Fortress Europe

[Nicheal]

Wow. I am impressed quite much! That Thing is awesome!
You managed to do a World WAR, that is not a Game anymore... that makes me ill,
stressed and nervous. Played until Turn 19 now. These Units look awesome,
everything is quite well, sad that all these Panzer, Armors and Tanks are not named
like the Way i said before, and sad that my Tanks dont really work.

The German Troops seem to be a bit overcheated, i think. I wondered that
Germany won the War. Even if i kill 12 U-Boats West of Ire by Flights, there are
quite enough to damage my Convoy badly, 8 Cruisers, 12 Lend Leases, 2 Transports.
I thought that Convoy might be big enough. The German U-Boats were many Wulf Packs,
but not so many that they could kill a whole Convoy i thought. But for my Taste
these Wulf Packs are a bit too many, while the German Tanks near Tobruk are unbeatable.
They were fourty, and all my British Infantry and Tank Divisions might be thirty,
but the Germans grow and grow, and they have Naval and Air Superiority, thats quite annoying.
That Game is such ´overdone´, that there is no Hole to pike through, quite a bit too much
for my Taste. I dont want to make an Effort to get a ten Hours War... i want to make
an Effort to get a ten Hours Game, whatever! A Grande Game.

One Failure i found. Hehehe! And there McMonkey can tell me NOTHING, yeah!

Turn 19 a Message came to take Option 5 Batch File, November 1943.
I was wondering cause i had only Option 2 and have i overlooked some Messages?
McMonkey, that evil British, should search for turn=19 File to change that in, maybe, turn=49?



I will lose that damned War, getting a Heart Attack while making a Hitler Gruss...



A Major Annoyance is to me, that these damned German U-Boats can easily kill my Cruisers,
thats quite unrealistic. One Shot and Goodbye. If i only would be able to fight back,
but glugluglug and all is gone. But our U-Boats were hunted by Destroyers and Cruisers and Flights!
I want to be able to fight back by stronger Destroyers and Cruisers, and want to defend my
Battle Ships by Flights, that would be much more realistic. That USAF Bomber i dont need
at the Beginning, it can close the Mid Atlantic Air Gap. Stronger Battle Ships and the Possibility
to combine these Ships with Flights while the Transports are sailing would be much better i think,
and my Money is too less, i get one RAF Bomber every 3 Turns, and need 2 Turns to find Industry,
and then that Bomber is shot down. That also is too less. Germany was heavily bombed.
If that RAF Bomber would have a bit more Defense, the Germans would need more Fighters for,
and that RAF Bomber could hold on a bit more to earn more Money and to kill more Industry.

-Cruisers and Bombers

-April 1944 plus May 1944 the two Count= are missing

-Wanted to make my own D-Day near Caen and found out, that these Strongpoints
cannot be defeated by nothing except a Nuke. One Option would be to change these Strongpoints
by Wonder automatically into whatever, Flowers or so by Cheating the Germans a special Tec i thought.
Then read the README, but if i have to kill these Strongpoints by Following the Orders of the High Command,
these Orders, i think, have to be as Messages in Game to fulfill the Routes of Death.
Who knows exactly where to shoot at Germans first? Have i to cheat to look at, which Town to kill
for which Strongpoint? The Events.txt has to order the Routes, or i cant follow the Orders.
Give me the needed Orders to kill Towns and Strongpoints by historical Routes and give me some of the
needed Troopers for, everything else is a blind Date! There was once another WWII Game which followed
the exactly historical Routes by explaining and telling every little strategic and historical Movement...
if i NEED to follow the Instructions exactly, there should be some...

The Scenario asks at the End of the WWII, to where the Human Player marched on. Perhaps it would be
an Option to ask two Month before all these D-Days, to where the Human Player came til then,
told as a History and an Order to Future?

​

 

[McMonkey]

Thanks for the gameplay tips Nicheal, I will have a good look at them and see what changes are needed! Perhaps Bombers could be cheaper, Cruisers and tanks stronger etc... I will also take another look at the mission style gameplay and make sure is is clear for players what they are required to achieve. As I created the game it is easy for me to forget to tell the player important information as I just take it for granted!

I'm glad you are finding it difficult, it's meant to be! WW2 wasn't won easily! One point I would like to make is that I managed to get my convoys across the Atlantic pretty much unscathed after a bit of trial and error. There is definitely at least one system that works well, but I'm not going to tell you what it is, that's part of the fun You need to find a way to get your Lend Lease shipments to the UK if you want your economy to work and if you want the Tanks and Fighter-Bombers you need in North Africa. The strategic bombing is just a cash top up!

