Hi Agricola,
As always I appreciate your honest and frank feedback. I believe it helps make me a better designer, at least I hope so.
As I indicated on a few occasions, this was actually my very first attempt at designing and as such the original core of the scenario didn't benefit from the subsequent experience and knowledge I gained with my other games. I did work very hard in the last few months to try and updated it to make it more fun and challenging but obviously didn't entirely succeed. I did encounter some unusual behavior on the AI's part that I tried to correct, unsuccessfully. Case in point:
When subsequent air recce revealed only a very few enemy ships, I began to wonder if some major disaster had decimated the powerful Japanese fleet – i.e. an Oriental version of the Bermuda Triangle bug in MGE and TOT
Thanks so much for letting me know about this Bermuda Triangle bug. Now I finally understand what happened and, more significantly why it happens primarily to the Japanese AI.
During my scenario testing, I always add up all the powers units OOB at the end of each game I play (total of each unit type remaining versus total of each unit type killed and compare them to the total of each unit type each power started with). In this manner, based on whether I felt the game was too easy or difficult I can adjust the OOB of each power.
The first time I detected an unusual behavior was when I noticed the Yamato super battleships seemed inexplicably to disappear from the unit count, even though I never got the event message stating they had been destroyed during the game.
Later on, as you indicated, I noticed a couple of times during my testing as the American player, that a large part of the Japanese fleet seemed to disappear into thin air, usually near the end of the game. Looking into my saved games I would see that on one turn the units would exist and the very next turn have disappeared.
Upon further research, I realized that the Japanese AI usually liked to park a substantial number of its naval units in the East China Sea, particularly in tile [150,52]. My first thought was maybe this tile was some kind of mysterious Bermuda Triangle tile that the AI didn't like so I decided to try and force the Japanese AI to move out of this area by instituting a series of recurring monthly 'MoveTo' commands (see the 'Japanese naval moves in Pacific' section in the events file). That seemed to have limited results as the Japanese fleet would only appear to move out when enemy naval forces would approach the area.
Without any other idea, I decided, as a last desperate solution, to convert the hex [150,52] from an ocean to a land tile but as you confirmed that didn't resolve the problem.
Now I understand why the units would only disappear near the end of the game. Being a traditionalist, my strategy would always follow the same path from game to game, i.e. concentrate on Europe first while slowly grinding down the Japanese outer defenses first (hopping from island to island, Guadalcanal - Rabaul - Kwajalein - Admiratly Islands - Palau - Saipan). Since none of these outer islands ever built naval units or have any naval units homed to them there capture by the American/British wouldn't have any effect on the naval stack on tile [150, 52]. I imagine it's only when I captured one of the inner islands (Taipei, Okinawa or Kagoshima), any one of which might well have built a naval unit during the game, that the naval stack at [150,52] would be destroyed.
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but if I understood the thread on this topic properly, this problem wouldn't occur if all the Japanese units were homed to NONE, i.e. it's only when there is a mix of homed and non-homed naval units in the same stack and one of the homed naval unit's city is captured that the entire stack is destroyed.
If that is the case, I believe I can resolve this problem by 1) making all starting Japanese naval units homed to NONE and 2) removing the Japanese AI's ability to build naval units in its cities and rather randomly generating it's naval units through the events file instead (all homed to NONE). I just hope I have enough space left in my event file to do so.
In this manner, I hope to be able to resolve the disappearing act and generate the naval units away from the East China Sea . The reason this isn't a German AI problem as well is that most it's subs are event generated and homed to none and that its fleet is much smaller and due to the proximity of allied naval forces much more aggressive and therefore much less inclined to loiter around in stacks.
On the subject of the MoveTo command, can someone explain why it doesn't seem to work in case of the Japanese naval units, i.e. they don't seem to want to move out of the East China Sea and appear to be parked there during most of the game. Example of one of the MoveTo' commands:
;--- Sea of Japan to Okinawa
@IF
TURNINTERVAL
interval=1
@THEN
MOVEUNIT
unit=AnyUnit
owner=Japanese
maprect
156,40,160,40,160,48,156,48
moveto
167,39
numbertomove=ALL
@ENDIF
An American expeditionary force (8 Battleships, 2 Carriers, 19 Liberty Ships, 114 assorted ground units and ~ 40 P-47’s and P-51’s) landed at Sapporo. After the initial landings by USMC units, M-12’s rapidly overran the rest of the Japanese home islands
This is a huge force, one I imagine primarily bought with the gold generated by your Freight units. It seems to confirm more and more in my mind that Freight units are simply too powerful a tool in human hands and shouldn't be part of any scenario.
Nevertheless, the end run strategy was one I feared players (you especially
) might use against Japan, i.e. bypass the outer islands and go straight for the homeland. I initially tried to remedy this by adding bunker units to the Japanese cities but as I indicated in an earlier thread the AI would, much to my frustration, continuously load these units on transports and ship them off the island. If anyone knows of a solution don't hesitate to let me know.
Unfortunately, unlike with Germany I couldn't remove the transports from Japan's OOB as the AI, surprisingly, actually uses them to invade different islands in the Pacific.
The other frustrating item, is that the AI also has the tendency to load any ground unit built in Japan on freighters and move them off the island, thereby weakening the home island defenses. That's why I decided to add the outer defenses breached event which builds new units in Japan through the event file and removed the AI's ability to build new freighter units, once this event is triggered, to try and prevent any further off loading of units from the island. I probably should increased the number of units generated through this event all the same.
I also generate a number of units when any one city from a specific set of Japanese home island cities is captured. I should probably increase that number as well. I should probably increase the number of Kamikaze as well.
I suspect that it is easier to play the US than Britain, both for the protection provided by the oceans on both sides, its enormous industrial capacity and possibility of fighting Germany and Japan sequentially rather than at the same time
I originally thought it would be more difficult to play as the British as well but actually found it to be the opposite. I believe the primary reason for this is that Britain benefits greatly from its myriad overseas bases, which makes it a lot easier for it to move its troops from one theater of operations to another with possibly the exception of Australia. Personally, I've found this remote island continent challenging to defend against the Japanese (particularly if you don't use the rush buy unit capability).
The only serious question about the scen is why are all the continents except Australia joined up as a single unit.
Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by joining Australia up as a single unit?. Australia is an island/continent that is part of the British Commonwealth. Joined up to what? Are you talking geographically, militarily, politically?
In my next thread I will prepare a list of changes I'm planning on making. As always I'll be happy to get any feedback.