Revisiting the Maginot Line

[cafka]

Oops, wrong thread.... Sorry

 

[danila]

Originally posted by knowltok
Perhaps a good solution would be to make rail travel like shipping, with a container. You would have rolling stock and would have to load your troops, then move and unload where you want them. I know a system like this would add horrible complexity, which is why I favor limiting rail travel to 1/5 or something like that. Face it, it takes as much time to load troops onto trains as onto ships. Also as much time to unload them and form up, so why does rail travel get the advantage?

A similar solution, although much easier, in my opinion, would be to allow unlimited movement only between cities. And may be, only once every turn. In this case, it will be possible to send units from their "home" city to the point of invasion, send them in the field, spending movement points and attack.

Basically, there will be two movement modes - rail transport between cities and normal movement (on their feet or wheels) across the terrain.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by danila


A similar solution, although much easier, in my opinion, would be to allow unlimited movement only between cities. And may be, only once every turn. In this case, it will be possible to send units from their "home" city to the point of invasion, send them in the field, spending movement points and attack.

Basically, there will be two movement modes - rail transport between cities and normal movement (on their feet or wheels) across the terrain.

Great idea. That would solve one and a half problems. First, no more kiss the wife goodbye in the morning, cross the continent, fight a war, re-cross the continent, tuck the kids into bed at night.

And half of the problem with rails running every which way.

 

[getak]

i couldn't tell you how useful fortresses really are.

it was the modern era and i had alot of magiono lines on my eurasian mega continent, about 10. i loaded them all with 3 artillary and panzers. they were all linked with rail roads, so units could support the lines easily.

however the real threat was always from the sea i built as many costal fortresses as i could and loaded them with 10 radar artillary minimum. one turn a large naval invasion force came up to the beaches wave after wave after wave. with that much artillary firing all at once at a single target i sunk battle ships in one hit and carriers were no match either. my forts mowed down their entire lines of ships for 3 turns, unti lthe invasion stopped coming.

i always attack with:
1) tanks
2) infantry
3) workers
4) settlers
5) infantry
6) artillary
7) tanks

this assault has proven unbeatable in the game. once an area is cleared the infantry secure the area, then the settlers settle, the workers irrigate mine or build fotresses, and the units in the rear fortify the new structures. i also use the workers to build rail roads up to the front lines, so more units can always be brought up from the production cities.

 

[JLE3]

Just my 2 cents, but the Germans defeated the Maginot line by going around it, invading Belgium in the process. The Maginot line did hold up well to frontal assault, but was vulnerable to a flanking move and attack from the rear. That's also the strategy the US used to defeat the Iraqi's.

 

[hzm]

It should be a wonder. But it would have to appear on the map, just like the great wall should.

 

[Supercilious]

Originally posted by JLE3
Just my 2 cents, but the Germans defeated the Maginot line by going around it, invading Belgium in the process. The Maginot line did hold up well to frontal assault, but was vulnerable to a flanking move and attack from the rear. That's also the strategy the US used to defeat the Iraqi's.

About the Maginot Line - you are wrong.

It surely had some defensive value, but the Germans did penetrate it in many places using shaped charges to blow up the steel and concrete fortifications, just as they did a few weeks earlier at the Belgian fort Eben-Emael, which was also assumed to be "impregnable".

Shaped charges direct all the force into a narrow stream vaporizing anything in its path and then penetrating. The Germans were the first to utilize that.

If you penetrate a fortress line in a few places you can ignore the rest of them. That's why China's Great Wall was never designed to keep invaders out (impossible - too long); it was designed to keep Chinese people in.

Again, the Maginot Line was better than just digging trenches in the trees, but it was penetrated and not worth the cost.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Supercilious


About the Maginot Line - you are wrong.

Your opinion would be contrary to the concensus of a vast majority of historians.

If the Germans had concentrated their assault on the Maginot Line, then surely they could have been stopped. The Line in and of itself would not be sufficient, nor was it meant to be. By slowing the German advance, the French army could have provided necessary reenforcements by the time the Germans could penetrate the defenses there.

Of course, the Germans made a specific decision to go around the Line, with the attack on the Line simply a diversion. The German battleplan was called Sichelschnitt, or "cut of the sickle." Later the Line fell, when the demoralized French defenders were surrounded. No fixed defense can last forever without relief.

http://europeanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa072001b.htm
(This is page 6 of a longer discussion of the Maginot Line. There are links to direct you to the whole article.)

 

[Sasebo]

I am a bit confused wasn't this thread about forts originally?? On the RR issue though I have to agree with knowltok I think, they could have perhaps done a bit better then unlimited movement. You can make RR powerfull without making it so drastic. I played quite a bit of CTP did anyone else? If I remember it right roads were 1/3 rail was 1/5 and maglevs(which came in modern era) were 1/10... RR wass perhaps a bit underpowered there but you get the idea. Also in the game Imperialism I remember that you would build RR capacity not the actual rails... A different game I know, but abstracting it and having you just build transport capacity and maintain that was pretty elegant and besides I HATE having all those worker types cluttering up the landscape. The single best thing about CTP was the public works display! IMO that is Sasebo

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Gray
The Maginot Line did not do much to help the French fend off the Germans during WWII. However, it is a viable option in Civ3.
. . .
Anyone else have some cool defensives strats/stories to share???

