Moff Jerjerrod's WW2 Global - Reloaded

[YsN]

Although the topic of the Second World rather beaten least you managed to bring her some zest!

 

[Teh Hobo]

A few things after downloading:

Errors in the 'pedia:





I also see a few 'discover their use' units, no offense, but that kinda annoys me. I'd like to know how to effectively use my arsenal to plan what I'm going to build (that's like if I were to show a leader a laser gun and tell him 'it's a surprise' when he asks how to use it). If you're going to fill it in when the rest of the 'pedia is done then that's ok.

Also, why not use AOI's naval system? I've not seen better foe civ3. Destroyers and subs used to bombard, battleships, battlecrusiers and cruisers to finish them off or take them on directly. Late war we'll see carrier groups and hk subs of course.

These are just from taking a look I'm about to give it a try.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Thanks for the feedback Teh Hobo. No offense taken, on the contrary thanks for the suggestions.

I'll repair the pedia errors and work on implementing a naval system similar to AOI for the next version. This will take some time of course. I need to study how the system works in AOI, which I have played extensively, and see how to apply it here.

As for the surprise units and how they work; my intention was to let the player have the joy of discovering how they work for himself. You do raise a valid point however. Perhaps I can included a brief guide to the new unit abilities.

 

[Teh Hobo]

Yeah the problem with normal civ naval combat is that subs are almost useless, same for destroyers (who's only real use lies in detecting subs).

I'll look forward to the fixes for the pedia, the game crashes almost every time I check a unit.

 

[Cimbri]

In my own WW2 mod, subs are the most powerful attack unit available. But they're still easy prey for destroyers and light cruisers. I don't know how the AOI system works.

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

In my own WW2 mod, subs are the most powerful attack unit available. But they're still easy prey for destroyers and light cruisers. I don't know how the AOI system works.

I believe the subs in AoI are set up so that bombarding is the preferred attack. As such, the bombard values are quite high to simulate the effects of a torpedo hitting a ship.

Now the downside is that subs can then bombard cities and brutally damage or even kill the defenders (El Justo left "lethal bombard" on so subs could sink ships obviously).

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

New revision available. See first post!

I have released revision 1.1 of the biq. Note that you will need to download the entire main files again as well. My apologies to those that have already downloaded the main files. Rather than issue an incremental patch I simply repackaged the whole scenario.

Enjoy!!



For the next revision I will need to come up with a solution to the submarine and naval systems that were proposed by Teh Hobo.

 

[Teh Hobo]

Excellent, I'm downloading the new files. The Aoi system has subs really weak but with large bombard values and ROF 4-6 and lethal sea. You might want to give them stealth attack as well so instead of trying to sink the escorts the subs can slip past and sink the transports, but seeing as the subs are rather slow they can be hunted down by destroyers and those sub hunting planes you mentioned. For destroyers they should be strong enough totake on each other and subs and have a much lower bombard strength but a higher ROF, 3-5 ROF depending on the destroyer should work. I'll try it out myself too so I'm not just a theory guy .

 

[Gosnork]

I'm pretty sure the sub hunting planes wont work. It's been a while since I tried it but if I remember correctly, the plane will only detect invisible unites within 2 tiles of it's base/carrier. Have you tested it?

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

I have not tested it but theoretically it should work. Hope to prove/disprove that claim soon with some more play testing when I get a chance. Still working on a Naval system and a guide to some of the new unit abilities.

 

[General 666]

Hi Moff , I have found some help for you. El Justo gives in-sights ...

ok

now, keep in mind that there are a bunch of qualifiers i use wrt sea unit builds. so i'll try and address them as i go along. just stuff specific to our scenarios and it might not be everyone's cup of tea. however, it has worked very, very well for us and it is imho the best use of sea unit behavior for civ3 (considering our circumstances that is).

the main point regarding "diversity" is to have two (2) or more separate regions on the map. by this i mean that there's 'isolated' regions on the map that have two (or more) distinct resource access areas.

for example, Great Britain can build all types of ships, including capital ships, in the home islands (due in course to a resource called 'Industry'). this list includes TBs, DDs, PCs, CAs, CLs, SSs, BBs, BCs, CV/CVLs (bolded = capital). however, abroad (in the colonies and commonwealth holdings) they can only build non-capital ships due to the lack of the so-called 'Industry' resource.

