R.E.D. WWII: Concepts & Suggestions

Hey on the bigger maps like 1936 and 1942 my game keeps crashing. Is there anything I can do to play on the big maps without my game crashing as soon as it starts? Also cool mod by far the best one so far.

 

Anybody... please upload version 28 of this mod somewhere... I'm a Mac user and Steam Workshop doesn't work for macs... only installing manually. Would greatly appreciate it!! It's a small file, a simple zip of the mod folder will do... Tks in advance!!!!

 

PERFECT!! Tks!!

 

After another full evening of play on the 1939-1945, i have some further review and suggestions:

1) This free blitz upgrade that Germany gets is incredibly powerful. Honestly, german tanks should start with some kind of "Logistics" upgrade that only adds 1 attack, not blitzing attacks for every movement point. A careful strategist can deploy about 1/3 of the required armor units as Germany when planning for the invasion of Russia, although by the time the game gets that far enough along its really way too far gone to not matter, because its relatively simple to take London, especially with the ridiculous operation Seelowe lol.

Luckily, this is only a problem when a competent human player is playing as Germany, because the AI is pretty bad at projecting their power to its full potential.
Proposed Solution-
A Unique Building that Germany can build that adds a Logistics bonus to armor produced in said city. Berlin and 1 other city would start with it, but you could build it in every city if you wished. It should cost something on par with the military base.

2) Food needs to be greatly more limited, scenario wide. It shouldn't be easy for anyone but Germany and Russia to produce more than 15-20 infantry and be physicially capable of reinforcing them. UK's capacity should be something like 1/3 of Germany's.

Proposed Solution- Across the board, increase the food requirement for reinforcing All units by about a factor of 3. Some minor balancing may be required afterward, but this would limit the use of Infantry as 'battle space occupiers' in a sense that you can spam them to just crowd out the enemies ability to occupy your area.

3)The placement of Manufactories is good, well done, but i do think that Germany should have 2-3 less of them, on the whole. Germany's population on the whole is sufficient to really ensure they are a production powerhouse, particularly after they consolidate Poland and Northern France. Warsaw definitely doesnt need 2 manufactories.

4) Convoys - i would bet it has occurred to someone at some point, but one alternative would be to reduce their movement points and drastically increase their hitpoints, so that their position was more estimable. They follow the identical route all the same, and its easy enough to park 1 or 2 naval units along that route and hunt em down, but it'd shake things up a bit. There should be a lot more of them, too. Especially for England, who should be almost entirely dependent on them for reinforcements, especially in Manpower.

5) Lack of US Coastline makes things really lame, lategame. Honestly, why not more or less copy/paste the 1936 tiles and some ocean onto the map?


6) Give a couple of "IslandCities/military bases" to Germany throughout Vichy NorthAfrica after Paris is taken. I.e. Casablanca, Algeria, and Tunisia. If in a further version a robust presence of the U.S.A. and a presumed operation Torch for them, this would make for an excellent divergence from the Russian front.


On the whole, the 1939 is pretty easy, and i even consciously handicapped myself at times just to see to waht extent i could do the most with the least. A.I. script needs to be given some extra gold at a minimum.





sidenote; the 1942 map - you can't build Banks, Military Bases, Barricades, and a bunch of other top-level buildings. I know the building list is under construction, but an inability to build any of these as a smaller nation kind of sucks. I'll compile a more comprehensive suggestion on what buildings might be added that would add to the construction/production aspects.

edit: why could the complete list of buildings from 1939-1945 not be wholly exported to the 1942?

super-sidenote; obviously there aren't resources, but its an obvious aspiration, and since i dont have any really great ideas on how you could even begin to balance the requirement of oil and coal and stuff, i wont get into it, but i'd be curious if someone could link me to a longwinded debate that might have occured in months or years past regarding this.

 

Can someone confirm deny; am i using the correct version of 1942? If there i sa newer version, i'd like to have it. im using the one that i got from the Steam Workshop download, that came with v.28

 

Great modifcation! Love this heaps, and it would be great if you kept updating it! Fantastic! I will think of some suggestions when I play some more!

 

Just a pointer - the icons for units are not what they seem to be in Strategic mode.

Some infantry units have a submarine marker in Strategic mode only. Whether this is a CIV5 issue or not, I'm not too sure.

Just thought I'd let you know, but I'm sure you know of this issue already.

 

Just read through most of this thread (at a glance, but still got most of what has been discussed),

I realize Gedemon is busy and stuff, and debugging takes precidence over new features, but here are a couple old idea's mentioned here that could do with reiteration, and some new ones as well:

1) Strategic Bombing needs some serious attention.

