Gedemon:
This mod is incredibly detailed and fun to play, and I’m amazed at how much you have managed to wring out of vanilla Civ. I want to add suggestions to the long list here.
Caveats: I’ve played only the 1939-1945 map as France, but my only crash was caused by IGE, so none of my issues are technical. My experience otherwise has been similar to others’, in that although France did not completely fall (I held on to Marseilles), I did watch Italy run wild from Libya to Palmyra before I decided to plop dozens of American-British units into London, Gibraltar, Malta, and Suez.
(1) Basically, everyone seems to have run out of steam:
The USSR is slowly moving west after taking Finland, while Italy and Greece trade Skopje back and forth. Otherwise, no AI activity. It’s the summer of ’44 with no end in sight. More military operations clearly would help trigger AI activity.
(2) City population issues:
Accuracy
I’m not sure how population ratings correspond to the real world, but London can’t possibly deserve only a 24 rating, 4 more than Paris. Its population was 8 million PLUS suburbs in 1939. Currently, it’s back up to 8 million in London proper and the metro area contains about 13-18 million people. Paris still has only 2 million (11 million in its metro area, 5 million overall in 1939). It’s hard to judge this, but if we take 1939 London as holding 8-16 million (depending on definitions) and 1939 Paris as holding 2-5 million, then if Paris is rated at 20, London should be either 64 (if Civ cities represent province/regions, which makes sense to me, so I’d use this value) or 80 (if they represent urban cores only).
But that should fix Britain, because every other town in Britain is a hamlet in comparison. Although Birmingham still holds only 1 million, taking Paris as the standard it should be 1/8 of London (64/8), or 8, the current map value. Britain is clearly the sleeping industrial giant of Europe in 1939—and still it doesn’t compare with the United States of 1945!
Impact
Meanwhile, northern Italy has large city populations. This seems to have a direct impact on production, obviously. Although northern Italy industrialized under Mussolini, the south still hasn’t. So one method of cutting Italy down to size (recall, it barely managed to knock over Ethiopia historically) would be to reduce its cities to much lower numbers, especially in the south. (In Sicily, half the working population probably didn’t even contribute to the above-ground economy at all.) Like Germany, Italy built a lot of factories, but it didn’t have a lot of labor.
France seems to be represented accurately, in that none of its cities are too small. France used to be the most populous country in Europe before Germany and Russia upped their birth rates in the 20th century, so despite WW1 there should be a lot of people spread out and few tiny cities, even though Paris had about a quarter of the French population. (Pre-WW1 rule of thumb: Paris x 4=France; France x 4=”continental” Europe, i.e., excluding Russia, Turkey, and Britain.)
(3) Preexisting industrial base:
France was largely rural outside Paris and Marseilles, and this is why it has so little industry. This made it unable to ramp up to meet Germany. So far so good.
The problem is that historically, France was better prepared in May 1940 than any player could be in this game. (Granted, this might depend on what level you’re playing France.) This is because of the inability to raise infantry divisions.
According to Wikipedia, France had several army groups, each containing several infantry divisions, totaling about 50 divisions in the northeast alone. And that’s just the French and it’s just the infantry: there were also Poles, British, Belgians, Moroccans, Africans, etc., not to mention cavalry, mechanized, motorized, and Spahi divisions, which increase that number by dozens. I was able to field only about four or five divisions, primarily because of insufficient time to build barracks and actually raise/buy the divisions. France should have more barracks and better access to infantry, whether through convoys or labor. Otherwise, the map needs to start out with a decent, modern army; infantry alone won’t tempt a smart player to go too deep into Germany.
(4) Weak alliances:
Belgium also fought with a sizeable army by 1940, about a dozen divisions. It even lent a few divisions to the French. The two were allies throughout, not just friends. I think others have noted this problem, which is basically due to the way Civ handles alliances. Clearly alliances need to be carefully chosen; France is more important to Belgium than Britain, even though all were allied, so France needs to be the ally. And so on.
Most of these balance solutions can be handled through the IGE, so I’ll try them.