WWII Europe: Small, Fast & Beautiful for IV - Discussion & Creation Diary

[NP300]

Another question is when to start the scenario. I see 4 options.

1) September 1939 and invasion of Poland
2) April 1940 and invasion of Norway
3) May 1940 and invasion of France
4) June 22 1940 after France and Germany sign an armistice

I think the principle used should be the one used by Civ4's designers: That of interesting choices.

I don't see the invasion of Poland as providing interesting choices. You'd have to invade Poland and that would be the end of it. Also, from a realist perspective, peace was still possible after the invasion of Poland. There was a phony war while Chamberlain may have considred peace. Peace came to be out of the question only after Churchill came to power. So I don't think 1939 leads to interesting choices.

Norway does provide interesting choices for Allies and Axis. Historically they both invaded Norway, the Germans just got there first. The choice for both would be whether to invade Norway or attack elsewhere.

The invasion of France doesn't produce interesting choices in my view. You have to invade it and that's it. When playing the CivII WWII scenario I was bored when trying to invade France optimally as the Axis player. Likewise, the Allies had to defend France. The interesting choices came later.

Now we have the possibility of June 22, 1940 after the armistice. This leads to the most interesting choices in my view. Now the Axis would control northern France but not the south. Vichy France would be neutral (but hated by the English diplomatically). The Axis and Allies could both try to get Vichy France as an ally. The Allies would have the option of attacking Vichy France, as they did in real-life. Both sides could try diplomacy to win over all the neutrals: Vichy France, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, etc. By June 22, 1940 Italy was already on the Axis side so this would be an added bonus.

The Axis could consider trying to invade England. They could try to fight England in North Africa instead. Both these choices would open the Axis up to attack by the USSR from the other side. The Axis could attack the USSR and neglect England, risking attack from the West and South. Or the Axis may even try to reach an agreement with the USSR, as happened in real-life and which should be difficult in the game.

The Axis would also have choices to focus on: Concentrate on the Navy and cutoff allied suplies? Concentrate on the air force? Etc.

The Allied player could make some choices. He could choose to invade minor countries like Greece or Vichy France and use them as bases. Or he could try to get the USSR into the war, etc.

An extra advantage of starting in June 22 1940 is that the Axis would also have northern France. This increases the size of the Axis to be more in line with the size of the Allies and USSR, which were huge. So this could aid in game balance while providing the most interesting decisions.

As for the USSR, it could be given some interesting choices as well. The USSR had a war with Finland. So the USSR could have a choice of re-invading Finland, or invading Turkey, Iran or Iraq. Or it could take a shot at invading the Axis. If the USSR invades Turkey and Iran this could be a path to peace with the Axis and expanding at the expense of the English towards India or Egypt.

So as I see it, the main locked war should be Axis versus England. Alliances with the USSR should be possible but made very difficult by making the Axis, USSR and England all hate each other quite a bit. The Axis and USSR should probably hate each other more than either hates England to better reflect what actually happened.

 

[Paasky]

A lot of answering in a single night. Good to see people are interested

But it could have had a serious impact had events turned out differently. The Germans seriously considered sending the Iraqis or Iranians air support from bases in Syria (Vichy French) or Crete (I forget which).

And they did. They harassed the convoys for a few years until the Allies invaded Syria and Lebanon in June 1941. After that it was too risky.
As the Iraqi Rebellion was in April -41 & the invasion was in June -41, there could be some relation to it

Alternatively, what if Turkey had joined the Axis or had been occupied? Or what if the Germans had fully occupied the Caucasus by the end of 1941 or 1942? Once more, the Axis would have had a land connection with Iraq and Iran.

Well, Turkey is in the map. wiki: "During World War II, Turkey signed a peace treaty with Germany and officially remained neutral until near the end of war", so it had the same relationship with Germany as Sweden.

Also, what if the Iraqi or Iranian resistance had been more effective? Then they might have tied up Allied forces for a while.

To make them effective, they would've needed equipment, which they got in very small amounts from the Axis, and training. As they were, the British could win battles even with equipment from the late 20's & early 30's and outnumbered 1 to 5.

Or it may be a better option to simply give the Allies free cargo ships with units at the west end of the atlantic every few turns. Then the Allied player would need to safely bring the transports to Britain over u-boat infested waters. The problem with this may be that the Allies then wouldn't have bases at the western end of the atlantic from which to base air attacks on u-boats or in which to repair ships.

