Over the Reich - Creation Thread

Also, maybe we want to shorten the 'bomb whistle' sound effect. I find it annoying after 2-3 uses, and it can take quite a few bombs to destroy a target in this scenario.

 

I incorporated your changes into 3.11 (probably should be 3.02 but oh well) and uploaded it here and on the wiki.

I didn't change the sound yet but will revisit it.

 

Also I think we'd better have Gomorrah increase Allied points by 52.5 as it destroys everything. I don't know that the points would be given with a delete unit event rather than a unit killed event. Even if the city isn't quite so built up I'm ok with a few extra points as this is one of the more devastating raids.

 

I didn't see this on my end but I'll double check the files when I get home. Are you also in the middle of a match?

 

You're scenarios are bleeding into each other!

 

No, I've been testing the special events. I noticed that for operation Gomorrah.

 

Notes about changes.

specialNumbers.alliedScoreIncrementOperationGomorrah = 52.5

This is the score that the allies get for destroying the special target during operation Gomorrah. They can get extra points for demolishing parts of the city with regular strategic bombing before the event. If desired, I could give the regular points for each target actually destroyed as if it were destroyed by regular bombs.

Added lines to remove the special targets for operation chastise after the event is complete.

Added the gomorrah report to the german newspaper in the event of an allied success.

Destroying the target at Schweinfurt removes IndustryI,II,III from the germans.

Destroying the target at Regensburg removes the first of EscortFightersIII, EscortFightersII or InterceptorsIII, that the German player has

For operation hydra, when giving the currently researched technology (in the event of allied failure), I give it outright, rather than setting research to the cost of a tech. This way, the germans get a full tech, rather than just the difference between current research progress and the tech cost. This can be changed if desired. Search for this line if necessary.
tribeAliases.Germans:giveTech(tribeAliases.Germans.researching)

In the Battle of Berlin, in the event of a worker's strike, every German city has a 40% chance of being set to disorder, and hence not producing for a turn. This can be changed in the table sTNum at the start of the special targets functions. At the moment this does not apply to occupied cities (I presume they are already disenchanted with the Luftwaffe), but that can easily be changed. I've made it so that only one of the three events can happen at a time.

I have removed the sunk freighters line from the score button, since it doesn't do anything. If people would like it for informational purposes, I can add it back in and tie the freighter sinkings to the counter.

Moved most of the special target code (not the text aliases part) to just before civ.scen.onTurn so that it would be after the strategic bombing code definitions (which I use for the events that kill railyards)

Basic testing has been done to the events (I temporarily changed the parameters in the sTNum table and added the ability to generate munitions at a keystroke, for the updateCloudKey), but I didn't check every last thing. At the very least, I don't think anything breaks to the console anymore.

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When doing a test, I captured a German city on the first turn, and ran into the situation where there is a funds shortage, and a building is sold off. We have to decide what to do about this.

Testing the building sale suggests that for each city, the tax production of the current city is added to the treasury, and then building maintenance is paid on each building, starting with the Palace (i.e. the order improvements are shown in the city window). If maintenance can't be paid on a building it is sold (without paying maintenance on it), and the process continues. This suggests (and a brief test seems to confirm) that a 0 maintenance building will never be sold.

Having buildings be sold off in this scenario creates problems, at least most of the time. We can divide the buildings into 3 types

Type 1: City 'type' buildings. I.e. City I, City II, City III, and Airbase. These govern what the city is allowed to produce.

Type 2: Strategic Target Buildings. Buildings that are tied to strategic target units and perform a function on the map.

Type 3: 'Ordinary' buildings. All buildings not in category 1 or 2.

Type 3 buildings are not a problem, if they are sold. However, we have to deal with the case where Type 1 or 2 buildings are sold.

If a building is given 0 maintenance cost, then it won't be sold automatically, and we don't have anything to worry about. Giving all these buildings 0 maintenance would solve this problem, but force re-balancing of lots of other things.

For strategic targets, I could run through all the units in the game each turn, and check that each strategic target has a corresponding improvement in its city, and do something if it does not (like delete the unit and change the terrain as appropriate).

Another option is not to do anything for strategic targets. The player loses the benefit from the city improvement, but still receives the benefits for the nearby terrain. It isn't too far out there. The factory is less efficient because it can't get as much fuel as it needs, but isn't completely worthless. This would seem reasonable (and easy), except that it might encourage the player to deliberately try to sacrifice railyards or military ports to get the extra cash. Perhaps those targets shouldn't cost anything to maintain.