Another point I would like to make is that both John Petroski and myself managed to halt the Africa Corps and then push it back out of Africa. It is possible to do. You just need to up your game

Thanks for the feedback, I will take it on board and consider changes

 

[Nicheal]

You Brits were lucky to win that War at all...

What the WWII makes such horrible is the Fact, that these evil Nazis almost won.
I as a German must hate you for defeating us, i as a Human must thank you much,
and i as Arier can tell you, that we were proofed to be the ´Herrenrasse´ versus
the whole World, and we almost defeated you whole ´Underhumans´...

-If Goering would have won the War over Britain, the USA would have never got
a Chance to crack the Fortress Europe with an Atlantic Wall near Cardiff.
And the Chance was there to fight the British Air Force down! Damned Radar.

-If the British Divisions landing in Greece after the Defeating of the Italian Afrika Corps
would have been destroyed by our Italian, Rumenian and other Allies in our Flanks,
our Operation Barbarossa would have started quite early enough to conquer Leningrad,
Moscow and Stalingrad before the Russian Winter... Europe plus Britain would have
been conquered at all, the Western Frontier would have been easily hold versus US,
and in the East Russia would have been cracked down.

But its a Fact also, that the Germans had much less Tanks and Troopers!
IF you would increase Tank Offense Possibility, you could give the Germans less but
stronger, and my British Tank Divisions could march on through. The Cruiser better
in Defense and a bit more expensive, the Bomber better in Defense and nothing else.

As I created the game it is easy for me to forget to tell the player important information as I just take it for granted!

I know what you tell me... i created ´The Silmarillion´ by taking the Requirements for natural...
and if some Guys dont know the Silmarillion Book Word by Word or have never read it,
and if some Guys dont know the WWII exactly by History, they will be damned surprised and fearsome!
We Modders forget often to tell these Things the Player while WE wrote the Events,
and KNOW the Story exactly!

Another point I would like to make is that both John Petroski and myself managed to halt the Africa Corps and then push it back out of Africa. It is possible to do. You just need to up your game

yeah, to HALT i did quite well. But if i dont find any Possibility to crack these Germans
down they will grow and grow, while my Divisions grow and grow without a Chance to attack.

Spoiler :

At the Moment my Infantry Divisions have occupied all the Hill Positions
around Barda and nearly til Tobruk to split the German Mid Massive, and my
Tank Divisions and Artillery wait in my Centre to march on right to Tobruk.

A Scenario Grande! The only Major Criticism: No historical military Names for Units,
and they do not increase by Rules.txt, and i cannot play the Axis.
And my beloved Tanks are still toothless...

​

 

[McMonkey]

-If the British Divisions landing in Greece after the Defeating of the Italian Afrika Corps
would have been destroyed by our Italian, Rumenian and other Allies in our Flanks,
our Operation Barbarossa would have started quite early enough to conquer Leningrad,
Moscow and Stalingrad before the Russian Winter...

That's an interesting one. What if Hitler had trusted Italy, Romania and Bulgaria to guard his southern flank and launched Operation Barbarossa on time. The extra few months may have allowed Germany to take Moscow before winter began.

Would the British have stormed up through the Balkans, smashing all opposition and cutting off the German armies in Russia? I very much doubt that. The Italian, Bulgarian and Romanian armies may not have been the finest fighting forces of WWII but I'm sure they could have slowed down the limited number of British troops in the rugged Balkan terrain. So the British would have had bases in Greece for bombers to attack the Ploesti oilfields, but this wouldn't be on the scale of the later bombing of Germany.

So why did Hitler feel so paranoid about the British prescence in Greece. Did he just overestimate their strength and ability? Did he underestimate his allies capabilities? I guess Yugoslavia's defection to the Allied side was a major factor, but looking at it retrospectively it would seem like a huge error of judgement!

