Fortress Europe

[clightning]

Well, if AI may transport unmoveable unit by in ships, they may also transport unmoveable air units by air carriers. Don't be so sure that AI don't have a carier. So, why wouldn't you make them unmoveable ships?
Just give'em more D to compensate the Pearl Harbor effect of "ships got catch in port".

 

[McMonkey]

The AI can't build carriers so I'm hoping this won't be a problem. If they do cheat themselves some carriers during my test I will look at using your method. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[McMonkey]

I'm up to turn 11 - January 1942 and I was wondering why the Africa Corps wasn't attacking SE of Bardia. There are no ZOC issues blocking them as there is a square directly east they could move into and attack my forces on the ridge at Hafaya Pass (where the 25pdr is sitting). I decided to experiment and changed the square directly NW of the Allied position (circled in red) from a non stackable Defences terrain (6 move cost) to stackable wasteland. When I played the turn the Axis units were unleashed and gave my forces on the ridge a real battering. Axis units also decided to move west for the first time, even though they had not been blocked before.

I will keep this change from now on as I want the DAK to attack Egypt (as a designer if not as a player ) and I will be looking at the other defences to see where the AI may be blocked from attacking. I can understand why the AI doesn't want to move into the Defences terrain, that would be suicidal, but I can't figure out why it wouldn't move around it.

Anyway, you may want to make the same change JPetroski as it will be in the final game!

Another questing. Does anyone know what stats I could give the Strongpoint unit to prevent the AI wasting their units attacking them? Is there a point where the AI realises it is futile attacking them?

 

[McMonkey]

Wow! Changing that one square unleashed the flood of pent up Africa Corps units around Bardia. It is now turn 20 (March 1942) and I have lost Egypt (bar Port Said) to the DAK and the Levant to a combination of Fallschirmjagers and Turkish troops. Baghdad is in Turkish hands and Mosul is under siege. I have decided to make the fall of Suez a game ender for the Allies (I will add this event), so therefore I have lost.

This is bad news for me as a player, but great news as a designer as it shows the Axis will attack aggressively when following its move unit event instructions. I will have to start over again to see what happens when the cork is taken out of the bottle from turn 1. Perhaps the Allies will do better if they don't have to contend with 10 turns of Axis reinforcements in one go. That seems logical. I can always increase the number of Allied reinforcements if it is too difficult. This is much easier than trying to make the AI a better attacker!

I have drawn up a big list of bugs and improvements to sort out, but none of them are game breakers so I think this first test can be considered a success! I will be interested to hear how you got on John. I think the Battle of the Atlantic and Malta still need a bit of work, but the Economy seems about right and the Axis does its job in North Africa and Russia.

 

[JPetroski]

Hey, I'm only into turn two, so I'd like to start over with the change. Can you do me a favor and send the modified .scn file along when you get the chance? Thanks!

 

[clightning]

Oh no! Prime minister McMonkey! Please don't fire or fire at the failed advisors, us.
We shall fight on beaches, we shall fight in London streets, and if have to, we shall fight in Canada!
------------------serious talking since here-------------------
Your SCN is very impressive for a effective Axis AI. For most other WW2 SCNs I feel a problem, that, if you play one allied power, the choice of a high difficulty level enhances all AI sides. As Axis faces UK/US/USSR, it seems allied powers benefit more from a high difficulty. I don't know much of the details but that's my experience: Axis always got stuck soon, unless make their special unit to be significantly cheaper.
Don't know how you make this, anyway your Axis is very impressive

 

[McMonkey]

Hey, I'm only into turn two, so I'd like to start over with the change. Can you do me a favor and send the modified .scn file along when you get the chance? Thanks!

Will do John. Most of the changes should be pretty quick to do. So I will try and get them done asap. The biggest difference is changing that square to stackable wasteland. The Axis just pummelled me with ten turns worth of reinforcements. I'm hoping that if that square is changed from the word go the Axis attack will be fierce, but the 8th Army will have a chance to hold them and push them back if played well.