I saw Gedemon mentioned that Manufactories would be 'pillaged' and 'auto-repair' after 3-5 turns, but i think this is inadaquete. Some kind of Worker-unit needs to be available, its upkeep cost high (like 5 or 10 gold per turn per unit) and it can repair manufactories in 1 turn, etc. As best i can tell, interception is incredibly underpowered. Fighters need something like +300% damage against bomber class units, because in my experience of playing through with the current unit-list, my bombers never get damaged more than 4-6 hitpoints in a turn, and heal that back up with the instant heal.

One point i am fuzzy on - what is the radius that Interception will occur? If a manufactory is 2 tiles away (separated by 1 tile between the city and the manufactory), will a fighter that is stationed in said city intercept a bomber that is 'strategic bombing' the manufactory? what about 3 tiles away? Does this occur with the air-targeting of all ground units? I have a top-end spec'd computer but disabled combat and move animation to move through the game at a faster strategic place. i will test this issue later this evening when i play a bit more.

A few alternative solutions to the entire bombing issue:


Cities require immense material costs (industrial Prod) and moderate manpower (the farm prod). I think this is an _excellent_ solution to the problem of "meaningless bombings."

The AI in my experience does few things truly well, but the degree with which they "Carpet Bomb" a city, either the British bombing Cologne and Frankfurt, or the Germans bombing Plymouth, London, and Norwich - they do this well and in totality, and this aspect of the AI's unusual aptitude should be expanded in its effect.

Some serious proposed stats for this:

2 new structures for cities:
-Fire Brigade <to put out fires caused by firebombing of cities>. Cost- 5 gold/per turn. Increases rate of city recovery by 50% (so it recovers 6 points instead of 4 per turn?)

-Bomb Shelter <Shield population cost>. Cost- 2 gold/per turn. Reduces the manpower required to recover a city by per point by 75%


City recovery:
<This should be based upon the actual size and importance of the city; a combination of its size, and how many structures are in it.>
A preliminary formula:

Cost per hitpoint of the cities recovery, in manpower: Population x 10
Cost per hitpoint of the cities recovery, in production: (Population x 10) + *10 per industrial structure + *5 per civilian or military structure

A practical example:
London
Population 24
Structures: Bank, Factory, Light Air Factory, Medium Air Factory, Barracks, Academy, Military Base, Baracade, Arsenal, Hospital.
(How these are classified, particularly the Hospitol, makes a difference, but its minor)
Costs 240 population points per hitpoint, or almost 1000 for the full turns recovery. This would be reduced by the bombshelter in a serious way, so that it isnt utterly crippling to the UK, etc.

Costs ___ Production
240 from population, 30 from the presence of factories, 35 from military and civilian, for a total of 305 points per hitpoint, or 1200 production for 1 turn.

Firebrigades could alternatively effect the production cost, and not the rate, but the entire point of strategic bombing should be the cost of rebuilding your factories.





More Operations:
- As a note, i think its great that the operations are at least doubly robust for the AI as they are for Humans. This should be especially the case with new operations, especially in Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans.

Operation Compass <UK project>; 3-5 Armor, 3 infantry, 2 bombers and 2 fighters spawn at Suez. Capable of being constructed in September 1940.

Operation Sunnenblume <Germany project>; 3-5 armor, 2 infantry, 1 bomber and 2 fighters spawn at Tunisia (as a trigger, captured by Germany, along with Benghazi, to allow for fighter/bomber basing there). THe AI would have be pretty closely guided to move these units around the coast of Libya and attack towards Eygpt. Capable of being constructed December 1940

Operation Torch < UK/ USA Expeditionary force as a city state that spawns there>; 2 uk armor, 2 infantry in casablanca, a decently large u.s. fleet and u.s. army, invading casablanca. AI would have to put emphasis on assualting eastward toward Tunisia across Algeria. Capable of being constructed as UK project April 1942.
(As an aside, i think there should be an automatic trigger that increases the presence of U.S. as an Allied CityState anyway, but this is a good way to put it forward).


Operation <Yugoslavia Invasion> <German Project>; 5 armor and 4 infantry spawn in vienna, attack southward. Capable of German construction in July 1940.

Operation <Italian Invasion of Greece> <Italian Project>; 3 armor, 3 infantry spawn out the sea southwest of Greece, 2 fighters nad 2 bombers appear in Rhodes. Capable of Italian Cosntruction July 1940.

Operation Barbarosa <German Project>; 10-20 armor, 5-10 infantry, 2 heavy bombers, 2 light bombers, 2 aircraft.
Note: This would be an incredibly costly project, due to its size. But i also think its very necesary because the spawn would occur mainly in southern poland and Romania in those German Allies and would attack upward with the twopronged goal and Odessa and Kiev.