of course, to maintain this 'resource isolation', one must set up the map to curtail (or remove altogether) sea/ocean/air trade. now, it doesn't haven't to be removed entirely. you could allow for it in certain cases through special city imp's or wonders and thus allow for some construction of capital ships. however, that discussion is not so important here. the main point is that there are distinct regions on the map where two (2) sets of ships are able to be built: all (capital + non-capital which is typically the highly industrialized areas of the map) and the non-capital classes (abroad assuming that the requisite resources [e.g., coal and iron] are inside the strategic resource box of the cities).

my experience with actually trying to get the AI to build more seas units tells me that i had to give it a reason to build them...sounds simplistic i know. but the point is if there's good reason for the AI to build them, then, in my experience, it will. good ways to promote this:

cheap prices - low shield costs for seas units is absolutely a plus for the AI. we intentionally set the prices for seas units in our projects real low and the AI does indeed build more than what we were originally accustomed to. don't have a specific formula on prices...but each class was sort of tiered out in terms of costs (e.g., BBs set at a certain tier for gen1-->gen2 and so forth).

easy access to imp's that produce vet sea units - we've seen that the AI is far, far more inclined to build sea units if it has the ability to produce veterans. so granting an easy route to build these types of improvements is paramount irregardless of whether there's resource isolation. i mean, it is probably Issue No. 1 for the AI in terms of whether to build or not to build, that is the question

escort - we all know how the AI loves to send along big-ass warships to escort their puny little transport units. annoying as hell imo...well, why not try and capitalize on this behavior and and design, a class of ships able to keep up w/ the transports? when set up in conjunction w/ the 'isolated resources', the AI does pretty well in building, say, cruisers, to tag along w/ their transport units.

ultra cheap transport costs - dirt cheap w/ no resource requirements. bumping up the transport capacity seems to work well too although we don't go too wild w/ this. however, the AI will build lots of them if they're super cheap. and as a result, amphibious operations generally increase. and the AI, if it has the proper infrastructure in terms of shield production and cities, will send along escorts (not always but the AI will definitely send them along if it has them).

raw materials - this is pretty much exclusive to my stuff. it's the reverse capture the flag method and there's a building available overseas (i.e., only in the colonies) that produces these units and they need to be shipped back from abroad to the home country in order to be cashed in for VPs and gold. the AI will guard these TRs if it has the inventory (see above). in addition, this method, while not for everyone due to the tediousness of it all, creates de facto shipping lanes and it gives rise to another aspect of naval strategy: commerce raiding. this is a pretty neat tactic in AoI and CLs and other smaller vessels most definitely come into play here and the capital ships are at times (the early gen ones) at a disadvantage due to speed (mvmt points). anyhow, just a neat little side game that is present for AoI.

upgrading and obsolescence - we set all capital ships on an obsolescence track (i.e., gen1 BB is obsoleted by gen2 BB and so forth). this means that they do not directly upgrade to one another but the obsoleted version disappears from the build queue when the next generation is available. this is done in the editor...but the unit action to actually upgrade is not checked. the reason for obsolescence is not to penalize...but to put these capital ships on a different track compared to the non-capital ships which can upgrade. upgrade sequence can depend on a bunch of things and is pretty subjective. however, we set DDs, mostly, to an every-other-generation path (especially when there's a lot of generations - 7 or 8 in AoI alone). CLs we set to upgrade directly to one another in sequence. other cruiser types and submarines have varying upgrade paths depending upon the quantity of generations, quality of the construction, and some other factors. but again, subjective to a certain degree. but the point to take away from this is that the non-capital ship generation lines have a nice 'finish line' so to speak whereas the capital ships, with their brute force and all, do not. and the AI does upgrade its ships so long as it has the scratch and the wherewithal (i.e., imp's that allow for it). the obsolescence also puts the human player into decision mode where he/she has to decide whether to keep the older generations of capital ships around for secondary roles or whether to scrap them (disband).

another less-discussed factor is the stat arrangement. i won't get into our formulas here b/c it's dry and pretty technical (yet, for us, extremely effective). however, what it accomplishes is a few things: it gives each type of ship the proverbial raison d'être which is imperative for all unit types. don't confuse the AI or give it multiple types of units that essentially do the exact same thing. differentiation is the key - and we use several things to set certain sea unit types apart from the others like total tonnage/displacement (i.e., HPs), total no. of guns on board (bombardment rating and RoF), torpedo tubes (very important for the TBs & DDs since they have high rates of fire but lower bombardment ratings [compared to the capital ships]), abilitiy to 'detect invisible' units like submarines, the 'invisible' tag for subs, extra movement points for cruisers, and a few other things. again, real technical stuff but it allowed us to get that differentiation that we were after. i mean, not only does the AI build all of the sea unit types in one location or another, it also gives the human player some options as well. for example, if the human player says go scratch to building non-capital ships, he/she is gonna have piles of obsolete units lying about at some point whereas construction of non-capital ships has a more fluid development path (i.e., upgrades allowed) and offers the player a more diverse fleet in general.