Exactly what I'm going to do And there will be bases in Greenland & Iceland (OB being given automatically when the Axis declare war on Denmark. Also, as Denmark is Pro-Allied, it will be easier to make OB deals)

On another note, how can the importance of the Suez canal be simulated? Since a restricted Europe map doesn't have too many transport ships to move across it, it can be difficult to simulate. In previous civ games it was done with a wonder. So it may be worth considering either a wonder or creating transport ships that have to be sent across the Suez canal. Another possibility would be to let it contain a wonder that provides free warships every other turn. So if the Alies own it, they get warships to help them ferry the transports. If the Axis take it, it helps them stop the flow of Allied transports. This may alos work for Gibraltar.

Creating transport ships. I made Gibraltar work in the same way as Suez/Istanbul. But should it be possible to simply walk from Spain into Africa? I don't think so, and that's why I have added Mountains below Gibraltar.

you can also have a unit upgrade to as many as you want.

But how do the upgrades work? Like this?:
Every unit from every class is buildable (as I can build archers & longbowmen at the same time)
The upgrade paths go from worst stats>best stats
If the best stats unit in a class is upgradable into another class then the old class becomes obsolete, UNLESS the new class unit can't be built (no resources) OR the new class unit has worse stats.

Are all of these assumptions correct? Are there any others to worry about?

From a design philosophy, I think it is important that you clarify the unit scale. For instance, does an infantry unit represent a division or a regiment?

Regiment. Otherwise I might just have 4 units: Inf Div, Tank Div, Fighter Div & Bomber Div. And that would be enough.

U-boats ...

Long post... So the old "Light Sub > Heavy Sub" is quite wrong... Well, I never was that good on the navy department.

Something else to think about: time-scale.

What would a turn represent: a week? a month? 3 month?

1 or 2 weeks.

Since this is a scenario where each country has an OOB at the beginning, a week is an interesting design decision, IMO. However, this should be reflected in the production time of the unit.

OOB?
The problem is that I don't like it takeing a loooong time to build an unit. But this can be made a user preference in the game speed

A system could probably be designed for the creation of new infantry unit, but it would probably be impossible to do so for the healing of existing units. 50 infantry divisions losing 10-25% of their manpower in a month would be a catastrophic event since the replenishment of those division would be next to impossible in the short term. Building such a system would be a real-pain, if at all feasible.

Maybe 1/2 or even 1/4 of the default healing speed could do this?

Another question is when to start the scenario. I see 4 options.

1) September 1939 and invasion of Poland
2) April 1940 and invasion of Norway
3) May 1940 and invasion of France
4) June 22 1940 after France and Germany sign an armistice

1)
But these could be added into the game start setting while starting the game. And the changes in cities/techs/politics could be scripted ("If GameStartTime = April, 1940 Then " etc.)


Great ideas everyone, but always remember that they must be simple enough to implement. Partly because I don't want things to get too hard to make, and partly because I don't want this scenario to have a deep learning curve. It should be historical & accurate, but id some of that has to be sacrificed for gameplay (or my lazyness ), so be it.

 

[Paasky]

EDIT: Got Civ4FormationInfos.xml back, thankyou.

 

[DarthCycle]

I agree, lots of good idea going on.

You're going to have to update your design document at least once a week or we'll have to browse the posts every time, not very time efficient.

Also, you should probably define stages for the development. For instance, what the 1.0 version will feature so we can focus and collaborate on these elements mostly. Any ideas that is worthwhile to investigate, but too complex or time-consuming can be postpone to the next version. We will definitively have many versions of your mod. The idea is to define deliverable so that the mod can effectively evolve gradually.

Things that we do need to refine:

- technology tree
- units
- countries (how each faction is different from the other). We should probably start with the main one (UK,Germany,USSR) and alternate/minor (France,Poland,Spain,Italy,Turkey, Danemark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Greece). US should probably not be a playable faction (open to debate of course).

The tech and units are closely related. So when we modelize the various unit, we should incorporate the tech tree in the design process.

I will do some work on armor and infantry: unit type and tech tree. I will do this for Germany, as a starting point. You can then give me your comments and I'll adjust. We can then use this as a template and apply this to the other areas (other unit type and other country).

I'll work on these unit type (main branches, will probably evolve):
1) Infantry: infantry, paratrooper, marine, motorized infantry
2) Armor: armor, anti-tank, assault gun, mechanized infantry

I will separate the tech tree by year: 1938 to 1945. For each unit type, I will define the main technological requirement and development path.

