Lets set up a PBEM!

One thing for today: With a little tear in my eyes, I proudly presents the first GEM WW2 PBEM Movie, where almost everything is going well for Japan (and far better for germany ;)). Enjoy it.

View attachment WW2 a Movie.zip

Oh i am also for disabling the espoinage system!!
 
I dislike the idea of disabling the spy system. It severly limits Russias options to get techs. Actually a good Russian player can get most techs ever needed by spionage.
 
Fandazma said:
@Kai I mean national China in combination with Kommunist China. But i see, after testing the Japanese, that the starting positions are different and not so bad for me, well done Kai. When do we start?
Click to expand...

My perception is that:

1) we are all happy with the 8 team structure
2) we are all happy with my home cities idea for exchanging cities.
3) The no capital building idea, I am not sure whether we are all happy with.
4) We are Not sure about the initial turn additional plot culture python script suggested by Martin.
5) Unsettled about the issue of espionage system that Dazz just raise

Is there any more issues we shall discuss?

Otherwise, I think we can give some more time for play testing (say up to this coming sunday), and then start confirming who plays which team, in the mean time looking for additional players. That should be able to allow us start the game sometime next week.
 
Well,

as to espionage: I agree the "spy" component of visibility from cities and buildorders is heavy. But once you have some spy's or even a great spy you can walk the enemies territory very easily. Most big cities are connected by rails. Consider that.

As you said the demographie is always visible when espionage is disabled. So fine. Than this "issue" from my side is solved, when spy is disabled.

But in this szenario i guess two kind of spy missions are important:

1) the sabotage mission : i.e. vs Oil-fields could be very useful. I would not like to miss that part. But i will yield to any vote wen we found our final player lineup.
2) the steal tech mission
 
Also lets remember what time we are talking about. WW2 without Spionage would be completely different.

No Richard Sorge spying in Tokio and giving Stalin the precise informations about Unternehmen Barbarossa, just to be ignored by Stalin. His second war deciding information was that Japan didn't intend to attack Russia, which allowed Shukow to redeploy sibirian troops to the defense of Moscow, stopping Germany 25km ahead of the Kremlin. Later ... well he was not directly betrayed by Stalin, but nothing was done to rescue him either. Why should Stalin rescue the one person who could blame him for ignoring the warning prior to the attack on the Soviet Union?

No Enigma machine und thus no necessity for Roosevelt to keep important informations from Admiral Husband Kimmel or Lt. Gen. Walter Short, which in effect allowed the japanese forces to caugh the Pearl Harbor forces with their pants down. But also no "Pearl Harbor shock" that allowed Roosevelt to ditch the isolationists and get the USA full ahead into the war. No victory at Midway or a number of other battles only won bye the Allies due to Enigma based knowledge.

No excuse for sending over 100.000 american-japanese citizens in so called "relocation camps", which in essence had rassistic reasons.

No race for the bomb, no capturing of the german V2 scientists by american and russian special teams.

WW2 without spionage would be a very different war indeed.
 
I agree with Bastian's thoughts as posted above , however , this is a game. A game where, in my opinion, the espionage system is seriously flawed.

Ideally, we would be able to have the espionage system work the way we want it but what we need to decide is whether the benefits of having 'steal tech' outweighs the downside of having your opponents being able to see your city views or as borgg points out, Great Spies being able to run rampant.
 
OK, so what we need is basically the same as with culture: an pre-existing allocation of spy points set in such a way that getting ahead of your enemies will take a decisive effort on your side. The weakness of the whole scenario is in both cases, that we basically start at 0, or close enough to it, and thus the differences between civs in monthly income in culture and spionage points can easily overcome this starting point.

Does anyone of you know a place where the spionage information is explained? Given the formulae for the different thresholds I could work out a suggestion.

Out of the guts I'd suggest a buffer worth 1 or 1,5 years worth against spionage. PLUS: the spionage buffering should be only worth the trouble for the major nations:

Germany
Japan
UK
France
USA
Russia

They should get a pre-scenario "buffer vs. each other, with lower buffers between allies. The problem is made more difficult by the fact that several of the "minors" of the alliances (Italy, Netherlands, the major Commonwealth states) bring a good number of spy points as well. But lets for now only look at the majors.