hope this may help some and always happy to provide more details as time permits

Even more advises can be found here on TheGuardians thread. EJs first post is on buttom of page 6. Read the rest of his posts to get an even better idea of his naval setup.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=333105&page=6

Hope it helps.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Thanks for the links General. This will surely come in handy when I start changing the ship stats.

 

[General 666]

Thanks for the links General. This will surely come in handy when I start changing the ship stats.

No prob ,mate.

Be aware that our normal game prefers building Battleships late in the game. But EJs setup prefer building Destroyers ,Subs and Transports. But tends to build NO Battleships anymore. That can be unwished. So further adjustments of EJs naval setup should be needed.

Good luck ...

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Be aware that our normal game prefers building Battleships late in the game. But EJs setup prefer building Destroyers ,Subs and Transports. But tends to build NO Battleships anymore.

I did not know that. Definitely will need to look into this further because I do want the AI to continue to build some BBs mid to late game. One thing for sure though, I've noticed using Rocoteh's setup, the AI really does not produce many BBs period. It tends to build Transports and BCs and some DDs but that's about it.

I wonder if adding the blitz flag to BBs under EJ's system will encourage the AI to build Battleships more?

 

[General 666]

I did not know that. Definitely will need to look into this further because I do want the AI to continue to build some BBs mid to late game. One thing for sure though, I've noticed using Rocoteh's setup, the AI really does not produce many BBs period. It tends to build Transports and BCs and some DDs but that's about it.

I wonder if adding the blitz flag to BBs under EJ's system will encourage the AI to build Battleships more?

When you use Blitz ships the AI bombs harbour city into pieces. I personally mislike this. btw ,blitzing units can attack four (4) times per turn. Just imagine how 20 BBs arrive at your coast.
Despiting this ,it is just much too many power for the human player.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Good point about blitz. Ok I won't use that flag then. I'd rather have the AI not build BBs then to have the AI bombard me into oblivion while I wait for my turn to come up again.

Btw I started work last night on implementing the AOI naval combat system into my scenario. I'm not going to go the complex upgrade route that AOI goes through given the short timespan of my scenario in comparison to the timespan in AOI. I will, however, have changed the way subs and DDs work in WW2 Global - Reloaded.

 

[General 666]

Good point about blitz. Ok I won't use that flag then. I'd rather have the AI not build BBs then to have the AI bombard me into oblivion while I wait for my turn to come up again.

That would happen for sure. ...and it was surely the reason why EJ has kicked Blitz.

Maybe I should add that AoI IS building BBs. But in my games only the USA does. EJ has made them very powerful compared with those of other nations. To compensate this the USA is building no minor naval vessels ,so far at least.
But I`m always has played with "General" difficulty level. Maybe that gives me a different game at all.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

EJ has made them very powerful compared with those of other nations. To compensate this the USA is building no minor naval vessels ,so far at least.

I did notice that EJ assigned different stats for the various BBs in any given Tech. I understand that he probably based those numbers off of real world specifications, however if that means the AI is less prone to build a unit because it does not deem it worth it based on the stats I'd rather have stats that are more uniform to encourage the AI. In a multiplayer game where all of your opponents are human then I could definitely go for the realism, but in singleplayer I want my AI opponent to use all if not most of the units in the scenario. If that means forfeiting realism for numbers that appeal to the AI, so be it. I'm not knocking realism, heck I would prefer to keep it as real as possible, but I'm not willing to do so at the expense of the AI not building units.

You'll notice I changed some of the aircraft specs from the original to help encourage the AI to build more fighters instead of bombers. My numbers are not perfect but I have noticed a slight increase in AI fighter production in my tests.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

See first post for the addition of WW2 Global - Reloaded 2.0 with naval system a'la AOI.

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

No prob ,mate.

Be aware that our normal game prefers building Battleships late in the game. But EJs setup prefer building Destroyers ,Subs and Transports. But tends to build NO Battleships anymore. That can be unwished. So further adjustments of EJs naval setup should be needed.

Good luck ...

It must be your particular game then, as a lot of factions still build dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts in the late stages of AoI.