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.