I will also do some thinking/research/model into the promotion system since it's closely related to the units.

Lastly, OOB stands for order of battle. It's basically the unit composition of a faction. Most major countries OOB are known for WWII for the different period of the war. So it's possible to build a somewhat realistic OOB in the scenario. Of course, since the unit scale is regiment, this will add some complexity into this exercice but I do agree with the design philosophy to do so. It will be more fun at the regimental level because there will be more diversity in units.

 

[Paasky]

If you've got civ3 conquests, check the original WWII scenario for some ideas if you want.

It began from BETA1 and after 6 months was in v1.0. After yet another 6 months, came v2.0 and now, 5 months after v2.0, v.IV is being made. Hopefully I can get the BEAT out for x-mas.

I'm making a wwii_mini scenario atm, it's only 64x40 so that I can test it on this scheiß-machine. Nothing fancy, just the maps for the large one (resized) and the cities. I might add it as a WWII Light version though.

I was investigating the different xml's and noticed that I could change the scale of the model for differnt units. This means that the Light Tank, although using the same model as the Medium Tank, will be smaller

 

[Paasky]

Here's Gibraltar from the wwii_mini.wbs:
Should it be
1) Like it is
2) Passable with ships
3) Passable with ships & land units?

 

[Fëanor]

Paasky i added you to my MSN, come online i'll send you the XML

Map looks great, i think that Gibraltar should be passable by all ships (however the owner should be able to bombard enemy ships when they try)

i reworked a bit the unit tree you pm'ed me, the asterisk are on the units i added (inc. Pedia ex. Detailed Stats.)

Pz 38(t)* -> Marder III* -> JgPz 38(t)*
Pz II* -> Marder II* -> Wespe*

Pz III-F* -> Pz III-J* -> StuG III-G*
Pz IV-E -> Pz IV-J -> JgPz IV

Pz V-A -> Pz V-G -> JgPa
Pz VI-E -> Pz VI-B -> JgTi

 

[DarthCycle]

I just finished some brainstorming on unit type for some of the ground unit.

The unit size is regiment.

1) Infantry: Ground Infantry, Mountain, Paratrooper, Marine, Motorized Infantry
2) Armor: Armor, Mechanized Infantry
3) Artillery: Towed Artillery, Self-propelled artillery

A typical regiment is composed of 3-4 battalions. I propose that the promotion system represent the addition of a battalion to the regiment

The possible battalion for ground unit are:
1) Reconnaissance (first strike)
2) Anti-tank (bonus against armor and mechanized infantry)
3) Assault-gun (bonus against infantry)
4) Anti-air (bonus against air)
5) Combat engineer (bonus when defending and/or attacking a city, river crossing)
6) Logistics (healing)

Each different battalion would have numerous level and be tech dependent. The ability in () is just to give a basic idea what the battalion would provide in ability. Of course, they will be more detailed.

For example, when you research Panzer II and 75mm gun, you are able to get the Marder II (tank destroyer) battalion. This battalion could be applied to: ground infantry, motorized infantry, armor and mechanized infantry.

When you research Panzer III and 75mm gun, you are able to get the Stug III (assault gun) battalion. This battalion could be applied to: ground infantry, motorized infantry, armor and mechanized infantry.

I think this model is somewhat more realistic. You can have multiple specialized battalion (promotion) added to a regiment. Instead of have a separate regiment unit for each type.

For example, a typical (early-war) Panzergrenadier division was composed of: 6 battalion of truck-mounted (motorized) infantry, 1 battalion of tank, and various suport battalion composed of artillery, reconnaissance, combat engineer, anti-tank and anti-aircraft.

A typical Panzer division was composed of: 1 panzer brigade (2 panzer regiment = 5-6 panzer battalion), 1 artillery regiment, 1 recon battalion, 1 anti-tank battalion and 1 air defense battalion.

When you think about it, it doesn't make sense to have a regiment unit composed of only anti-tank or anti-gun battalion. However, you could abstract it and say it is a ground infantry regiment reinforced by anti-tank weapons. But with such a model, you couldn't reinforce the regiment with different level (or model) of anti-tank weapons or a combination of various battalion type.

Let me know what you think of this model before I move on and dwelve into the details.

 

[Paasky]

Hmm... It's quite different from the old way that I did it, which was the one I've got now.
But I think I'm growing to like as I dwell on what it allows (and dis-allows) me to do.
It would reduce the amount of units to do though.
One thing though: You should be able to construct new promotions in cities. And that could be difficult.

