Hi John,
As indicated, I had a chance to review your comments and stats and here is my feedback. I hope it explains my reasoning behind some of my decisions and addresses some of the changes that you and others are recommending.
… It is very frustrating seeing so many reinforcements stuck on the European Powers map with nowhere to go. I note that when Warsaw fell they were deleted. Did you intend to NOT do this for the German minor states (perhaps thinking no one would bungle it up as much as I did ). You may want to revisit it because it's certainly possible to mess this up enough for this to happen.
Actually, it is already a very real possibility in the event file for you to lose ALL your minor allies, including the Germans. It’s just in the case of the Germans, that it is only designed to occur if you lose certain cities starting in January 1813. In your case you just preceded the triggering of the event by more than 2 years.
The reason for this is that historically, France was still dominant in central Europe before 1813. It’s only after the disastrous Russian campaign, and the successful rebirth of Austria and Prussia, and their subsequent victorious battles (in this scenario’s case the capture of key cities) that the Germans started to desert Napoleon.
As such, I didn’t want the French player to start losing his German allies before 1813 simply because they may have made a tactical mistake of not properly protecting their backside.
By Turn 65, I write this with a good-sized defense force in Paris, Reims, and Brussels. I think that I can probably hold these cities indefinitely. The Brits are rolling up the Biscay coast and the Spanish are spotted approaching Clermont. I might get some relief in the future because the AI isn't being very smart Allies to one another and Britain is blocking out much of Austria and Russia's paths to get to me. Britain probably has the smallest army in the region.
I might keep the save just because it would be interesting to see if I can could salvage anything here. I think it's impossible to win of course and probably impossible at this point to even achieve a stalemate. Perhaps a partial defeat would be a good objective now Anyway, I'm attaching it in case anyone wants to try.
I reviewed the stats and compared them to the same date from my previous play through.
I’m pleased to see that the actual overall numbers of units produced by both sides, up till December 1810, were almost identical (tootall vs JP):
France 415 to 391;
Coalition Powers 1481 to 1591.
The great difference was between the:
Remaining active units: 274 vs 94
Casualties suffered: 141 vs 295
I think the most revealing statistic was in how you produced so few Regiment de Ligne (RdL) for the same period, 102 vs 57 but an over abundance of Infanterie Légère (IF) 24 vs 45.
From my experience, its preferable to have no more than a 1 to 5 or 1 to 4 ratio between RdL and IF. Though the IF a great for mopping up enemy forces, it’s the RdL who are the defensive backbone of your army. A too great reliance of IF on the frontline will soon see your forces diminished by enemy counterattacks.
Also remember that for every 15 Coalition Line Infantry you manage to kill, the event file will generate one free veteran Carabiniers units, which is superior to the Light Infantry.
Before L’Élan Napoléonien expires you should attempt to build/buy as many RdL as you can to benefit from the veteran status the wonder provides because afterwards you will start to notice that your casualty rate will steadily increase.
Another important difference is your over reliance on Artillery a Cheval units. Though they are good in pinch for softening up entrenched or out in the open enemy units they don’t have the same punch as the 8lb artillery. I would recommend a 2 to 1 ratio in this case.
Though you produced more overall artillery units:
Art. à Cheval: 19 vs 14
Art. à pied 8lb: 8 vs 19
In terms of artillery shells, I was able to generate more of the heavy hitting 8lbs:
6 pdr shells: 96 vs 174
8lb pdr shells: 188 vs 109
I reviewed your save game and have to admit I was surprised to see the level of devastation the Coalition was able to bring down on you. To see Russian forces made it all the way to the Rhine was a particular situation I didn’t expect to see. This makes me happy to see that the AI is truly capable of running an effective campaign on its own (i.e. I didn’t have to include move to commands to cover every possible situation).
-Attacking piece meal or without a plan cost me terribly, especially in Spain.
This game relies very much on combined arms tactics. Artillery is your iron fist, calvary your spearhead, light infantry for mopping up, line infantry your defensive backbone and the Hussars your eyes. The more you prepare the right mix of units on your offensives, the more successful you are likely to be.
I’ve said this in the past, but it is worth repeating, any offensive you attempt to launch without artillery will stalemate very quickly.
Any major offensive you undertake, without Hussars will leave you dumb and blind. You will only receive up to a maximum of three Hussars in the game. Don’t needless expose them to risk, otherwise if they are killed you will lose them for six turns plus any amount of time it takes them to get back to the front. That can be a very long time to be in the dark about your enemy’s dispositions.
-Not waiting for the AI to blunt their own offensive in the war of the 5th Coalition directly resulted in my front completely collapsing, as did being unaware of the historic British landings in northern Germany, which led me to completely leave this front unsecured.