I guess this post would be more at home in the alternative history thread. No need to reply to this, I was just thinking the scenario out loud

 

[Nicheal]

But it is a Fact, that the Italian Troopers did NOT succeed in conquering the Balkan,
but the German Troopers. It is a Fact, that the Italian Offense on Egypt was huge,
but the British Forces, much more less, succeeded finally by Major Faults in Italian Strategy.
What a Surprise that huge Italian Forces were overwhelmed by British Lions.
That Shock, that the Italian Forces were not able to conquer anything might be
the Reason, why Germany later occupied Italy itself... how can we trust an Ally
who fails and fails? Its not a good Idea to let it happen, that British Regulars and
Yugoslavian Partisans could unite their Forces to occupy our Backyards, a strategic Disaster!
That might have opened another Way for a D-Day... but, the WWII is over,
and now Germany can conquer Europe by Peace Bonds easily... our Plan was successful finally,
cause Leopards dont fight each other...



Two Ideas for your Scenario Grande: Is there any Need in a Fortress Europe Skin?
And you could edit your Batch File by deleting the Order Pause in Chapter :done.
That will cause an automatical End of the Batch File after choosing Options.

​

 

[McMonkey]

@Nicheal
To be honest I don't bother using different skins as I find they make it difficult to view the information (shields, food, science beakers etc...) so I prefer to stick with the original skin. If you want to make a skin feel free.

I will look at making that change to the batch file.

 

[Nicheal]

WHAT?!?!?!? Dont tell me you still use this damned old and damned ugly original
Test of Time Skin! THAT

as I find they make it difficult to view the information

is a Matter of Colours and Style, not a Matter of ´they´ > all new Skins.
It seems to me thats an Excuse to not develop that Effort, which is quite a little!
You surely know there is a Batch File which loads anything out of a Source Folder
by automatical Backup of the so-called ´Original Files´, which i dont even knew anymore...
No no no. Catfishs Rusted Skin and Bocos Lawrence of Arabia Skin made me think
about the huuuge Advantage to create a Scenario an own looking styled View.
But do what you want to! I am insulted and disgusted right now...



From my Side i said enough so far, so do what you want to, its completely yours.



​

 

[McMonkey]

I'm not sure what the original looked like or if I am still using it. The one I have in general use is a grey stone looking boarder around the maps and info box and some kind of rough grey effect for the info box itself. What can I say, I like achromatic colours. Its a bit like when they changed the skin at Apolyton and everyone fled here for the neutral grey calmness

If you wan't to make a skin for Fortress Europe be my guest. I will include it in the final download and you never know, I may be converted!

 

[Nicheal]

The cool, McDude, at us Wizards is, that we find a Way... i looked at your
Fortress Europe README to assure you, that IS old and ugly...

Its a pity, that it seems even the great Mod and Modder McMonkey dont really uses
new and colourful and styleful Skins. Thats really easy and gives every single Scenario
a quite excellent Push right to smooth Feeling. I too was a bit fearsome at the Beginning
of these four .BMPs and this Batch File ´Copy the whole Folder into Main Directory
Test of Time´ load the Batch File, it will automatically backup your original Files´,
but if you made that once, its quite EASY and yeah, you copy that damned Folder into
Main Directory, make some click click, and Finis! Thats an Effort like to go for a pee,
dont be nervous, it will flow anyway!



​

 

[clightning]

Despite respect to the great Italian food and people, your discussion above remind me a joke:
If Italy join the Allies, it would take 2 German divisions to defeat it,
If Italy stay neutral, it would take 5 German divisions to guard the border,
If Italy join the Axies, it would take 10 German divisions to save and help it.
The world shall be grateful to Italy for its outstanding contribution for defeat the Nazi

 

[CurtSibling]

To be honest Nicheal, various skins don't change very much.

I have used the same "dark iron" skin for years, and I dimly recall it
being for a Bismark mod, but all I know is that is works for my eyes!

Your menu patterns in "icons" had to be changed, as they make it
hard to see what is going on in the game...The Skins are OK...

 

[AGRICOLA]

To be honest Nicheal, various skins don't change very much.

I have used the same "dark iron" skin for years, and I dimly recall it
being for a Bismark mod, but all I know is that is works for my eyes!

I agree, use whatever you like.

A long time ago I got fed up with scen skins that were either too cluttered or too bright and detracted from playing the game. I've always liked the very neutral CIV MGE skin and have converted my TOT files to match it exactly so that MGE and TOT look identical.

My operative word is "simplify". I standardly "doctor" (some call it butcher) Icons and Terrain files to minimize visual clutter. For example, I like to have the grid on but, after years of playing, have no use or need for the white outlines around city production squares. Roads/RR's are straight. After all, it costs extra labor/money to put in a crooked ones. Also it didn't take long for an early caveman to figure out that the fastest way to drag home the cute chick from the next cave was a straight line. Etc. etc. etc.