Right now it's in the "maybe" category, so give me enough Pro's and I'll take it.

Perhaps making promotions into two categories: Buildable & Battle. You could construct the buildable promotions, but only get Battle promotionsfrom winning battles. These could then give a +10% for whatever battalion you have in the group. Give me a way to do this, and it's definately in

This idea has some resemblence with the armies of civ3 (except that the army itself has an A/D rating)

Oh, one thing: Infantry are all Marine, and no other units can be. And the penalty for a marine attack will be +300% for the defender, making landings/river crossings suicidle with anything else than infantry.
Also, cities will always give tanks a -50% strength, so that infantry will have some real use, even for the nations which can build heavy & very heavy tanks.

 

[NP300]

Here's Gibraltar from the wwii_mini.wbs:
Should it be
1) Like it is
2) Passable with ships
3) Passable with ships & land units?

Interesting. From the standpoint of realism it ought to be passable but from a gameplay perspective it may be best not to make it passable to ships.

But, how about this:

Make it passable. Make the naval tiles around gibraltar/suez/constantinople/Malta be a special kind of tile. This tile could have a huge defense penalty. It could also have a high movement cost to force ships to spend at least one turn in the special tiles. So now, whichever civ has naval units stationed there could massacre any ships that try to go through.

This can be justified as a defense penalty when passing the straits.

The only problem would be that the Aixs, for instance, could exploit this to attack british ships passing by the straits. It could perhaps be remedied by carefully adjusting the tile movement costs. For instance, there could be 3 special tiles to go through. The middle one could be the only one with the defense penalty. The two on the edges could just have extra movement cost but no defense penalty. If the movement cost is high enough then it could take the ships 3 turns to go through them. In this case Axis ships might will find it hard to attack the British ships going by the tiles. They could never get to the middle tile from safe ground. Only the British (or owner of gibraltar) could hit the vulnerable middle tile with impunity.

 

[Paasky]

Good idea! Remember, we're talking civ4 here. So it's quite easy actually to give only the owner of the straight no defensive minuses (maybe change the tile(s) by a script or something)

 

[jbfballrb]

just a note, in case you havent noticed, on the tech treee. each of those little tech rectangles = 1, and the lines get drawn and redrawn.

 

[Paasky]

???

1234567890

 

[dreamcrusader]

This is looking great fellas, cant wait!

 

[Infinit1]

Thinking along NP300's line of thought, how about just having the one tile that requires the huge amount of movement and has the defense penalty. This should be fine to the owner of Gibralter because they can go around it by entering one side and leaving the other side of the city.

By the way, the scenario is looking great and sounding even greater! Keep up the good work fellas.

One more thing, why is all of Europe covered by the Spanish?!?

 

[jbfballrb]

they didnt lose it all. its an alt history template

 

[DarthCycle]

Paasky: at first glance, this model looks like it would support less units, but when you look closely, it does offer a lot of different one.

Infantry types/models (first draft)
Ground Infantry: 1937 =>1939=>1941=>1943
Mountain: 1939=>1941=>1943
Militia: 1937=>1939=>1941=>1943
Paratrooper: 1939=>1941=>1943
Marine: 1939=>1941=>1943
Motorized: 1939=>1941=>1943

That makes 20 infantry units! Each of these infantry has different statistics (power,speed) and abilities (river crossing, air drop, terrain specific bonus, defensive bonus, attack bonus,etc…)

Armor types/models (first draft)
Armor: Pz I=>PzII=>PzIII=>PzIV=>TigerI=>TigerII
Mechanized Infantry: 1941=>1943

That makes 8 different armor units. Not bad.

Now let’s look again at the proposed promotion/battalion system

Reconnaissance: 3-5 levels (details to be defined)
Anti-tank: 5 levels (JagPz I, MarderII, Marder III, JagPzIV, JagTiger)
Assault-gun: 3 level (Wespe, StugIII, SgzIV)
Air-defense: 3-5 levels (details to be defined)
Combat engineer: 3-5 levels (details to be defined)

With about 30 different promotions/battalions, there is a lot of different unit combination possible here.

You want an effective armored tank killer: use a PzIII with 2-3 level of anti-tank battalion reinforcement. You want an effective city defender: use a 1939 infantry with 2 battalion of combat engineer. You want an effective general purpose infantry: use a 1939 infantry with 2 battalion of assault-gun.