This would also trigger a recipricol spawn of russia units around the Urals that could 'race' to the front, and a secondary spawn of a lot of units 12 turns later around Moscow.

It'd be complicated to code, but it'd be an important to 'help the war along.'




I haven't actually played a campaign as Russia yet, but in my last UK campaign, i watched the German advance into Russia and it was incredibly slow. I saw some other commenter noted that perhaps the "Enemy AI pays especial attention to the Human Player at the expense of less aggression towards the enemy AI" and if this is the case, i guess its a good thing, but there needs to be specific spawns and orders given to those specific units to keep the game from stagnating even if the player in single player gets huge victory early.

The Axis suffered serious setbacks in their campaign, despite stunning speed in their conquests. Failure of the battle of britian and the western desert campaigns are the two best examples, and deserve special attention in terms of projects.

I would also encourage the enemy AI be given some kind of special gold infusion to fund larger militaries.



I'd love to play a multilayer hot seat with 1 or 2 others if there is someone around anytime.

Great mod though, Gedemon, hope my input has been helpful.



e: and i can now make an educated guess at the lack of buildings in the 1942, because the presence of buildings will make the AI build those before building units, which is annoying, but at the same time, when playing Japan, and when having harbor-embarkation only enabled, a ton of my units got stuck in Indonesia because i couldn't build harbors. And it further was a serious economic drain because i couldn't even connect those islands with harbors to subsidize the cost of their defense, etc. A solution to this would be to put harbor's in all of those island cities, except maybe some of the extreme south pacific ones like Guadalcanal. Those islands need to be expanded in size though anyway. the map is large enough to tolerate small islands with significant defensibility value being a 2-3 tiles bigger.

e2: i keep remembering stuff i wanted to also mention-

The 5 turn warnings before declaration of war are terrific, but they drop off and dont really incorporate declarations on greece or yugoslavia, and i remember being caught off gaurd when suddenly i was at war with them and had not 'prepared an invasion' for them.


Furthermore, there needs to be another building or two that adds dramatically to the defense of a city but not at such a cost. playing as the UK i found myself disbanding the military abses at gilbralter and malta because i just couldnt afford them and wasnt really going to produce many units or do much research there. there needs to be an alternative building that just adds 'fortress' aspects to the city without the huge cost or beneifits for troop training.


And these buildings should be present in Strassburg, Metz, and Rhiems. And there should be some kind of semi-unique tileset along the border of germany/france at the beginning of 1939 that makes units move slowly over them, or adds huge defensive buffs to the units stationed over them, to simulate the maginot line. This would also encourage germany to wait till the spring for when it would flood through the low countries and straight to paris in classic blitzkrieg fashion.



And lastly - and i had heard this mentioned - is there some way to fundamentally alter teh way tiles behave in a manner that might more closely simulate 'winter' in northearn europe and russia? Or, instead of changing the tile, buffs could be placed on units in specific places, like northern Europe and Russia (and Scandinavian). This is coming rapidly off the rails in terms of simplicity, but it would add an incrediably nuanced micro-management aspect to the game, and would add greater importance the tile-promotions of winter or whatever.

In northern Europe, Scandinavian, and russia, from December through the middle of april, there would be a movement penalty that reduced infantry movement by 75%(for example, something like 2 moves on road, and only 1 move every other turn off road, etc) and 50% movement for armor on road (so they could still maneuver) but literally no non-road movement (stuck in the snow/mud). Furthermore, all Russian soldiery could come with a free "winter promotion" that removes this effect, but it'd only be a premium promotion for everyone else. In my vision of this, a battle of the bulge operation would be 3 or 4 armor units spawning in December that are incredibly buff'd with promotions and the winter promotion that would just wreck the allied forces in France, and possibly win it. Who knows.

Ya, complicated

The supply line buff is terrific, and this could be a nice compliment to that.

 

Ilshur, I would love to play hotseat in this scenario as well. We could even use the GMR program found in the multiplayer section to help the process along.

Regarding balance issue, I do agree that interception is kinda underwhelming. Even fully promoted, fighters have a hard time damaging, let alone killing any kind of bomber/heavy bomber. Imo, interception should look like this:

-Attack aircraft: Getting devastated by fighters. Its already like that, so no change required.
-Fast bomber: Getting heavily damaged. They already have a good chance of evading, wich should be their only defense, if an ennemy fighter catch them, they should really take a lot of damage
-Regular bomber:Moderate damage. A bomber should not bomb all game long without fear of being destroyed
-Heavy bomber:low damage. The whole point of those airplanes is to be hard to kill. Heavy fighter should be required to even have a chance to stop them.