Tactics, tactics, tactics. Knowing when to hold back and when to strike is one more key to the success of your campaigns. Striking too soon without the appropriate force to deliver a succession of killer blows, or waiting too long to allow your enemies to rally or other powers to join the fray are decisions you continually have to make.
-I spent a lot of money on happiness improvements that don't really seem to have much use here. I found that I still had to use an entertainer and in many instances it probably would have just been cheaper to avoid the improvement altogether as you seem to need all three in most cities to get any benefit. A size 2 city can't even be kept happy with just one. I'm not sure if this is your doing or the game's but I'll be adjusting my strategy going forward.
Money should be spent almost exclusively on raising troops. After I capture a city generally the only happiness improvement I will build (not buy) is the Church (aka temple). I typically always keep my Happiness rate at 20%, and for the great majority of cities that is usually sufficient to keep them happy.
After that I concentrate exclusively on revenue generating improvements (Marketplace, Banks, Great Markets and courthouses) wherever they are set to increase my revenue.
McMonkey tells me he also builds production type improvements and than once done converts the cities to building Money Market (aka Capitalization).
I use the Plunder units you capture, exclusively to help build the production improvements in those key French cities that have the ability to produce units.
The ultimate goal is to get your conquests to increase your revenue as much as you can, to be able to recruit (aka buy) as many new units as you can. A good investment strategy can easily account for 20 to 30% of the total French infantry force you raise in the game.
This was part of my design concept from the beginning as I believe it falls well within the historical narrative whereby Napoleon used his conquest and the plunder he garnered from them to finance most of his campaigns.
-I didn't do a good job of min/maxing. I very much had a leisurely take on development and the economy at first and didn't get serious until it was too late. Turn 1 will take me considerably longer next time.
I always keep my happiness at 20%. In the first years, I try to maximize my science as much as possible without trying run a deficit if I can. When all my science is done, I move my money beaker to 70%.
-Likewise, I didn't really bother moving Gendarmes much considering them worthless units. Thus, I had a few cities with these stacked in France when they should have been cannon fodder at the fronts. Next time, I'll be moving these too. They might do an OK job stacked on hills to slow down enemy offensives (I still think they're pretty much worthless in the cities).
In this case, I believe you wholly underestimate the value of the Gendarmes units. They are not designed to be offensive units at all but rather to relieve your regular French infantry from garrison duties when they could be used more effectively elsewhere. This is particularly true in regions that you firmly control and are out of reach of enemy units.
Don’t forget, since the cities that produce the Gendarmes can only produce these units, you are in a sense getting them for free (just be sure to re-home them when you move them to new cities to be able to continue to maximize the production output of the original cities).
They also serve another function, whereby they can be used to sponge off enemy attacks, in particular in France against British Marines, and therefore give you a chance to rush troops to the affected area before the city falls to enemy hands.
-I probably should have taken greater advantage of Napoleon's administrative costs early on.
When you are about to undertake a major campaign, there is no better general to lead your offensive than Napoleon, and his presence on the frontline can easily shorten any campaign by months.
But when his battlefield abilities are no longer needed you should take every opportunity to send him back to France to take advantage of his administrative skills.
-I really needed to figure out a way to rush towards the heavier artillery to take on Zaragoza.
Mortier de 12po play a crucial role if you are to be successful in the Iberian Peninsula as it contains more fortifications than any other region on the map.
-I dislike the naval attrition model for a very specific reason: Villeneuve almost always shows up in the winter, far from port, and by the time his fleet gets even to Biscay, it's half-dead. This is totally out of my control. I don't think naval attrition is all that accurate (it's not like they suddenly stop having supplies on board during winter) and I think if you want to replicate the risk of storms perhaps you should give ships the trireme flag during winter months and make the likelihood that they'll be sunk pretty small, but enough that it can happen, thus scaring the player into working along the coastline. Given that you don't allow shore bombardments during the winter I think these two things would combine to make naval operations effectively neutered during that time.
Initially, I didn’t apply winter attrition to naval units in the game but I later added this for two reasons. The first, because the Atlantic and North Sea are notorious for their difficult weather during the winter and it seemed unrealistic that naval units could operate in these conditions with impunity. I’m no expert on Maritime Warfare of the period, but I imagined if the Spanish Armada could be wrecked by storms in the middle of summer, conditions should be doubly harsh in winter.
The other reason, was a little more gamey but originally I found it was too easy for Villeneuve’s task force to lay off the coast of Portugal and shore bombard the Portuguese and British ground troops into oblivion (though I did later add British naval move to commands to push more English ships down to that coast).
Adding the winter attrition effect seemed to redress that situation nicely at the time.
By the way, Villeneuve is set to randomly appear within the first 4 turns of the game,. The fact that he seems to keep appearing in November for you, is apparently just bad luck. Ironically, in most of my play throughs, he typically appeared in the first two turns.