 

[AGRICOLA]

@McMonkey

Although I unfortunately don' have the time to play FE at present, I was interested in your changes since I playtested the previous version 3-4 years ago. It's almost a completely new scen. I looked over the Readme, loaded the first turn, checked a few things and came up with the following comments:


1. "*No exploits (IE exploiting the Factory events in an unrealistic manner)"
How do you define "unrealistic". IMHO, if the damned things are there and can be reached - BOMB 'EM!

2. "*The Airlift unit may only carry two units and only carries Infantry or Royal Artillery, no tanks!"
There seems to be no Airlift unit.

3. "*Ship chaining, black clicking etc..."
You're right, ship chaining is actually quite a problem in an ocean full of U-boats.

4. I would suggest that you might copy the Readme into a Word or similar text document and run a spell check. There are 20+ spelling errors.

5. I really don't like the absence of civ colors on the health bars. A major problem is that now there is no indication of whether one is facing a single enemy unit or a stack. Even the most cursory recce should be able to determine whether one is facing a regiment or an army. Also, excepting U-boats, the Axis ships appear absolutely identical to Allied ones. I don't think that's entirely fair to player.

6. Is there pollution in the scen? If there is no pollution, city windows could be decluttered by removing the pollution icon from the Icons file. If there is pollution, I can hexedit out of the scen.

7. Is there any good reason why AA units have Mv=0? Mv=1 would seem to be more realistic because these are not fixed installations and should be able to move. Also, the description says that only fundy can build this unit. That is not true.

8. Allies cannot bridge rivers even when they get the Pontoon Bridge tech. Can Allied Engineers ever build a bridge across a river?

9. I have a high regard for naval ops, so before bothering to read the Readme in detail and discovering that it is handled by events, I tried to figure out how to best launch Operation Torch from the US and from Britain. First I checked the Web for relevant historical facts and the compared them to what is possible in the game. My inescapable conclusion was that surface warship movement is too low by at least a factor of 2.

For Torch, the Western Invasion Convoy left Hampton Roads (Philadelphia/Washington area) on Sept 23, 1942 and 14 days later (Oct 6) arrived off Casablanca where it had to wait 2 days until Oct 8 before the surf had subsided enough to permit assault units to land.

According to Google Earth, the convoy traveled a straight line distance of ~3300 nautical miles. Zig-zagging and routing to avoid U-boats, would probably have added 30%, so the distance traveled would likely have been ~4300nm, or just over 300nm per day. That works out to about 12 knots, no problem for fast transports and troopships and just jogging along for the escorting warships. In the game, it takes 6 weeks.

Similarly, although the elderly British battleships that operated in the Med had a design speed of 23-24 knots they probably could maintain no more than 18-20. Despite this and because the distance between Alexandria and Tobruk is only ~310nm, a BB should be able to start from Alex before dawn, arrive at Tobruk at dusk, bombard the besiegers for a couple of hours and be back off Mersa Matruh at dawn. Something like the Japanese night bombardments of Guadalcanal.

The 24 hour dash up the Channel by the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau is a 5 turn crawl in the game.

I think that the Lend Lease ships have the correct Mv=10 for the 6-8 knots that they were capable of while zig-zagging, avoiding wolfpacks, bad weather, etc.. Similarly, U-boat and submarine movement rates look appropriate. However, surface warship Mv could be doubled without negatively affecting the game.

10. I see that AI naval units suffer from their usual lemming-like homing instinct and tendency to form large stacks. It's an unfortunate quirk of both MGE and TOT.

11. I agree with you that there is no reason to suffer any naval or air losses in getting all Lend Lease ships safely to Britain. Consequently, there really are no insurmountable problem with the Allied economy.




Looks like a great scen. The previous version was certainly a nailbiter.

 

[McMonkey]

Thanks for the feedback Agri. I really took your last feedback report very seriously and did a huge amount of work to remedy the issues you raised whilst making other improvements to the scenario. It is almost a new game in some ways. I think the biggest issue before was the economy. I think I have the balance about right now. It should be close to the edge to make the Battle of the Atlantic relevant, but it shouldn't be impossible to make ends meet. I won't answer every point, but I think a few need a reply.

