The Cold War: Playtest Thread

[techumseh]

It's absolutely out

 

[tootall_2012]

Here is my latest update.

It's April 1960 and through my continued support of Nationalist movements and Pro-Western proxy actions, I've managed the following:

Central America: San Salvador and San Jose remain in my grasp though Sandinistas rebels have begun to make their appearance and control parts of the countryside.

Caribbean: I continue to hold Port-au-Prince though a rebel insurrection almost managed to overthrow the local government.

North Africa & Libya: Casablanca, Oran, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli remain under my tight control though rebel forces continue to operate in the desert south-west and south-east of Tripoli which requires constant sweeping operations to eliminate them.

Egypt: after completing my conquest of Libya I moved straight onto Egypt and to date have captured Alexandria, Cairo and Port Said with relative ease though I strongly suspect the Muslim Brotherhood will likely contest my control as some point or other and therefore will require I maintain a strong garrison in the sector.

Middle East: Tel Aviv, Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Baghdad, Basra and Kuwait remain under my control. My plans of conquering the entire Arabian Peninsula have been partly stymied as starting in April 1958, a peace treaty between the Pro-West and Neutral nations was imposed though I’m not certain why this occurred as I didn’t initiate it. Was this triggered by the event file?

As such, I find myself limited to conquering the European cities located on the rim and so far Abu Dhabi and Salalah have fallen to my troops though the area has its share of rebel and pro-Eastern insurgents I need to deal with.

This also means I won’t be able to invade most of Iran, at this time, as it is mostly part of the Neutral nation power (save the port city of Bandar Abbas, which is part of the Non-Aligned Coalition).

On the other hand, I have been waging an increasingly hot air war with Soviets air units infiltrating airspace in both eastern Turkey and northern Iran. But as Tech indicated in his own games, it’s mostly first generation aircraft and in my case primarily ground attack ones (Il-2, Su-7, Tu-95 and the occasional Strategic Bomber) but no fighters to date (Mig-15 or otherwise).

As I recently researched Advanced Jets II, I’ve been able to gradually deploy more and more F-86 Sabres wings into both my American and Pro-West air forces and therefore are more easily able to establish air dominance in the various contested sectors.

South Africa: after the appearance of the first rebels near Pretoria, I decided to launch operations into Mozambique and have captured Maputo and Inhambane as a consequence. I’m considering launching operations into Namibia, after building up my South African forces more, in order to capture Swakopmund and Windhoek, as I suspect they will eventually serve as a base of operations for further African Liberation movements.

China: The Chinese CCP are on the run and only have one remaining holding, the city of Qiqihar in northern Manchurian which I expect to capture in a few turns. As I have only this game as a basis to judge, I’m not certain if my success in this region is due to a particularly successful original defensive strategy on my part or more a lackluster performance on the CCP’s AI part. But as I previously mentioned, I suspect that my early gambit to capture Pyongyang may have played a significant role, as once secured that port allowed me to transit a great quantity of armor, artillery and air units through the Armaments Purchase program directly into the Korean Peninsula. It would have been much more difficult if I had to do so from Japan instead.

Though the Soviets continue to harass Urumchi, the sector has greatly stabilized after I redirected significant ground and air units (both fighter and ground attack) to the area.

The economic prosperity of the Pro-West has never looked brighter as my national reserve stands at over $78,000 credits (three times the value of the U.S. which stands at $24,000). My monthly income versus costs comes at $2,499 to $555 which translates to a surplus of $1,944 credits per turn. At this point, if there was a diplomatic units spy option, I could basically buy nations rather than the more circuitous method of buying arms to conquer said nations (not that I’m recommending that you should, quite the opposite!).

In addition to the three factors I enumerated in my previous post, I suspect part of this economic success is due to the fact that the CCP hasn’t overrun China. The KMT now control 22 Chinese cities, which contribute $593 out of those $2,499 credits (given that I’ve played 39 turns, so far, that comes out to roughly $23,127 credits that I may not have accumulated had that nation fallen to the Communists instead).