Also, I think the main problem is the AI. As Italy, on Deity, I was able to capture the whole of north africa and most of russia with ease. Same with Germany as I was able to claim Europe with too much difficulties.
I did play this scenario once in a hotseat game with a bunch of friends over a few beer. The Axis are really powerful but nothing the allies could not stop.

I still think this is a great scenario! With more Operations, units and balance, this could even take over the regular CIV experience for me

 

this particular mod has such incredible promise though, it just needs a few more layers of development to expand the full playability. The convoy system and strategic bombing system, along with some token eastern seaboard of the U.S., would make it terrific.

 

Here is a further idea:


Expand the Atlantic west by 8-10 tiles, and then add 3 to 5 U.S. Cities in a coast, tall cities well developed, and make them a CS for teh U.S. that's friends with the U.K. and France. Convoys of men and material spawn there literally every turn, and this is what funds the U.K. Then, around December 1941, they are annexed by the U.K. and the U.K. becomes, more or less, "The Allies".


This would make it more important for Germany to sustain uboat warfare (they would need a more robust immediate presence, somewhere on the order of 12-15 uboats clustered about) and it would further balance the production powerhouse of Continental Europe).

e:


if i were to triage on what should be resolved first:

1) Interception. Triple or quadruple the damage fighters deal to bombers and attack aircraft, and perhaps expand the range to a radius of 3 tiles beyond the city (is this not the default?). Im thinking mainly of england and france, and the prevelence of the AI to bomb to zero some city other than london or paris where all of the human fighters are based.

2) Strategic bombing of manufactories. Simple enough, Gedemon has said he is thinking about it, i say, go for it!

3) More convoys, and at least a token U.S. Eastern Seaboard expansion. Maybe even just make it U.K., so that german uboats can attack land units and surface navy being built there. And then a token expansion of some kind of "great atlantic route" for planes that have to go to newfoundland, iceland, and then to england (because the distance across the atlantic is too great).



Gedemon; if you want further consultation, i'd be happy to get incredibly specific (despite the lengths of my posts, i have not yet really begun to go into minute detail).

 

Great effort ilshur. Let's hope we can make some progress!

 

I play with DX9 and settings all on minimum or low.

Today I took over Paris with the Germans and as soon as I destroy Paris - and pillage it the game crashes (it obviously cannot deal with the border changes and France being kicked out of the game.
I got this crash report:

I hope this can be resolves and it isn't going to remain with me.

 

at a certain point, i just think civ5 cannot function on lower end systems. i have a top end system and it still crashes on me from time to time.

 

Hi again. Gedemon, or anyone, could you answer this question? I've been playing the mod, and every time I started a new game, the mod became a little more like the vanilla game. It's weird. Now, if I try to start a new game on any map, all the colours are like the usual game. Like UK is red, Russia is yellow, and city states are not shown properly. Some of their territory on the map is just black. And their city icons are not there. At the beginning, when it asks you to choose a production to start off, I click choose a production and it just pans to the city. If I go into the city screen, and try to choose production, nothing happens. I click choose production in the city screen but the selection doesn't open up. Also, there is espionage selection, resource icons at the top but not actual resources on the map, if an enemy unit goes near your city you can fire upon it, with the city. It's just like the vanilla game except for the units. Everything else is good except for what I mentioned above. Is it possible, after I updated to Gods and Kings, that the codes got mixed or something? I've totally uninstalled the mod, deleted everything from the cache and MODS folder, and re-subcsribed in game, still the same. Is there anything else I can do? This mod is too great to let go.

 

Without knowing it for sure (only Gedemon proberly knows for sure), Im fairly sure that G&K broke the mod (I have not had time to try it myself).

I am also hoping that Gedemon can fix the mod to work with G&K once he gets back, as many others have said this mod is too good to just fall into the dark pit that is incompatible

 

It was noted over on the Steam forum that it works fine with G&K only if you have only Mongolia activated in the DLC. G&K and all other DLC (except Mongolia) have to be deactivated.

Since doing that, the only issue I've had is that the game crashes at the downfall of France (My work around has been to leave Paris to the French, surround it, and conquer each city individually. I'm about to find out if there is any issue when I take Moscow.

 

there is an option to turn off automatic triggered events in the checkbox menu before you start the game (advanced game settings, in the faction seleciton menu).

Given Gedemon's history of updating this scenario, im sure he will update it. i just hope we can make some further advances in playability and strengthening the AI, as well.

 

Okay, thanks for the info, I'll try disabling certain DLC