1) Hopefully the events will work in a way that will prevent the factories from re-spawning once key cities are captured so no exploits will be possible. An example of an exploit would be to read the event, fortify units on all but one of the factory spawning locations, leave the key city/cities in Axis hands and then repeatedly bomb the re-spawning factory that will keep popping back up in the only remaining co-ordinate square! Not that I would expect anyone to do something that dastardly

4) I don't spell too good nohow without ma trusty spellchecker

all) I will look into the health bar colours and the other issues you raised and see what I can sort out.

Thanks

 

[clightning]

Hi Agri,
Regarding to the fleet speed (or some similar potential debate that may arise over air speed ),
it is true that a BB can dash up the Channel within 24 hours,
but how long it may take for the BB to prepare for a second bombard run?
I think this “overall speed” should be more important to decide the unit's speed in game,
Besides that McMonkey may be very reasonable to make the ships slow enough to give air powers a chance to intercept them.

 

[McMonkey]

In the original version of Fortress Europe Operation Torch was launched from Britain and the US. This took a lot of planning and in the end I decided to have it as a reward event for success in Libya. I could look at making ships a little quicker, but as the only major long distance amphibious operation is sorted I am inclined to go for better gameplay stats over realism. After all an aircraft can fly hundreds of miles in a few hours but in game it may take several weeks. There are always some compromises to be made when working with the Civ2 engine.

 

[AGRICOLA]

1) Hopefully the events will work in a way that will prevent the factories from re-spawning once key cities are captured so no exploits will be possible. An example of an exploit would be to read the event, fortify units on all but one of the factory spawning locations, leave the key city/cities in Axis hands and then repeatedly bomb the re-spawning factory that will keep popping back up in the only remaining co-ordinate square! Not that I would expect anyone to do something that dastardly

I can understand your concern about abusing Factory respawning but, because of the way the "randomize" parameter works, you have no need to worry about misuse, abuse or exploits.

In an event that uses "randomize", the algorithm randomly (we hope) picks one of up to 10 locations. If, for whatever reason, it cannot spawn in the first location, the event ends and no unit is spawned. The algorithm does not search through the remaining spawning locations to find one that works. If there are 10 spawning locations and 9 are blocked, the chances for a Factory to be respawned are 1 in 10.

Also, loss of any of the "trigger" cities will definitely stop respawning.

 

[McMonkey]

That's good to know. I can remove that comment from the read me. I wasn't for a moment suggesting anyone would try such a ploy...well Ok perhaps for a slight moment

I hope you get a chance to try it out at some point in the not too distant future. I will try and get the changes done soon so give me a shout if you do decide to have a go and I will provide you with the updated files!

 

[Catfish]

In an event that uses "randomize", the algorithm randomly (we hope) picks one of up to 10 locations. If, for whatever reason, it cannot spawn in the first location, the event ends and no unit is spawned. The algorithm does not search through the remaining spawning locations to find one that works. If there are 10 spawning locations and 9 are blocked, the chances for a Factory to be respawned are 1 in 10.

That's not true. The next location in the list is checked until a suitable one is found. If none is found, then the CreateUnit action will abort. This can have a marked effect on events that use high Count parameter values. There are a couple of posts about this at Apolyton:

• A Pseudo Intelligent AI Defence
• Calling Catfish

 

[clightning]

I don't meant to dig up a old thread without a good reason...
But the Battle of Altlantic is soooooo hard.
Allied economy start with $1600, each turn brings -$420 deficit, each Lend Lease brings $400 income. Strategic Bombing can hardly be count on as a stable income. So, in the long run, Allied must keep roughly 1 Lend Lease arrives each turn to stay not bankrupt.
But the escort fleets in US coast can hardly stand more than 1 turn in the open sea, many are sunk, the lucky ones got badly injured so they must go back home to be repaired or they don't stand a chance at all in the next turn. But after being severly damaged their speed is cut to 2-3, thus they need many turns to return and be repaired... Then RN come to help but the arttrition is also awefully fast. And new build cannot compensate this, not by far. The Maritime bombers contributed many kills of the U-Boats, but even their highest effciency of 1 kill each turn, they cannot stop the U-Boats from attacking the fleets. And Land Lease ships need 5 turns to arrive in UK.
At the 5th turn, the first package of 3 Lend Lease ships are 1 turn away from Liverpool, the Ministry of Treasure is on the verge of selling city assets, the Allied Navy have only less than 10 ships that are still operational for escort.
I wonder how to bring the next Lend Lease package savely...and the next of next...
The only sustainable method I figure out is, perhaps, stop the Stratigic Bombing, and use the saved Bomber and Maritime Bombers to circle the fleet...