Hi, I played a game of this scenario about a month ago, and had a great time. It is quite nicely done, and the game feels pretty balanced. I did however have some issues and feelback, as follow.
Issues :
- The southern part of the map is cut off, so south Africa, the south part of Australia and south America are missing. If I open the map I download directly with the civ5 map builder, I get this error, so it is not even a result of my tampering. I am wondering if I am possibly missing some other mod or something?
- The game was nice and playable until sometime in 1941, and now crashes during the soviet union's turn. No matter how many time I try, I get the same result. Are there some logs somewhere I could check to see what went wrong?
- Playing as the Italians, I lose the ability to construct anti-air guns after the discovery of the first AA gun upgrade tech (Basic Ballistics I think it is). Somehow that seems to obsolete the old model, but not allow me to make the new model.
I also have a number of suggestions for tweaks and balancing.
Land:
I like the current model, where cities provide Soldier reserves ("horses") for troops. I think it is a great system, but somehow it always seems that the infantry limit is too low compared to the tank limit (iron supply). Also, there are no fallback troops to make that cost no supplies. I propose the following:
- Infantry go from 2 to 1 "horses"
- Militia go from 1 to 0 "horses"
- Tanks go from 0 to 1 "horses"
This would still impose a limit on all main combat troop types, tanks and infantry, while not limiting the number of support and reserve troops one can make. Some types support troops are still obviously limited by Iron, but this would still allow some garrisoning of militia in the rear lines without too much impact on the front lines. This would also turn infantry into the most common soldier type, which is accurate in WW2. You should see many more infantry than anything else.
Naval:
I am finding that there is not real variety in the naval units. Sure, there are plenty of units, but they are very linear. A battleship is stronger than a cruiser, that's all. I propose the following:
- Submarines are currently only effective against transports, but their damage to other ships is minimal. They should get some kind of bonus vs cruisers and battleships, to be a threat to these kinds of ships.
- Cruisers should provide some kind of air intercept type defense for surrounding ships, to protect them from aircraft attacks.
- Submarines should only be able to be attacked by light cruisers and destroyers, and spotted by destroyers. Heavier ships did not carry any anti-submarine weapons. Some of this may already be implemented, not 100% sure.
This would give more distinction between the ship types, give some more rock/paper/scissors type of interaction, and force a bit more variety. Currently, I see no reason not to make battleships. Less battleships will still be more effective than more lighter ships.
Air:
I find that there is not enough of a distinction between lighter and heavier bombers. I see no reason to make lighter bombers, other than cost saving. Here is what I propose:
- Light bombers (=CAS) should be more effective against ground and naval troops (I think they already get a bonus, but they are still not noticeably more effective than heavier planes). They currently have a shorter range, which seems adequate.
- Medium/Heavy bombers have a higher range. They should be less effective than light bombers against ground troops, but have the ability to destroy terrain improvements (bomb resources).
I feel this would stop making light bombers the poor man's heavy bomber, and give it the close air support role. This would increase the strategy in picking one's planes, and placing them on the battlefield.
That's all for now. Once again, thank you for this great mod.
. So, the only units adding tile improvements to the map will be great people and to a lesser extent infantry (who can build forts, but the map starts out with plenty already).