To put it in numbers:

an income of 150 spy points a months is a good guess I'd say. So in 12 months of war preparations the great powers should have aquired 2.000 spypoints. How could they be distributed?

Germany and Japan: they spy basically on the 4 other major powers. A flat 500 points on UK, France, USA and Russia sounds reasonable. -> 2.000

Russia: they spy on everyone, but also have the highest spy rating. Giving them a 500 flat on all 5 other civs doesn't sound unreasonable, but would of course give them 25% more accumulated spypoints then those had by the Axies. -> 2.500

UK, France and USA: they are spying on the Axies and Russia. A flat 500 on each would put them on a significant disadvantage compared to the Axies and even more so Russia. On the other hand they do have an higher number of spypoints alltogether distributed over an high number of states. -> 1.500

The other possible solution would give all 6 major nations a flat ~2.400 spypoints and distibute them between the enemies: Germany and Japan get 600 on 4, Russia gets 500 on 5 and UK, France and USA get 800 on 3.
 
Dazz, why do you consider it broken? After the Allies did break the Enigma code, they DID have the kind of information about Germany that we do have when we have city sight. The only information the couldn't decipher and thus use for their planning was the railroad information ... and the only reason why they couldn't break it, was that the railroaders where using a different slang then the military guys. ^^

Actually what borgg did was just ahistorical in one way: he did give away the knowledge of the broken code, where this remained secret in reality till the 1970s.

The allies did indeed cruise around german subs, and used decoded Enigma information for example to win the airbattle over England. Borgg did win it by sinking the italian fleet due to information gained this way... I don't see this as flawd, actually I do see it as a crude, but rather well working mechanism.
 
I did send it out ... ups, why didn't you say I did send you the octobre turn. ^^
 
I am all for espionage. I see no need to eliminate this feature. If you really have problems with city visibility being gained easily, how about you set the Satellites technology as a prerequisite for that, or disable the feature altogether for GEM?

Espionage is certainly not game-breaking to my mind.

Best Regards,
Martin
 
I'm no expert on when the Enigma codes were cracked in RL but I do feel that being able to see all city views in the first few turns in very unrealistic.

I would be in favour of keeping espionage if either Martin's or Bastian's idea could be implemented severely delaying the point where you can see city views.
 
I just read through again our emails and this thread to check our preference for playing which team. Basically, we are mostly happy with the original setting.

So:

(1) Unassigned: Germany, Hungary, Italy - 3 civ
(2) Fandazma: Japan, Manchuria, Thailand - 3 civ
(3) Ace of Spades: Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, Iraq, Iran - 5 civ
(4) Dazz_G: Russia, Mongolia, Communist China - 3 civ
(5) Genghis_Kai: Nationalist China, France, Netherlands, Greece - 4 civ
(6) Borgg: Britain, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand - 4 civ
(7) Bastian-Bux: Canada, America, Mexico - 3 civ
(8) Adhesive86: Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile - 5 civ
Neutral states: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Nepal

Martin, would you mind trying the Germany team? I am sure you are more than capable for the biggest aggressor in the game :) Then we just need to find one more for the Middle east team, and if we can't find one, just leave it for AI.
If you wish, you can also try the French team, and I can be Germany again.
 
You could offer him the european axis as well if Martin wants to play middle east.
 
Dazz Enigma was first cracked by a polish team in the 30s. It was set back a bit in 1938 when the germans changed several settings, but this was quickly overcome.

In January 1940 the allied decrypthion teams where able to decipher the german airforce code, later that year also the army code. Only the navy code was more of an obstacle: it remained unbroken till May 1941. This decryption of the navy code was broken for a full 10 months between february 1942 and december 1942. Oh and lets not forget the railroader code, which remained unbroken for the whole war, due to a less streamlined language used by the civilists.

If we translate this to the game, then Poland, UK and France should be able to see all airplanes of the european axies in january 1940, all ground forces by middle 1940 and all naval forces by may 1941.

If you compare this with the in game situation that a dedicated player pooling all 150 to 200 spypoints vs. one target will be able to see this targets cities after 3 months ... then it seems reasonable. Dont't forget: any point placed in counterspionage will delay this significantly. And if the UK frex is pooling all its spypoints vs. Germany frex, it leaves itself wide open to italian and japanese spionage.