Your SCN is very impressive for a effective Axis AI. For most other WW2 SCNs I feel a problem, that, if you play one allied power, the choice of a high difficulty level enhances all AI sides. As Axis faces UK/US/USSR, it seems allied powers benefit more from a high difficulty. I don't know much of the details but that's my experience: Axis always got stuck soon, unless make their special unit to be significantly cheaper. Don't know how you make this, anyway your Axis is very impressive

Thanks clightning. The Axis units have slightly better stats, ignore ZOC and Impassable terrain. They are created by events with co-ordinates starting under their untimate objectives. While these cities are in Allied hands the spawning of the Axis units is blocked, but as cities are captured the Axis units can appear and therefore they are always near to the front line. I also used 'move to' events which tell the DAK to head towards Suez and as there is only one road this works well.

I think I need to do some more work to get the U-Boats working as well. I have decided to do away with some of the U-Boats spawned in the Mediterranean and move them to the north and south Atlantic to prevent the Allies sailing around their spawning grounds. Other minor changes are things like reducing the number of Free French units, removing Lend Lease ships from the Axis, tweaking some stats and so on. Nothing revolutionary.

 

[Civinator]

McMonkey, I agree that for a modder it is satisfying, when the human player looses a game when the setting in a game is somewhat fair -even if that human player is the modder himself.

I have some questions from the last posts you wrote in this thread:

changed the square directly NW of the Allied position (circled in red) from a non stackable Defences terrain (6 move cost) to stackable wasteland.

How did you do stackable and non stackable terrain?

The Axis units have slightly better stats, ignore ZOC and Impassable terrain.

Can landunits, that normally are not allowed to cross impassable terrain, move over an impassable terrain if this terrain holds a road or a railroad?

 

[McMonkey]

McMonkey, I agree that for a modder it is satisfying, when the human player looses a game when the setting in a game is somewhat fair -even if that human player is the modder himself.

Funnily enough knowing what to expect didn't help me a great deal. I was quite happy to see the Axis could beat me, though I think if that square had been unblocked from the start the outcome would have been a bit different. I don't want players to lose, only lose if they play poorly, so mission accomplished thus far! On my next go I plan to push the blighters back to Berlin

How did you do stackable and non stackable terrain?

Stackable terrain is either an invisible airbase or fortress. In this scenario I chose to use fortresses as I needed to use some airbases. All you do to make them invisible is blank them out in the CITIES.bmp. There is a utility tool called 'CivStack' that will add either an airbase or a fortress to the types of terrain you choose. You can also add/delete using the cheat menu.

Can landunits, that normally are not allowed to cross impassable terrain, move over an impassable terrain if this terrain holds a road or a railroad?

No, roads and RR make no difference. There is a setting in the ToT rules file (@UNITS_ADVANCED section G) that allows you to set specific units to ignore Impassable Terrain and a setting at the end of @TERRAIN to set if that terrain is impassable or not: Defences, 6,2, 2,1,2, no, 0, 0, 0, Pln, 0, 0, 3, no, yes,; Gla

 

[clightning]

Good job McMonkey. U-Boats and Anti-transport is always another hard to make part. Looking farward to see that.
One question: How do you compensate the "Stackable" defence bonus in ground battle? As far as I know there are 3 ways but I'm satisfed with each of them:
1,make all terrain a 50% deduction on defence factor, but as air/naval units ignor Fortress anyway, their A should be cut to be balance with ground, but should keep unchanged when air/naval against each other...
2, make all ground units 100% more A, this is fine with the above problem but: if you apply this to Ignor Wall units they will be too powerful; if you keep Ignor Wall units A value unchanged then their capability is fine but their stats looks to be of no advantage to others so AI don't build them much; if make no Ignor Wall units for convenient, then that's ...lazyness and boring......
3, make all ground units Ignor Wall, same as make no Ignor Wall units.

Or there is a 4th way: there is a TOT patch that enable "Stackable" effect without Fortress or Airfield. This seems to be perfect but it has bug and not able to run some SCNs(I don't know why but it just can run some cant run some), perhaps that why we don't see it's used a lot.

Or Perhaps I shall post a new thread for this?

 

[McMonkey]

At the moment the U-Boats seem to attack the escort ships before they go for the Lend Lease. I think this may be due to the cost of the Lend Lease being lower than other ships. As Lend Lease are given via events I can give them a high cost and make them U-Boat magnets! I also need to block off areas of the Atlantic that the U-Boats ignore and improve on the existing 'move unit' events. Things will get easier for the Allies once they can produce Maritime Bombers.