Bear in mind that you've stacked the deck against France in the first place. It's very rare for a naval shell to be able to kill a three decker in one shot but trois points routinely get destroyed by one three decker in return...
I’ve done some preliminary changes to try and redress this imbalance and give the French fleet are fairer chance. This needs to be tested and fine tuned.
You could remove this ability by only allowing naval munitions to generate at sea via lua, but then I suspect you'll never see anyone invade England unless you make other balancing changes.
This sounds like a good suggestions and I will review if this can be added as a part of my naval modifications.
As I’ve mentioned in a few post, I’m reviewing the overall naval system (shore bombardment, naval combat, naval move to commands etc). I don’t want players to have to resort to gimmicks to deal with different situations but rather come up with a fair and balanced system.
-I will reaffirm that I dislike how hard Charles is to dislodge from a city. Maybe it's not a big deal if you're doing really well and have 9 cannons in the area. But consider that generals are pretty common in this game. If you end up fighting on numerous fronts as I did (and fighting 5-6 generals), you end up in a situation where you can't kill any of them unless they venture out. If the AI doesn't do that, you're never retaking the city they park in.
I have to be honest; this is the one feedback that I’ve received from players that has baffled me the most. I’ve played probably over 400 turns as part of my testing and had to confront dozens upon dozens of Coalition leaders, and though, yes they have at time given my forces a bloody nose, forced me to make a hasty tactical retreat, put up a stubborn resistance in this or that city, in the end I’ve never ultimately failed to overcome each and every one of them be it through tactical manoeuvring, patience or simple brute force.
As most players familiar with the period know, Napoleon certainly did NOT win all the battles he fought. And for me that was the whole point of these leaders, to give the players, and myself, a real challenge and not simply be able to steam roll over the opposition whenever or wherever I went.
With regards Charles, he’s the exact same strength as Blucher, Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, Moore and Schwarzenberg. Wellington and Kutuzov are the most dangerous allied leaders of all.
-Pulling up an improvement in the civilopedia causes the large picture to have the stock photo from the game. I think this might be a "me" issue because I think(?) there is an option in ToTPP to use the larger icon photo instead but if I'm wrong about this, consider investing some time on the internet grabbing some more appropriate photos because this is such a beautiful scenario that it really is marred with this (avoidable) glitch. If you intend someone to use a different setting, consider putting that in the installation instructions or elsewhere in the readme.
I’ve never modified these pictures in any of my previous projects. I can review if this can be added but I see this as a very low priority. To be honest, I’ve already spent a year and a half on this project and aren’t too keen to spend another 6 months. As you may understand, I’m eager to move on to another one.
-Consider adding some minor text to the civilopedia, or utilizing the "tab" feature Prof. Garfield and I implemented in OTR, where there is some minor help for units. I'm not seeking historic information as you did with your Vietnam scenario. I think bullet points with some highlights (like you have in your game tips for the ships) would be good. "Frigate: can fire one naval shell per turn at cost of all MP" or "Napoleon: grants 50% bonus to infantry or shell attack or can use diplomatic bonus in cities." It would be good to have a handy reference in game for the changes you've made with lua. I get that you've put much of this in the readme but investing a few hours into this would, I believe, be a big help to the player.
Except for Vietnam, I’ve never added text to the civilopedia as I always preferred to invest the time in producing a quality ReadMe. I always felt that was more worthwhile because ultimately I rarely, if ever, referred to the former and I suspect most other players don’t either.
I thought most of the details you mentioned can already be found either in the ReadMe or scenario messages but I can review if I can add more in game messages.
Edit-revisit if you want to have units in training for ALL cities delete if the city is captured or not (perhaps on a delay of a turn or two to give the player a chance to recapture it). It IS possible to lose this bad!!!
Sorry, I don’t quite understand what you were trying to say here. Could you elaborate?
All in all a top-notch scenario, truly a new standard for masterpiece. Please take all of the above constructively as I did absolutely have a blast here and am truly inspired to get cracking on my own scenario about a European megalomaniac trying to rule the world. I think there are plenty of other designers who are probably chomping at the bit to implement much of what you two did here and you should both be very proud.
I’ve enjoyed reading your feedback and truly appreciate all your comments and suggestions. I very much intend to work on a version 1.1 that I hope will resolve the more disputable aspects of the game.
(in all seriousness, consider refusing to let naval munitions spawn in cities as a trade off to maybe not making Villeneau's fleet doomed from the start. It might be interesting to have Villeneau's "leader bonus" be that he acts almost like a Train Militare on the seas, and fleets stacked with him don't lose HP during winter).
I did find the Imperial Guard stacked with Napoleon or Lannes to be a great way of finishing such sieges without sustaining terrible casualties, especially as a replacement unit will be created on the replacement path.
)), I kind of took a break from CIV during the holidays.
