Imperialism II PBEM

[Prof. Garfield]

The French Navy has expanded so much in the past couple of months that an Armoured Cruiser is even seen on a modestly sized lake in French East Africa.

I've moved my troops around, so go ahead and modify the railroad multiplier.

 

[Patine]

The French Navy has expanded so much in the past couple of months that an Armoured Cruiser is even seen on a modestly sized lake in French East Africa.

I've moved my troops around, so go ahead and modify the railroad multiplier.

Victoria, Kivu, or Tanganiyka?

 

[McMonkey]

RUSSIAN EMPIRE - January 1874

I was unable to get the limited Mass Railroads to work. If I set @COSMIC2 RailroadMultiplier, 14 I get an error message saying that Monoplane 280 movement exceeds the 255 limit. I've played around with all sorts of combinations but everything causes a crash to desktop. Does anyone have the expertise to set this correctly? I've used the multipliers successfully in scenarios in the past so I'm a bit puzzled as to where I'm going wrong.

 

[JPetroski]

The road multiplier (and I guess the new railroad multiplier too) are tied together with the number of spaces that aircraft can move. To achieve maximum aircraft movement, you need a very low road multiplier (in Over the Reich, I use "1"). Don't ask me what the math is, but if you are getting an error with 14, try 13, then 12, 11, etc. until you finally get one that the game will take.

 

[McMonkey]

Still everything I try causes CTD

 

[Patine]

RUSSIAN EMPIRE - January 1874

I was unable to get the limited Mass Railroads to work. If I set @COSMIC2 RailroadMultiplier, 14 I get an error message saying that Monoplane 280 movement exceeds the 255 limit. I've played around with all sorts of combinations but everything causes a crash to desktop. Does anyone have the expertise to set this correctly? I've used the multipliers successfully in scenarios in the past so I'm a bit puzzled as to where I'm going wrong.

The road multiplier (and I guess the new railroad multiplier too) are tied together with the number of spaces that aircraft can move. To achieve maximum aircraft movement, you need a very low road multiplier (in Over the Reich, I use "1"). Don't ask me what the math is, but if you are getting an error with 14, try 13, then 12, 11, etc. until you finally get one that the game will take.

I'll wait to play until @McMonkey and @JPetroski are satisfied with their rules and math tinkering.

 

[McMonkey]

You may as well crack on for now Pat. Japan has no Mass Railroads to take advantage of at this stage and I've not changed any of the rules as yet, just experimented. Everyone is aware that a limitation is now a possibility if we can get it working so we can all plan ahead for that eventuality. I don't want this to stall the game, especially if we're ultimately unable to implement it.

 

[JPetroski]

@Patine go ahead and play the turn I'll take a shot at the rules modifier and at least let people know what is possible when it is my turn.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Victoria, Kivu, or Tanganiyka?

Malawi

I was unable to get the limited Mass Railroads to work. If I set @COSMIC2 RailroadMultiplier, 14 I get an error message saying that Monoplane 280 movement exceeds the 255 limit. I've played around with all sorts of combinations but everything causes a crash to desktop. Does anyone have the expertise to set this correctly? I've used the multipliers successfully in scenarios in the past so I'm a bit puzzled as to where I'm going wrong.

I got this to work, so it is possible.

I think you need to write RailroadMultiplier,1,15 (the TOTPP launcher will confirm this) in the rules, but you will also have to change the road multiplier to 5. The game computes the least common multiple of all the movement multipliers, and then multiplies every units movement by that number, to store remaining movement in the save file. The maximum movement points that can be stored is 255. The game doesn't distinguish between units that can and can't use roads/railroads when storing these numbers, so this stuff applies to ships and planes as well.

Consider a goods truck, which has 3MP in the rules text. The game must be able to accommodate having it move both on roads and on railroads. Let us suppose that the unit expends 1/3MP on a road, and 1/5MP on a railroad, and the unit moves across a road and then a railroad, from full movement points.