Actually the way to play the spy game is: you decide how much points you place in counterspionage vs. your enemies AND its allies. Don't forget that it might be usefull to use the low spypoint income of your minors on one specific target. Germany itself does need to distribute its spypoints to counter the allies. But Hungary doesn't need to do so, if the german player does know that his troops crossing hungarian territory will be visible anyway to everyone putting spypoints vs. Hungary.

I do understand the reluctance of those that didn't pay enough attention to spionage ... but actually it IS a very important and if used well game deciding factor of the game.

As it is no major nation can claim to be left short of spypoints. Some do have more then others thats true. But thats like in reality: the german gouvernment can't blame anyone except themself for having a worse secret service then frex Israel.

Of course civs with many cities do have an advantage in spypoints. But only once they have covered their territory with courthouses. AND: they do pay for this in maintenance. Once Russia managed to build courthouses everywhere, it becomes the spymaster of the world. But isn't the KGB rightfully remembered for its activities?

Stalin almost lost the war because he ignored the warning of Richard Sorge. The axies did loose the war (partly?) because they relayed on the security of Enigma AND never changed it sufficently enough. Enigma could have been made unbreakable rather easily.

Being overconfident enough to start a war against Japan as the UK is as devastating as forgetting about the possibilities of spionage and loosing the italian invasian fleet. But isn't learning part of the multiplayer experience?

Each and everyone of us made some stupid mistakes in the first game. I for example could have finished conquering Colombia in septembre 1940 instead of decembre. I strongly vote for leaving spionage in as is, maybe trying to give the major nations a way to distribute a number of spypoints early on. But spionage is working similar to history, and shouldn't be left outto accomodate to the playstyle of a a few people. We did that with several victory conditions already, and do not need to reduce the game even further to a pure quest for conquest.
 
Bastian-Bux said:
You could offer him the european axis as well if Martin wants to play middle east.
Click to expand...

I don't want to leave Germany/Italy to a new player. He could be a novice and with a bad Axis player, the game would not be fun. On the other hand, I know Martin is quite good (although he lost the fleet, but that's not entirely his fault. It is me who ask him to send his fleet for re-enforcement). If Martin really doesn't want to play Germany, I can play it again.
 
To be honest, I was looking forward to playing a minor team. I would very much like to participate in the game, but at the same time, my schedule is quite busy right now and therefore I do not quite feel up to taking over a major power, which would require a lot of active diplomacy - a rather time-consuming aspect of the game, especially with that many players around.

As the middle east, I would not be in the fray as much, and therefore able to rely on passive diplomacy (accepting/refusing offers from major civs, joining/leaving their alliances) which would be a lot easier to handle for me.

Best Regards,
Martin
 
OK then. In that case, I think I should take the Germany/Italy team and let the new guy take the French team to be safe.

So:

(1) Genghis_Kai: Germany, Hungary, Italy - 3 civ
(2) Fandazma: Japan, Manchuria, Thailand - 3 civ
(3) Ace of Spades: Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, Iraq, Iran - 5 civ
(4) Dazz_G: Russia, Mongolia, Communist China - 3 civ
(5) Unassigned: Nationalist China, France, Netherlands, Greece - 4 civ
(6) Borgg: Britain, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand - 4 civ
(7) Bastian-Bux: Canada, America, Mexico - 3 civ
(8) Adhesive86: Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile - 5 civ
Neutral states: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Nepal
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

LilBudyWizer
Character generator
Replies
0
Views
266
LilBudyWizer
LilBudyWizer
T
Improve Age End Cadence
Replies
0
Views
289
tman2000
T
N
[CTP] How to set up multiplayer via IPX on Civilization: Call to Power and Call to Power II
Replies
0
Views
195
ninjaboy42099
N
Lonecat Nekophrodite
My Reviews of Civilization 7: Progressions, Regressions, and HK Replications
Replies
0
Views
2K
Lonecat Nekophrodite
Lonecat Nekophrodite
Smayo
Improved Setup: AI Memento Selection
Replies
7
Views
1K
Smayo
Smayo
Back
Top Bottom