The key here is that all levels of battalion promotion are tech dependent. Because of this, higher levels get really effective (and they are cumulative). By the time you get to JagTiger anti-tank battalion, such a unit will decimate (ie really effective) any armored opposition. No need to have a unique “tank killer” unit like a buildable StugIII unit or a JagTiger unit. As I mentioned earlier, at the regiment level, that unit model doesn’t work. That is, if you’re trying to be somewhat realistic of course.

As far as buildable battalion system, I have an idea. You introduced the system where a specific city improvement building is required to build certain unit, tank factory for example. We could introduce an add-on to the factory (similar to the power model currently used) that makes the factory grant specific battalion/promotion to any unit that’s built from the factory. For example, an anti-tank factory add-on that would grant 2 levels of anti-tank battalion to tank unit built from there. Only one add-on could be used on a tank factory but you could replace it with better add-on when available later in the war. 1945 anti-tank tank factory add-on could give 5 levels of anti-tank battalion for example, basically an uber tank killer unit factory.

Apply this design philosophy to artillery, navy (surface and sub), fighter, bomber and missile unit type, and we can easily have over 100 different unit. Every faction has a different tech path and promotion/battalion. That’s a lot of unit diversity if you ask me.

Other things you mentioned
- All infantry units are able to conduct invasion and river crossing, but marine should be the most effective unit. From a design perspective, I prefer to give a unit a penalty when it’s trying to conduct an operation that it’s not designed to do. In this case, a regular armor could conduct an invasion but it would get a big penalty. It’s not that the infantry unit is more effective when it’s defending a beach; it’s the tank that’s not appropriate for the invasion.
- The same could be said for combat in city, forest and hills, armor unit should get a penalty when attacking on those terrain. Engineer and mountain infantry should also get a bonus on defense.
- Basically, armor unit should only be used (ie very effective) on open-terrain: tundra, plain, desert, grassland.

 

[Paasky]

One more thing, why is all of Europe covered by the Spanish?!?

Actually it's the Inca Empire

Paasky: at first glance, this model looks like it would support less units, but when you look closely, it does offer a lot of different one.

The WWII SF&B for had almost 200 units, let's see if we can beat that!

As far as buildable battalion system, I have an idea. You introduced the system where a specific city improvement building is required to build certain unit, tank factory for example. We could introduce an add-on to the factory (similar to the power model currently used) that makes the factory grant specific battalion/promotion to any unit that’s built from the factory. For example, an anti-tank factory add-on that would grant 2 levels of anti-tank battalion to tank unit built from there. Only one add-on could be used on a tank factory but you could replace it with better add-on when available later in the war. 1945 anti-tank tank factory add-on could give 5 levels of anti-tank battalion for example, basically an uber tank killer unit factory.

One thing: How can new buildable promotions be added into existing units by constructing them? That is the single largest problem with this idea.

Other things you mentioned
-All infantry units are able to conduct invasion and river crossing, but marine should be the most effective unit. From a design perspective, I prefer to give a unit a penalty when it’s trying to conduct an operation that it’s not designed to do. In this case, a regular armor could conduct an invasion but it would get a big penalty. It’s not that the infantry unit is more effective when it’s defending a beach; it’s the tank that’s not appropriate for the invasion.

In every unit can make a marine assault (sea to ground or over river). But the units without the Marine promotion will give the defender a +300% bonus (ex: Rookie Inf @ Grassland [S10+300%+50%=S45] defending against an attacking Rookie VH Tank [S40]). If the unit does have the Marine ability, it won't give that bonus for the defender. This is why I don't think there needs to be a Marine unit, but maybe a "Marine Training" promotion to give it +20% when doing a marine attack?


Some questions:
1) Can promotions be civ-specific?
2) How to make units/buildings/techs civ-specific?

 

[Fëanor]

@DarthCycle
i spent last night brainstorming on how to adapt HoI2 like rules for a WWII, my outcome was something very similar with only a couple of major differences.
Those are: Adv. Light Tanks (Pz II L), Heavy Tanks (Tiger I&II) and Superheavy Tanks (Maus) as promotions, the other promotions would be:
Art, SPArt, Rocket Art, SP Rocket Art, AT, TD (SP AT), AC (Armored Cars), AA and Eng.
Pretty Much the complete list of Hearts of Iron II except the Police attachment

 

[Paasky]

... which is going to be added, either as it's own unit or a promotion