Finally, as the U.S.A., I feel I may be falling behind technologically compared to the historical pace as it now takes me 8 turns to research each tech (from the original 6 turns). My current research rate is set at 50%, which just keeps my income to cost balance positive. As I need to keep 20% of my rate for luxuries to avoid massive discontent in my cities, I can only change the rate between the science or tax. I could go for the maximum 80% science to 20% luxuries, which would reduce my research time to 1 tech every 5 turns but cause roughly a $900 per turn deficit, which would be offset by the current $2,100 credits per turn I receive from my Pro-western proxies for a net positive balance of $1,200 credits.

All the same, I probably should have started researching the Research Lab advance as soon as possible to build the corresponding improvement as building the University in the few cities that hadn’t one and converting most of my available citizens to Scientist isn’t doing enough to cut the rate down.



As you know from my previous play tests of your scenarios, I like to provide a summary play by play of my game so that the designer can evaluate if their design and events are behaving as they intended or not, and as a consequence, make any adjustments they feel may be appropriate. Therefore, all my comments should always be viewed either as constructive criticism or positive reinforcement.

I have to say I’m also extremely impressed by the quality of your play testing to date as I haven’t encountered any console errors or bugs associated to the game, which given the size of the event file and scenario is quite an accomplishment.

I won't necessarily provide this depth of feedback everyday, but I plan on playing this game till the end and give updates and ask questions whenever appropriate, if that works for you.

In the end, I hope you find this information useful.

 

[techumseh]

Tootall: how are you handling the gifting of units to your proxy?

 

[tootall_2012]

I've been using these methods:

GIFTING:

• Originally, when ground units transporting them by ship to friendly Pro-West territory, disbembarking them and gifting them there OR if naval units sailing them to friendly Pro-West waters and gifting them there, or
• Since I found out it was possible, gifting U.S. units that are situated in American cities that are international ports (click on the port city and press '2' and it will give you the option to select the unit you want to gift and to what city you want to gift it to).

Now that I know it's possible, I use a combination of both.

ARMS MARKET:
I've also used the International Arms Market extensively to purchase many units for the Pro-West faction, particularly, though not exclusively, fighters and attack aircraft.

 

[tootall_2012]

I'm looking for a little bit of guidance here. It's August 1960 and the Pro-West find themselves at peace with both the Neutral and Non-Aligned nations.

How or why this happened I do not know but is there anyway to reverse this situation? Is there some extra consequence if I decide to attack them and break the peace treaty?

Also re-reading the ReadMe, I see that my decision to invade Egypt may not have been the wisest:
"Alignment: Some areas (Cuba, Egypt, Ghana, and Indonesia) can be aligned via technology research. For example, if the Non-Aligned research “The Non-Aligned Movement,” they can choose to align Egypt, which deletes all foreign units in the cities of Egypt, and immediately transfers the cities to the Non-Aligned tribe. These areas are limited, but it makes stationing large forces in them very risky if you are another player."

Looks like I should pull out the majority of my troops stationed in that country's cities. Could my occupation of Egypt be the reason why I find myself at peace with the Neutrals and Non-Aligned?


EDIT: So it seems on turn December 1960, I can all of a sudden attack the Neutral power again. I'm kind of confused now as to what is going on.

 

[JPetroski]

Pressed for time but to answer your immediate question, you can attack them with no other issues than you'll be at war

 

[JPetroski]

In the end, I hope you find this information useful.

Oh absolutely. I learned my lesson with Caesar to give you gents a chance to have a proper playthrough, so I'm not making major changes right now (aside of course from actual bugs being fixed, or addressing some cosmetic issues). If it would require a restart I'm not changing it yet until you both say you're done.

The economic prosperity of the Pro-West has never looked brighter as my national reserve stands at over $78,000 credits (three times the value of the U.S. which stands at $24,000). My monthly income versus costs comes at $2,499 to $555 which translates to a surplus of $1,944 credits per turn. At this point, if there was a diplomatic units spy option, I could basically buy nations rather than the more circuitous method of buying arms to conquer said nations (not that I’m recommending that you should, quite the opposite!).

