And... Because I need four posts in a row. I just thought of a
way better idea than my going through thousands of lines of code and adding in stuff. I'd propose a pretty simple solution to all of this that I think will give you a good option
@Prof. Garfield without needing to completely change things like letting you reinforce anything and everything but also make you quite dangerous
where you should be (the boonies).
Instead of changing the game completely let's just do this (assuming
@techumseh and
@civ2units agree).
If a Pro-Eastern unit activates on jungle, mountain, hill, or swamp terrain (the boonies), they get an attack bonus. I was thinking something in the order of +5. This would hopefully make it more likely that a concerted Pro-Eastern revolution would be able to take cities but wouldn't completely change everyone's strategy partway through our game. It would make places where the Pro-Eastern guerrillas
should be problematic (like jungles of Southeast Asia, South & Central America, and parts of Africa) much more difficult for the west to hold, but at the same time, of course, since there is no
defense bonus, if the Western Powers really were having none of it they'd have a chance too.
The only technical issue with +5 attack for units starting on impassible terrain is that it could be used to boost units activated in cities as well. This is a minor point, since a "don't deliberately circumvent events in this specific way" is a reasonable house rule, and an occasional mistake wouldn't be game breaking.
I think a more fundamental issue is that there is no advantage to having guerrillas in the countryside. All it does is give the defender warning to bring in more units. A few units sitting on mountains or jungles isn't really a big deal, since it doesn't really cover up production. If they move to cover easier terrain, then they're probably an easy kill anyway.
I do think something needs to be done about insurrections as they're the core, fundamental "hook" of this scenario. The solution I have above only helps the attacker but not the defender (including the tribe that just attacked). It's "clean" and doesn't involve me going through literally every, single country that I defined in the rebellion mechanism and adding more code to each.
Garfield's right - if he can't reasonably expect to take any land then why not simply invade Europe as early as possible? I'd like to avoid this being another scenario about WW3 and make it a scenario about the conflicts across the globe.
I do like the idea of keeping the international port mechanism because I think it makes things interesting, but you know, if he had an option of, say, investing 6,000 in the interior with the reasonable expectation that they could capture interior cities, and then continue investing in more rebels to swarm towards the coast, I think that would be much more fair, balanced, and interesting than the current mechanism of everything being blunted immediately.
The insurrections are important, and might be a bit difficult to balance. If they're not very strong, then it is hard to use them to take cities, so whoever is behind probably stays behind, since they have less money to fund rebellions, and the rebellions are not easy to make successful. On the other hand, if insurrection is too easy, then stuff everywhere changes hands all the time, or, at the very least, at a moment's notice. You do have to get it right, because otherwise someone will decide that World War III is the only viable path to victory.
The Iran and Iraq war is did work out more or less how we want things to go. Ground troops had to be employed to counter the rebellion, but Europe did decide to employ them. If that didn't happen on the doorstep of the USSR, I'd be fine with losing the war along with the port. My advice, which I'd be willing to implement, is to allow shipment of units to cities that are near the seller's cities. So, air units that could fly from a seller's city to the buyer's city can be bought for free, and ground units could be bought at a cost reflecting the transportation infrastructure between the cities. So, I'd have been able to use the WWII lend lease route to send heavy equipment to the interior cities in Iran, but not to some interior backwater in Africa, which seems much less reasonable.
It's one thing if I can bring forces to bear on an area and decide to contest it and he doesn't make progress because of this. It's quite another if he simply cannot make progress because the units afforded to him are not powerful enough to capture any cities.
Maybe a compromise would to be to only give the attack bonus in jungles and not hills, mountains, and marshes. This would make:
-Southeast Asia
-The Congo
-Central America
-Columbia
The hot areas that would be more susceptible to guerilla attack. Frankly, these were the areas that saw such contention so it's not like it is inaccurate.
The all or nothing nature of rebellions suggests that I wouldn't bother putting resources there anyway. If I can't capture a city, then what's the point of spending any money to fund rebels? If no attacking unit dies, then it was basically free to suppress the rebellion. There has to be some advantage to having rebels in the jungle, even if they can't take cities.
Another area where I wonder about the realism is the ability to capture a port, then purchase large numbers of unit directly there. This may be beyond what you want to do in the middle of a game, but perhaps delivery of military purchases should be limited to home countries, or at start cities.
This could go either way, I guess. If your "sponsor" knows you're trying to capture the port, they might be willing to send you a lot of equipment the moment you have a port to unload it in. We do have
Code:
city.turnsSinceCapture -> integer
if we want to make sure the city has been held for a bit of time before allowing shipments. I don't mind making that kind of change mid game, since we've taken a break to rebalance anyway. I see this as a playtest, where things should be fixed as they are noticed. This also doesn't seem like the kind of rebalance that would throw off a significant strategy.