We want to perform the following subtractions: 3-1/3-1/5

In school you learned how to add and subtract fractions, by finding a common multiple of all the denominators (in this case 1,3,5), and also how to find the Least Common Multiple (LCM). In this case, the LCM of 1,3,5 is 15, so we re-write our problem as

45/15-5/15-3/15

Since 45/15=3, 5/15=1/3 and 3/15=1/5

With a common denominator, the subtraction is now really easy, since we do our arithmetic on the numerators only (45-5-3=37) to get an answer of 37/15.

The game figures out the LCM, and then only stores the numerator of each unit's remaining movement points. In this example, the MP were originally 45, but after the movement they were 37.

If you want high movement rate units in the game, you must choose road and rail multipliers with a low LCM. With units that can move 17 squares (destroyers I believe), we can have an LCM of up to 15. That works with a RR multiplier of 15, and a road multiplier of 3 or 5, a RR multiplier of 14 and a road multiplier of 7 or 2, a RR multiplier of 12, and a road multiplier of 2,3, or 6.

While we're changing rules, can we change airship attack to 2 or 3, and maybe up the price somewhat.

 

[Patine]

You may as well crack on for now Pat. Japan has no Mass Railroads to take advantage of at this stage and I've not changed any of the rules as yet, just experimented. Everyone is aware that a limitation is now a possibility if we can get it working so we can all plan ahead for that eventuality. I don't want this to stall the game, especially if we're ultimately unable to implement it.

@Patine go ahead and play the turn I'll take a shot at the rules modifier and at least let people know what is possible when it is my turn.

Alright, after work I'm visiting my girlfriend in the hospital tonight, but I will make a college try to play later this evening or tomorrow. I don't foresee a big delay.

 

[McMonkey]

Thanks for clarifying that Garfield. Unfortunately, the young McMonkey had zero interest in mathematics at school & learned next to nothing beyond how to play the fool. Not something I'm terribly proud of now. If John is happy to make the changes I'm happy to hand over to someone who paid attention in class & didn't sit at the back throwing paper planes

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Thanks for clarifying that Garfield. Unfortunately, the young McMonkey had zero interest in mathematics at school & learned next to nothing beyond how to play the fool. Not something I'm terribly proud of now. If John is happy to make the changes I'm happy to hand over to someone who paid attention in class & didn't sit at the back throwing paper planes

I don't know. Young McMonkey might have made the correct decision in this instance. He got to have fun, and old McMonkey can get the answer from someone for whom writing the answer is more time consuming than finding it. In this case, the best options are Road Multiplier 5 & RR 15, Road 7 & RR 14, and Road 6 & RR 12.

 

[Patine]

No major news.

 

[Patine]

Thanks for clarifying that Garfield. Unfortunately, the young McMonkey had zero interest in mathematics at school & learned next to nothing beyond how to play the fool. Not something I'm terribly proud of now. If John is happy to make the changes I'm happy to hand over to someone who paid attention in class & didn't sit at the back throwing paper planes

Sounds similar to my high school days, actually.

 

[JPetroski]

German troops annex Sofia.

 

[voltar]

USA

Mendoza captured and a tribal capital razed in the jungles of South America

 

[JPetroski]

I forgot to edit the rules if someone else wants to give it a go.

 

[Northerner]

I’ll change the rules and upload the file along with the save game when I play tonight.

 

[Northerner]

The British Navy keeps growing.

Investments in railroad projects increase greatly all over the Empire, as industries and cities are connected to increase productivity.

At the current pace of investment the French will have left the British far behind in war preparedness soon enough.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

@Northerner Did You Ctrl+N at the end of your turn? Most units seem to have movement points left.

If you did, can someone send a copy of the rules before the change. Like an idiot, I forgot to make a backup copy before making the modifications to the Railroad multiplier, and for some reason, removing that line isn't working to make all units have their move points expended.

Also, we'll have to go with a railroad multiplier of 12, unless we make some other changes. A multiplier of 15 will give destroyers unlimited movement after steam turbines (or for the British player, who has lighthouse), and a multiplier of 14 gives unlimited movement to destroyers for lighthouse+steam turbines.

Also, I plan to reduce Airship attack to 3, and increase cost to 600. I think everyone agreed that they needed their power reduced.