In addition to the three factors I enumerated in my previous post, I suspect part of this economic success is due to the fact that the CCP hasn’t overrun China. The KMT now control 22 Chinese cities, which contribute $593 out of those $2,499 credits (given that I’ve played 39 turns, so far, that comes out to roughly $23,127 credits that I may not have accumulated had that nation fallen to the Communists instead).

Finally, as the U.S.A., I feel I may be falling behind technologically compared to the historical pace as it now takes me 8 turns to research each tech (from the original 6 turns). My current research rate is set at 50%, which just keeps my income to cost balance positive. As I need to keep 20% of my rate for luxuries to avoid massive discontent in my cities, I can only change the rate between the science or tax. I could go for the maximum 80% science to 20% luxuries, which would reduce my research time to 1 tech every 5 turns but cause roughly a $900 per turn deficit, which would be offset by the current $2,100 credits per turn I receive from my Pro-western proxies for a net positive balance of $1,200 credits.

All the same, I probably should have started researching the Research Lab advance as soon as possible to build the corresponding improvement as building the University in the few cities that hadn’t one and converting most of my available citizens to Scientist isn’t doing enough to cut the rate down.

This is now the second scenario after OTR where I've basically experimented with using lua to alter the economy, and both have been difficult to balance in this regard. The USA/Pro-West should be richer than the Soviets, but not this rich, and this is substantially more cash than I've ever managed in my Soviet games.

Some options to address it include:

-Make Pro-West Units cost more to purchase;
-Reduce the amount of bonus money the Pro-West and U.S. get per city
-Consider not giving both the Pro-West and the U.S. the bonus. The Pro-West are quite well-positioned for trade, in stark contrast to the Pro-East, so perhaps this would work?

Now that I know it's possible, I use a combination of both.

Well it won't be a possibility in the future, at least for ground and air units. Currently, you can't "purchase" ships, so I think I'll allow one to move ships to locations and gift them via the "surrender' mechanism here (which will simply mean you'll need to trust that purchasers pay / sellers will give the ship in a MP game).

I imagine this might be slightly unpopular, but much of the strategy I envision in this game is capturing the international port cities that are requirements for shipping free units to your proxies. If you can simply deliver and deposit them anywhere, there isn't any point to this.

The proxy itself, as you may have noticed, can purchase units at any coastal city, but pays a $500 premium for any coastal destination that lacks the international port.

This is my attempt at gameplay/strategy that will make certain cities worth substantially more.

EDIT: So it seems on turn December 1960, I can all of a sudden attack the Neutral power again. I'm kind of confused now as to what is going on.

This is the wonders of Civ at play. I imagine you and Knighttime had similar frustrations with the AI in Napoleon, hence your plan to have the game adjust the diplomacy as needed on the fly. I think there's just some game mechanic or game bug going on behind the scenes that is causing this. The only diplomacy I enforce in the scenario is removing/adding the various alliances that exist depending whose turn it is (so that an attack on the Pro-West by the Soviets won't trigger a U.S. response, for example), and enforcing the peace with the neutrals for the main powers to prevent an unrealistic landgrab (The United States shouldn't be invading Mexico, which they'd do as a matter of course every single game if they were allowed to). Some of the alliances (China & USSR as well as Europe and the USA) can be removed if China or Europe researches a certain tech also.

Anything else is the game being stupid.

Anyway, a real concern of mine is the fighter issue, mainly because the fighters are some of the coolest and most important units in this game. I'm going to have to address that via events if the AI won't simply build them on their own. I don't think there's much documentation out there about how the AI chooses to build fighter units unfortunately. I might just do something as simple as a check to see if a civ has a certain technology, and then a random turn to build a few fighters for them.

Please let me know if either of you notices that they aren't building other units too.