From a gameplay point of view, delayed access to the international arms market means it takes longer to be able to consolidate a position and prepare for a counterattack.
Interesting. I would definitely bump up the RPGs. How do you feel about giving them the ignore city walls flag? Tackling cities seems to be a weak point for the revolts. Also, can you double or triple up on the revolts in the same turn?
Yes, you can launch multiple revolts at the same time, including in the same area. I've been doing that.
Well, there are a couple of factors that lead to that. One is the super importance of International Ports, the other is the over-rated power of naval bombardment. Of these, the most important is the power of naval bombardment. One simple way to reduce its impact is to reduce the number of attacks that capital ships are allowed to make from 2 to 1. Let's start there. Another way might be allowing the construction of coastal batteries sooner.
For all China's posturing, their beaches are theirs because the United States Navy
says they're theirs
2 attacks per turn is plenty limiting already. Each BB is destroyed by about 2 cruise missiles, which multiple late war units can fire.
There are a few issues at play here, and part of the issue is that they stack together. The battleship makes deterring bombardment very expensive, since it can kill the strongest defensive units extremely reliably. The battleship will be veteran, and has a lot of HP, while the defender will have a difficult time gaining veteran status, since there is probably no active ground war. If you're trying to defend with IFVs, the battleship can do 2000 gold of damage per turn, for at least a few turns, the cheapest Russian tank still costs 650, so 1300 gold for two per turn. With the IFVs down, cruisers can take out tanks safely, and other naval units can go down the defensive list. After tanks, the fighters can be targeted from the sea, opening the fleet air arm to attack.
If you're just going for straight cannon fodder, the revolutionaries I guess are 3 for 400 Soviet gold, but you need a lot of them, and your fighters might defend first. The capital ships aren't very vulnerable to the attack aircraft, especially since they can stack, and are veteran, while the attack aircraft aren't. And, if you don't have enough cannon fodder, those expensive aircraft will be destroyed by the destroyers or frigates anyway, which has happened in Pusan and elsewhere.
If your position is that an accurate model of the US Navy's power is that it can win any war near the "coast" (which is a pretty broad definition on this map) with only minimal help from the army, then you'll also need to model the reason why that power isn't used all the time.
There's limitations in Civ2. Korea is going to be quite difficult for you to hold. Southeast Asia, with a few interior bases, is a different story. While you do get event help there, you also have a much better strategic position.
I'm not against the idea of letting the Soviets reinforce the interior without the need for a port but think maybe they ought to have to at least research the cargo plane tech first, or have some sort of other detriment so it's "better" to have the port.
Could a non coastal city be limited in how many units it could buy? Maybe they only get 2 or 3. I'm open to ideas to keep it fun and viable for all.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, the peak strength of the US during the Korean War was over 325,000 men, and the peak South Korean strength was some 600,000 men. It really doesn't seem like the equivalent to those kinds of numbers were employed here, but maybe I just misunderstood what happened on the last turn. (900,000 would be more than necessary to overrun what I had, but the point is that significant ground forces had to be employed in the real Korean War, not just the navy)
It would be feasible to limit the purchases of non-coastal cities, if you like. However, allowing interior purchases doesn't really change the fact that the West can expand its influence all over the world with far less defence cost than the USSR or Non-Aligned.
Not limitations of Civ2 as much as the limitations of the design, which combines two important factors: great emphasis on International Ports and overwhelming shore bombardments for those who have large navies. It's the combination of these two factors that is the destabilizing influence.
Any unit that can only attack twice in a turn only becomes overwhelming if your opponent manages to concentrate them.
Frankly, this is the first MP match. If someone thinks the Soviets are totally outclassed I'm more than happy to play 10 turns of a parallel game to prove they too can steamroll.
I'm fine with swapping roles in a parallel game, but first, please use cheat mode to set up what the pro east "should" have in place after a takeover in order to deter or defeat naval bombardment, and actually play out the combat a couple times.
This is part of the fleet that was amassed to attack Korea. All of this damage was done by the defenders. If this same fleet was brought to this same level of damage attacking a city that had air cover on stand by, I doubt the results would be pretty. Indeed, I only risked it because I used a strat bomber to figure out how many fighters would attack, and guessed that there was limited air cover available. As it stands, most of these are under direct threat on a 1-turn basis from strat bombers flying from Nomohan. All of them would be susceptible to Tu-95 bears. None of these vessels can strike back against those aircraft and require a constant CAP by fighters to protect them from events that might or might not materialize. Frankly, once the Tu-95 and Tu-160 come online, with 25 and 35 MP respectively, there's a great chance that none of these direct attack vessels will be all that useful, because they'd constantly be within range (certainly I wouldn't be able to attack twice - that would be a luxury of attacking places without such air cover).