Here is an example of a Maginot type defense in The Walls of Eridu. Of course, nothing is as simple as it seems. It actually requires two walls; one to protect against invasion from the east, another to protect from Persian encroachments emanating from their southern position on the peninsula. Meanwhile, the extensive border with Japan is an invitation for invasion.

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm12/Eridu.htm

Walls can be very useful for deterring attacks and controlling the movements of your enemy, but they should be backed by an active and mobile defense.

 

[Shabbaman]

You should have beaten the Japanese in the first place, like I did
I've got the strangest feeling about this thread: didn't this used to be in the war academy or something? It's pretty old at least...
Railroad/artillery is the ultimate defence. Building fortresses along your border as depicted above is just plain old fun!

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Shabbaman
You should have beaten the Japanese in the first place, like I did

When I said the long border with Japan was an invitation . . .
Tokugawa retired shortly after accepting my "invitation."

The Maginot Line still worked as intended by inhibiting the Persians and French from a land invasion in support of the Japanese. The French did try a naval invasion, but it was ineffectual.

 

[MajorFallout]

Originally posted by knowltok
Certainly the bombing of terain squares can work to nulify railroads, but that doesn't mean that railroad movement couldn't be modified and still retain a great game. Also, will the AI bomb your railroads to stop your internal movement? If not, advantage player. It is just something that would be interesting to hear the rational behind.

Fighter strategy....
You can also take advantage of the AI's insistance on bombing certain areas of your territory (an enemy city nearby), by locating alot of fighters in those cities which it seems to bombard, and set them fighters to 'air superiority' mode. Now watch those bombers get blown to bits by your fighters.

I managed to do this once, when the AI was attacking one of my cities, so I put about 8-10 jet fighters in there, and told them to defend the city. In the next turn, the AI sent all of it's bombers over, and my fighters destroyed them all! YEEESSSS, said I! Their entire airforce was wiped out - they only had about 12 planes to start off with, now they have nothing. Then you can send in your army, almost unmolested by planes.

 

[JAWiseman]

Originally posted by Zachriel


But to keep the tactics feeling "right", rail is too powerful.

I agree completely.

To others that have posted, IMHO the fact that a train can cross a continent in one year in "real life" is irrelevant. The movement benefit of rail should be relative to all other movement in the game. To be able to move 2-6 squares at a time, then 20 turns later, to be able to infanately move around within your borders does not feel "right" to quote Zachriel.

I believe that Civ3 would have a much better "feel" if railroads were incrementally better than roads, say twice as fast (e.g. 1/6 of a movement point), and making that simple change would feel more "realistic" than rail.

I mean really, anyone can cross a continent on a road in a year too, but I do not hear anyone saying roads should have infanite movement. I can drive from NY to LA and back 50 times in one year, and I am sure I could walk it once in one year. What implications does that have on the game? It clearly means that movement should be relative within the game, and does not need to make sense in the real world.

 

[Thierry]

I think railroad is fine the way it is. Unlimited movement is unrealistic, but not so much.

I think the huge game advantage of being able to mass all your armies in one point models the historical advantage of the railways.

Look at history : War between the states and after that, Prussian and French war (1870) : the railways were considered to be a major element in all strategies !

What appears utterly unrealistic and very badly balanced is :
* unlimited railway capacity... Maybe like in other games (imperialisms ?) a capacity wich has to be built ?
* No way to stop railway movement in the vicinity of ennemy units...
* the ability to airlift 'heavy' units. You should'nt be able to airlift mech infantry or armor to any point in the world.

Even america with the greatest power ever in the world can't airlift any significant part of it's army... In a West vs East scenario, they always aimed at blocking russia while waiting for the main force to cross the Atlantic by sea... No overnight overlift of the whole US army !!!

I think defense would be handled very differently in those case and the Maginot line would be an even more important strategy !

Oh ! By the way... Did any of you take into account that the real think costed HUGE amount of money ! In Civ, fortress are free... The real maginot line had miles of tunel with caserns, mortars, guns, etc... and heavily taxed the army budget... Better to have more planes, armor or better equiped infantry...

 

[MacBaldrick]

IMHO the biggest blight on the later games is railroading the entire continent - also quite unrealistic. A mechanism like charging gold for maintenace counpled perhaps with a gold cost to build RR (railroads are costly and can take 50 years to repay their initial investment). If the initial gold cost balanced the gold gain from rail improvement over a period of time a player would have to build a 'realistic' thin rail network due to economic contraints.

This might limit some of the discontent on unlimited RR movement as it is too powerfull when coupled with rail everywhere. You now move to the nearest piece of rail then go back to normal ground movement - quite realistic. It also increases the power to you (or the AI) when attacking the now limited rail network so cutting off portions of an empire becomes a more realistic strategy and countering this by defending key rail junctions assumes its 'realistic' importance.