As for the unit stats / stackable terrain. I probably had a system once upon a time, but I can't remember what it was now. I have probably thrown out the notes! What I have done is observed the behaviour of the units and tweaked the stats to get them working correctly. I would say that a new thread to discuss this would be worthwhile.

 

[Civinator]

Thank You very much for your answers, McMonkey.

It´s a pitty with the impassable terrain, as it would have been a great feature in a spacemod.

 

[McMonkey]

Just a quick update on progress. I have done all of the minor changes. Now I just need to sort out:

1. U-Boats stacking up
2. Axis bottlenecks
3. Axis push into Caucasus/Stalingrad

I have found the main locations the U-Boats stack up (11 locations) and will try and remedy this with 'move to' events. Do these work when the units are in cities? I will also try and fix the Caucasus problem with 'move' events. These were very successful in North Africa so I think it will work. The question of Axis attacks being blocked is a harder one to solve as I don't understand why they were blocked south east of Bardia when there was a route open to them. This may take a bit more experimenting/playtesting but I'm hoping these changes will be completed tomorrow evening. Other than these issues everything is working very well and I'm very optimistic about the next playtest!

 

[Civinator]

The question of Axis attacks being blocked is a harder one to solve as I don't understand why they were blocked south east of Bardia when there was a route open to them.

Could this be the vertical border in Civ 2, when units automove in the opposite direction?

 

[McMonkey]

I don't think so as they move east with all haste once the one square of Defensive terrain on their flank is changed to wasteland. I checked if making this square stackable made any difference (Defences are high movement cost, non-stackable and impassable to armoured units). Almost all Axis units ignore ZOC and Impassable terrain so I can't see how this would block them even if they wanted to move directly into the offending square, but all they had to do was go past it. I think that the square they had to move into (plains) was set as non-stackable. I don't know if this was by design or was a mistake but I might test to see if this was the problem.

There are several other points along the road to Suez where the Axis have to pass Defences and they seem to negotiate these ok, but I would hate to get into my next playtest and find another blockage point!

 

[McMonkey]

Just tested it both ways and the only way the Axis will move east towards Egypt is if the square (I will call it square X) is changed to stackable wasteland. Without understanding this phenomenon I can't prevent it from happening elsewhere. I guess I will just have to playtest and change it as it crops up! Hopefully this is just a one off incident though!!!

 

[clightning]

Thanks for explaination McMonkey.
Test a large SCN is always a hard work. Don't know much, but is it possible to play as a neutral power and Cheat to view whole map and how AI powers fight each other? In this way you don't need to find flaws one by one by yourself.

 

[Hans99]

Maybe this is interesting for some events:

The proclamation of the Free Republic Vercors in southern france on 3. July 1944, which was crushed by german forces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquis_du_Vercors

 

[McMonkey]

@clightning
As the scenario is only meant to be played as the Allies it isn't a big problem to test it as them. In fact I need to test it as them because I expect an AI controlled Allied Civ would lose North Africa quicker than I did in my last test

@Hans99
That would certainly be a worthwhile battle to simulate. Unfortunately I am out of event space. If I had more space there are a number of other battles and campaigns I would also like to explore (the Dieppe Raid, the Partisan war in Yugoslavia and Greece and the Battle of Hurtgen forest being a few ones I had to omit). I could always look at multiple events files, but that is a lot of work and complexity and I just want to get the scenario working well right now.

 

[JPetroski]

Well, I started again this afternoon at lunch after making the changes you advised. I'm not far in at all but have definitely noticed that the Axis immediately start moving east towards Egypt.

They destroyed the northern units guarding that pass SE of Bardia, and I had to move the southern and western units to counterattack on my first turn. I will be interested to see if I can hold them.

I'm also very interested to see how the economy goes. I figure I'm about 9-10 turns away from economic self-sufficiency without worrying about the U-Boats. I could have pushed that to 6 or so if I researched propaganda first, but felt that it was vital to have air support in North Africa before I pushed for bombers. I hope I made the right choice.

This scenario is so much fun because there is just so much that can go wrong.