Type 1 buildings must remain in the city, since they govern production. Either they must be given 0 maintenance cost, so they'll never be sold, or they must be replaced if sold. Since they are not built anyway, they should have a build cost of 0, so that no cash is produced when they are sold. If you want each city to have a 'base' fuel cost, then I guess we simply check each city after production and replace any sold off buildings of this type.

For proper cities, we would put all the maintenance cost of the 3 buildings into only one of them, so that one would be sold. Then, when we check each city for its 'definition' buildings, if there is no 'city' building, then we know it is an airfield, and if there is, we know it is a city that had one of its buildings sold off.

Let me know what your thoughts on the matter are.

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This is what I think still must be done for OTR events:
0. Fix bugs as they are reported, maybe do some more deliberate checks.
1. Sort out the building maintenance problem.
2. Add 'important' messages to the newspaper (like D-Day?, could use suggestions for this) when they happen.
3. Maybe take another look at combat reporting to see if it can be easier to use. (Optional, doesn't directly impact game mechanics)
4. Add a more detailed menu to the newspaper, so that you can skip to an article you want, instead of going backwards one by one. (Optional, probably a relatively minor improvement.)

Is there anything else?

 

I did a quick test to see if I could simply give a maintenance cost to a wonder and avoid all of this, but I cant.

Unfortunately giving these buildings a 0 maintenance cost would completell unbalance the fuel effects, so I think your onProduction idea is the best way to handle this.

I'm in agreement with only doing this for City III and the airbase. I'll modify the rules so only City III and airfields have a cost, and so that all these buildings cost 0 to build.

I'm ok with your idea about letting factories get sold. I'll modify the text for when this happens to something appropriate.

I don't believe there are other events than those you listed. I think text like the Stalingrad one I posted would be good for the newspaper, as would the instruction text for the Historic Missions (assuming the enemy can't read it).

 

3 January Changelog

-- Checks to see if City III (23) or Airbase (17) is missing from the
-- city and replaces it if necessary. If the city has City II (9) then
-- it is a 'city' and not an airfield, so City III is replaced.
local function replaceSoldCityBuildings()

Changed build cost of Airbase, City I, city II, and City III to 0. Upkeep of City I and City II reduced to 0, upkeep for city III increased to 6.

Tested the code, and it appears to work.

textAliases.foggiaText1,2,3 added to allied newspaper when appropriate

textAliases.overlordText1,2,3,4 added to allied newspaper when appropriate.

textAliases.vistulaText1,2 added to allied newspaper after being displayed to allies

textAliases.stalingradAlliedText added to allied newspaper after displayed

textAliases.stalingradGermanText added to German newspaper after display

textAliases.huskyAlliedText,GermanText added to appropriate newspapers after display


textAliases.avalancheAlliedText,GermanText added to newspapers

textAliases.kievAlliedText,German Text added to newspapers

textAliases.korsunAlliedText,GermanText added to newspapers

Added justOnce to various text displays in that part of the code, where there wasn't some sort of other 'guard' in place (like tech given)

textAliases.DDayText added to allied newspaper when appropriate
DDay in Baltic text added to newspaper also.

textAliases.secondFrontText1 added to german newspaper when appropriate

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I think this update covers 1. and 2. As far as I know, this means that as far as game mechanics go, the events are complete. Further changes will either be bug fixes, or changes to the newspaper or combat reporting.

 

Oh, one more thing, which has been annoying while doing testing, but I always forgot to bring up. Many German cities start the game with a food deficit and an empty food box, so I get several famine messages when I play. This is exacerbated by the fact that I'm trying to test other things and not fix cities, but it seems to me to be bad form to have a game start where cities have to be re-adjusted to account for a food deficit on the first turn, and also have an empty food box.

We can use lua to put some food in the boxes, either on the first turn of the scenario as an event, or as a script run during the game if you plan to release a new start of the scenario, to account for the worker placement and maybe other things too (if they exist).

Also, something else I thought of from time to time, but was never at the front of my mind when posting. The Allies seem to have little reason to worry about having their ships destroyed, since they serve relatively little function. What if there were some kind of penalty for losing 'big' ships? Maybe have a point penalty for losing a ship like that. Or, maybe you can't accumulate more than, say, 50 Allied Points per big ship, so if you lose too many, you have to build more for DDay.

