestions regarding map changes and unit upgrades
Hi there! Having discovered this great scenario a couple of weeks ago, and spending definitely too much time playing and replaying WWII since
I would like to give my own two cent's worth.
First of all: Great job, Rocoteh, you seem to have created almost an entirely new game in its own right. Keep up this truly outstanding work!
Now, as far as my gaming experience goes: I have started playing version 1.9, and followed through the course of the campaign playing the Germans on Emperor and Deity levels, and giving both the US and France a couple of turns into the game. In my German games I have always been able to stage an invasion of the British Isles after defeating continental France, and before attacking Russia. In my most advanced game, by Mid-1942 "my" Germans had more or less easily conquered all of Europe, Russia up to the Urals, the entire Middle East, most of Africa, and a long range amphibious operation had captured New Caledonia, thereby eliminating the last remnant of the French. I have ended this game now in order to play 2.0, probably as some other civilization.
My impressions and suggestions:
Regarding gameplay in 1.9:
-
Drafting made things much too easy. In my last game as the Germans I ended up with more than 200 drafted German Infantry, which were great for garrison duty, but which took away much of the necessity to consolidate your conquests before moving on. So it is a good thing to eliminate drafting in 2.0 onwards IMO.
- City Air defence is much too strong. I suggest eliminate this, and have the player and AI relegate to AA units and fighters.
- For some reason which i have not been able to determine, the Soviet AI auto-production of Soviet militia never started.
-
Foochow in China is always razed by the Japanese because it starts with 0 culture. Increasing culture to 10 in the editor resulted in no razing at least in my playtest.
Regarding world map 2.0:
- Good job to eliminate some useless African cities.
- Add
rail-road between Ruhr and Amsterdam.
- The fish in the red sea between
Cairo and Suez Canal (rename: Port Said?) should be eliminated in order to prevent Suez Canal from growing unnaturally at the expense of Cairo. Sinai peninsula should be desert entirely. Add some bonus food resources SW of Cairo instead to enable growth here.
-
Kiev in Russia should get additional bonus food resources, whereas Charkov and Kursk should get none, in order to reflect actual size and industrial productivity (Kiev was the third largest city in the USSR)
-
Rename Wick to Aberdeen (most important city in Scotland north of Edinburgh/Glasgow)
- Take away the bonus food resouces from the desert cities
Riyadh in Arabia and
Murzuk/Sabbah,
Bisciara and
In-Salah in the Sahara: In my games these cities turned into some major industrial centers, while in reality they are not much more than desert oasis.
- The same applies to
Uganda. It should not become so productive.
- The same applies to Obdorsk in northern Siberia
- Move
Johannesburg one tile to the south. In reality this should be a major city, bigger and more important than Pretoria. It should also have some shield bonus to simulate South Africa's rich mines.
- Give
Sydney in Australia more shield boni. In reality it should be a much more important industrial center than Canberra. For the same reason, the autoproduction of ANZAC infantry should be moved there (sorry Melbourne
).
Regarding units:
-
Destroyer flotillas should be eliminated. AI will build only those, except maybe for a few Yamatos.
- In general, more of the early units should be made
obsolete by new developments. Otherwise the production menu becomes totally cluttered later in the game. And it is somewhat unrealistic that e. g. Germany should still build Panzer IIIs when for the same cost Panzer IVs or even Panthers are available.
- German
Panzer III should be made obsolete with the advent of the Panther. Panzer IIIs should upgrade to StuG IIIs (which is realistic since many undercarriages of this tank were converted to gun carriers and other such uses in reality)
- German
Panzer IVf2 should become available with Land 1941, probably more expensive, and they should be made obsolete by and upgrade to Panzer IVh.
- German
Me-410 (F) should be eliminated. This plane is quite useless in stats compared to the other fighters, and in reality it was never produced in significant numbers. Since it does not have a particular unit graphic there is also no loss of "flavor" here.
- German
He-219 does have pretty strong stats, giving a much stronger role than in reality. I suggest toning these stats down or dropping the plane altogether, and instead offer a beefed up, upgraded version of Me-109 or a FW-190 with longer range.
- German
SS Panzer 1944 should be renamed simply "Königstiger", in order to make it easier to differentiate from SS Panzer 1943 in the build menu.
-
Combat engineer is not necessary, should be dropped.
- Brits always build too many
Blackburn Skua, too many to reflect their actual usefulness in real life. I suggest to reduce their bombardment strength.
- New ship classes should make older classes obsolete, eg. Gneisenau class is made obsolete by GneisenauC2, Carrier is made obsolete by CarrierC2, ans o on, however no upgrading here...
- Italian
G-50 Freccia fighter plane: I do get an error when calling up this unit in the civilopedia, causing the game to crash.
- Germany should get at least a few heavy artillery as starting units. The Wehrmacht actually had these in the beginning of WWII, with the specific intent to use them on the Maginot line and Belgian fortresses. To compensate, just such a belgian fortress unit should be added, in the forest SE of Brussels.
-
Auto-production in Germany: If city air defence improvement is eliminated, install German 88 auto-production in Ruhr.
-
Auto-production in Italy: Give them poor Italians some transports from time to time, so that the AI can actually try to reinforce their Libyan possessions without having to walk around all of the Mediterranian getting in everybody's way.
Auto-production in Britain: Edinburgh should not auto-produce a British Tank brigade, as it becomes obsolete fast, but rather a Worker instead of London, which should auto-produce a Spitfire, to make the Air Battle of Britain more difficult for the Germans.
Well, these are all suggestions I can think of right now. Have fun. I certainly will, with this. Looking forward to the huge map.
Circumpolar