Having a unit somewhat weakened doesn't cost anything but time, unless there is something ready to counterattack. Regular attack aircraft are vulnerable to shore bombardment (since their range isn't high enough to be stationed far inland), and I think I lost 3 in Pusan a couple turns ago to naval bombardment. In any case, they don't have enough attack power to take out veteran battleships and cruisers. Here, you're suggesting that in order to make progress on the coast, the Pro East needs its own fleet of strategic bombers separate from the Soviets. In this example, a Tu-95 flying from Nomohan wouldn't even be guaranteed to be able to land on that turn (depending on how far away the ship retreated), and would be vulnerable to fighters from Japan or Kadena. Does the Pro West have any kind of comparable expense?
Clearly, the cruisers and destroyers have to be withdrawn at this point. 1-2 of the battleships probably should be, and all of the battleships would need to be after one more encounter with a BMP-1 or tank.
Also of note, it costs 84,600 gold to rush-build a BB of these from scratch. This is 10x the cost of a A-7 Crusader (the American Tier II fighter bomber with a 27-shield row cost). Of note, the Soviet Tier III Su-25 has a 26-shield row cost. Again, a battleship can't be purchased via arms sales or other mechanism like the planes can be.
Not trying to be too pushy over the point, but I again fail to see how "overwhelming shore bombardment" is an issue in this scenario. In our game, it is 1956 and the Battleship is still formidable. In a few more decades, it will be phased out for the less powerful but more survivable AEGIS cruiser.
Damage doesn't cost anything to heal in Civ II, except time. Your battleships can arrive, impose thousands of gold of cost in defeated units, and then disappear over the horizon ready to show up a few turns later.
The fact that Battleships can't be bought isn't all that relevant. What else are your cities going to produce? Buildings cost 2 gold per shield, so you'd rush them and build units more slowly even if the unit can be bought via arms sales. The battleship doesn't have a shelf life. It's not like it disappears after a few turns, so you lose something if there isn't a target immediately available. All it really means is that the defender can't counter you with its own navy. Not that it would matter, since the military port bestows veteran status immediately, while weapon sales units are not veteran.
I have no problem with not being able to dislodge a fleet just offshore. I can change weapon sales so that a fleet can blockade and either raise costs or prevent delivery outright. I also have no problem with that fleet impacting land battles. I do have a problem with the fleet being able to inflict decisive defeats within a couple turns with minimal ground involvement.
The Philippines rebellion was defeated by naval power, though I was just learning at the time and should probably have expected that. Lima was emptied by naval power. The Malaya Rebellion was defeated by naval power, even though Europe didn't want to recapture Taiping (either there is some event associated with it, or the city wasn't worth splitting limited ground forces). Dakar was emptied by naval power, even though by then I had the most powerful defensive unit available, and I was hoping I could eventually mass attack aircraft. In Vietnam, I had enough event driven revolutionaries that I had enough cannon fodder to save my planes from being attacked, and I think that was the case in part because I had so many veterans. In Europe and Turkey, I had to use blocking units and make concessions so that my cities there wouldn't be under constant attack and nuisance "invasions".
For every rebellion I generate, I've been trying to figure out how to deal with the inevitable arrival of a fleet. Thus far, I've sunk one battleship and 2 cruisers. Have a look at the casualty list in the defense minister report. There is a disparity, and I think most of it comes from naval bombardment (including air attacks from carriers).
My suggestion is that whenever a ship defeats a unit through naval bombardment, that unit is re-created at 50% health. Maybe give marines an attack bonus if attacking from the same square as a battleship. This way, naval power can influence adjacent ground combat, but can't just come in and do free damage.
I'm far more concerned with how realistic it is that an insurrection can actually capture cities that are defended by tanks with 8-12 defense and 30 hit points. To me, that is the issue that might need fixing. Hence the proposals to either increase the number of RPGs in a rebellion, give them "ignore city walls," give rebels a boost while on jungle, or some combo of the three.
How about this: if a pro east or pro west unit is fortified within 3 squares of an enemy city (and is not within its own city), it has a (high) chance of generating another unit during the onTurn event. Fortification would mean that the unit has to be 'established' there. This would represent the rebels gaining influence in the countryside because the 'legitimate' government can't crack down on them. Perhaps the chance would depend on the kind of tile. Hiding in the mountains wouldn't represent much influence, but being unable to dislodge rebels from farmland or developing tiles would show the existing government to be weak and not worth supporting.