 

I never caught this because I would always adjust my specialists on the first turn (I kind of assume most people would) but this weekend I'll make adjustments to this and a few other things so it won't happen. I agree a scenario shouldn't start this way. No need for a lua fix - this is a design issue.

The powers started WW2 thinking that big ships were important, but they didn't play much of a role in the conflict. I'm not sure the Allies should get a point penalty yet. I like the idea in concept that the Germans should have a way to chip back, but I do think they're in a considerable time crunch. Maybe we can revisit this after the latest round of playtests? I'm keeping track of how many points I receive and when and would be better able to comment on this at the end of a game vs. a human.

 

I can still give you a script to put some food in each box if you like, it wouldn't take very long.

Maybe the rules should be changed to prevent disbanding ships? At the moment, it probably makes sense to move the big ships into a coastal airfield and disband them for aircraft shields, which seems unreasonable. And while the big ships didn't do all that much, it doesn't seem likely that they would have been 'wasted' either, which might be a reasonable thing for the Allies to do in this game, given how many ships they start with.

Also, remember to set the barbarian unit won't expire flag for your neutral territory unit, while you're in the rules.txt .

 

I can change them to non-disbandable. As far as wasting them... I don't know. You have options for how to use them, one of which is keeping the main battle fleet of the Kriegsmarine bottled up. I think if a player just throws the whole navy away, that will open up other strategies for the Germans.

It's not a surprise to McMonkey that in my current playtest I'm raiding his shorelines trying to take out radar with the fleet but I will say I don't consider that a waste. Ships are sturdier than aircraft and it makes sense to use them to take out any targets they can reach.

I like the idea that different people could employ different strategies. As long as there is a downside I'm OK with people going Crazy Ivan with their fleet (in this case, you need to use aircraft to hit coastal targets instead).

That barbarian flag is probably why they all deleted. I plan on releasing a large update this weekend that adds them back in and addresses these things.

 

@Prof. Garfield can you think of any reason that the city I founded at 124,62 disappeared between turn 10 and turn 11? You can grab the save from my playtest with McMonkey. I have founded other airfields without an issue in the scenario.

Edit - I also did a test from turn 11 to 12 (McMonkey, I kept my head down and just hit enter over and over again so I didn't see anything) and the airfield I created at 138,58 also didn't hold up. I'm wondering if this problem has anything to do with the clouds and the fact that terrain is changed to an airfield underneath of them.

 

Have The Italian and Russian Front cities disappeared also? I know why they have, and how to correct it, but I'm still trying to figure out why the airbases are deleted. I know where it is happening (I put in textbox messages just before each delete city line), but I'm not sure why it is happening yet.

 

They have deleted between turn 10 and 11, which is also when I noticed the other cities I built having deleted. I assume it has something to do with the new events work that you did as we just played a turn with the new stuff today, and that is when the deletion happened.

 

I just ran a quick test by starting a new game and building some test cities in East Anglia - those cities survive to the next turn, but the Italian and Russian Front cities do not.

As for the airfields, I reloaded McMonkey's turn 9 save and ended his turn to bring up mine. I confirmed that the location where I built the new city had a cloud over it on map 1, as did the second location where I built the test. However, bizarrely, I then conducted a test with a new game where I built two airfields - on called "TestCloud" as there were clouds above its location, the second called "TestNoCloud". I did this on turn 2 to rule out some sort of first turn grace period. Both cities survived....

 

I'm pretty sure it is not a cloud problem.

The code that is deleting the cities is there to make sure that cancelling construction of an airbase doesn't leave one on the opposite map. The code to replace sold airbase improvements has made the game think that the italian and russian front cities should be deleted, since they have received airbase improvement, but not corresponding night map city. I can fix this. I'm not sure, however, why the other cities are being deleted, and am currently investigating.

 

I'm getting closer to the bottom of the problem. After commenting out the 'delete city' event, I find that the night airfield exists, except it is not placed on the map after the initial turn. The bomber it built is on the map, as is the city name, and I can access the city from the City adviser, but the tile itself does not register as having a city. That means that the city below it is deleted, after which, the city itself is deleted.

I suspect it has something to do with the village on the square. I will investigate cloud+village to make sure it isn't a cloud problem after all.

 

Bear in mind that the second city I test built, not on a village, also deleted