Back to the original thread topic - yet Maginot lines are great - and late industrial you have loads of workers idle after you RR the continent.

I sometimes build a double line of forts, with RR of course - pretty impregnable as even on a long line you sometimes cannot fully man every fort against a sudden attack (and you don't get to move over your RR until the AI has broken through and poured cavalry / tanks through the breach. With no unkeep cost why not.

 

[Hellfire]

Originally posted by JAWiseman
I agree completely.

To others that have posted, IMHO the fact that a train can cross a continent in one year in "real life" is irrelevant. The movement benefit of rail should be relative to all other movement in the game. To be able to move 2-6 squares at a time, then 20 turns later, to be able to infanately move around within your borders does not feel "right" to quote Zachriel.

Odd, I find that history says that the United States did just that in the late 1800's They built lots of railroads and you suddenly could go cross country several times if you wanted. Connestoga wagons and cowboys were a thing of the past. There's a reason why it takes so long to get to the interior of Africa but its so easy to get to just about every place in the US except the highest moutains of Montana. Everything is connected and it makes it very easy to travel.

:
I believe that Civ3 would have a much better "feel" if railroads were incrementally better than roads, say twice as fast (e.g. 1/6 of a movement point), and making that simple change would feel more "realistic" than rail.

I mean really, anyone can cross a continent on a road in a year too, but I do not hear anyone saying roads should have infanite movement. I can drive from NY to LA and back 50 times in one year, and I am sure I could walk it once in one year. What implications does that have on the game? It clearly means that movement should be relative within the game, and does not need to make sense in the real world.

Yes this is true, but Steam Power was invented BEFORE the automobile (Motorized Transportation). Before the car, you needed a railroad to cross the country, now you can do it anywhere a modern road is built.

I think at some point transportation should be near limitless if not limitless all out. I like the idea of using a movement point to airlift rather than an entire turn. I like the idea of giving increases in movement to industrial and modern age naval units. Maybe in the beginning you could make railroads use only 1/9th of your movement points so they would get 9 moves and then when motorized transportation is discovered make it unlimited.

If you want to argue realism, the United States today could easily march over any country and attempt to take it (and has *cough*Afghanistan*cough*). The only thing stopping them are relative technological strength and manpower. Two things that are also a factor in Civ3. The world should be accessible easily no matter what.

And as for gameplay a lot of people are arguing about wartime being able to march over other civs with RRs in one turn. I say play at a higher level when they can keep up with your production and tech and defend your hoards of MA with MI. I find it odd that Zachriel would advocate limiting this when he had a Conquest victory on the french GotM. Without RR, he would have never been able to get a Conquest victory without triggering a domination first (unless that was turned off, and if so I'm sorry ). It would make the difference between a domination and conquest victory pretty silly, and almost impossible without a cheezy early age rush on a small map. In the modern age once you have mobility to send people anywhere its only a matter of resources and tactis if you can win a battle/war. This is what was so telling in WW2, that the US had an infinite supply line that kept the GIs fresh, and kept our production powerhouse going, and it was only a matter of time before ther germans could not keep up.

And what about peace time? I can fly/drive in workers from all over the country to clean up damage from earthquakes and floods and hurricanes, why can't I do it for pollution? I would hate to have to send my workers on a 3 turn jaunt across my map to clean pollution. It would also confuse the hell out of the AI when my units were set to autoclean pollution because they'd have to rethink every turn where they wanted to go. I do NOT want to micromanage pollution cleaners.

The industrial age was just that a dramatic boom in population, production and transportation. I think it is accurate historically and balanced in gameplay. The things that prevent me from marching across another Civ are its production, its population (culture flips) and unhappiness of my own people. Unless I spend 50 years preparing for war and make sure I have 3x as many MA as another civ has MI I've never been able to cross them in one turn, except maybe in a small map.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Hellfire

I find it odd that Zachriel would advocate limiting this when he had a Conquest victory on the french GotM. Without RR, he would have never been able to get a Conquest victory without triggering a domination first (unless that was turned off, and if so I'm sorry ).

I did? Maybe I did.

I didn't mean to be an advocate. I would love to play the game either way, I'm sure. There are always countervailing considerations. For instance, infinite movement reduces late game tedium. Also, infinite movement drastically reduces the pathfinding computations required, which makes the game somewhat playable on the average home computer.

Addendum: And they should make forts more powerful while they're at it.

 

[CivAgamemnon]

Perhaps everyone keeps forgetting this is a game, and not reality. If you want reality, join the armed forces or become a politician.

You work with what you have. If don't like what you have, mod it!

 

[Pembroke]

I wish!

If only the railroad movement factor was opened in the editor...

Leaving it "infinite" as a default would leave the out-of-the-box game as it is but at least then those who wanted to could change the RR movement to their liking.

Besides it would open up new scenario possibilities, like having "bad roads" and "quality roads".