 

[tootall_2012]

Here is a brief update:

Back on turn 46, August 1961, I captured the last CCP stronghold of Qiqihar and thereby put an end to that Civilization. Coincidently, on the same turn, a little more than a third of the way into the scenario, I captured my 67th objective thereby reaching the marginal victory status.

In the meantime, I’ve reached April 1962 and currently, the Pro-West faction treasury stands at over $89,000 credits. Its income to cost numbers is $2755 - $627 for surplus of $2,128 credits per turn. As I continue to conquer more cities, this surplus will only continue to grow, and I imagine I could easily top the $250,000 treasury limit by the end of the game. As I indicated, I’ve been purposefully limiting my arms purchases to avoid breaking the balance of forces (as I prefer not to buy my victory but rather accomplish any victory the old fashion way, i.e. through a city unit building program and simple strategy).

Oh absolutely. I learned my lesson with Caesar to give you gents a chance to have a proper playthrough, so I'm not making major changes right now (aside of course from actual bugs being fixed, or addressing some cosmetic issues). If it would require a restart I'm not changing it yet until you both say you're done.

Thanks. I prefer to play the entire game before I give any definitive feedback, though as you may have read already, there are some tendencies that are becoming quite self evident.

This is now the second scenario after OTR where I've basically experimented with using lua to alter the economy, and both have been difficult to balance in this regard. The USA/Pro-West should be richer than the Soviets, but not this rich, and this is substantially more cash than I've ever managed in my Soviet games.

Some options to address it include:

-Make Pro-West Units cost more to purchase;

-Reduce the amount of bonus money the Pro-West and U.S. get per city

-Consider not giving both the Pro-West and the U.S. the bonus. The Pro-West are quite well-positioned for trade, in stark contrast to the Pro-East, so perhaps this would work?

At this stage, I obviously cannot provide any feedback with regards the Soviet/Pro-East side, but it appears clear that there is a huge economic imbalance between the two Blocs. Even assuming I’d lost all of China, I imagine the Pro-West could still manage some big credit surpluses.

As I indicated earlier, the fact that the Pro-West is significantly more prosperous than the U.S. should be seen as an anomaly. I prefer to play to the end before offering some possible specifics recommendations, other than to reiterate that I feel the Western blocs economic success should be driven primarily by the U.S. and the Pro-West should only be the beneficiary of U.S. aid not the main source of it.

Well it won't be a possibility in the future, at least for ground and air units. Currently, you can't "purchase" ships, so I think I'll allow one to move ships to locations and gift them via the "surrender' mechanism here (which will simply mean you'll need to trust that purchasers pay / sellers will give the ship in a MP game).

I imagine this might be slightly unpopular, but much of the strategy I envision in this game is capturing the international port cities that are requirements for shipping free units to your proxies. If you can simply deliver and deposit them anywhere, there isn't any point to this.

To be honest, I think I would much rather prefer your updated approach. I didn’t use the ‘surrender’ method all that frequently but even when I did it always felt somewhat wrong.

The proxy itself, as you may have noticed, can purchase units at any coastal city, but pays a $500 premium for any coastal destination that lacks the international port.

This is my attempt at gameplay/strategy that will make certain cities worth substantially more.

Ok, thanks for pointing that out. I still thought it was determined as you indicated earlier by some other factor (international dateline?).

This is the wonders of Civ at play. I imagine you and Knighttime had similar frustrations with the AI in Napoleon, hence your plan to have the game adjust the diplomacy as needed on the fly. I think there's just some game mechanic or game bug going on behind the scenes that is causing this. The only diplomacy I enforce in the scenario is removing/adding the various alliances that exist depending whose turn it is (so that an attack on the Pro-West by the Soviets won't trigger a U.S. response, for example), and enforcing the peace with the neutrals for the main powers to prevent an unrealistic landgrab (The United States shouldn't be invading Mexico, which they'd do as a matter of course every single game if they were allowed to). Some of the alliances (China & USSR as well as Europe and the USA) can be removed if China or Europe researches a certain tech also.

Anything else is the game being stupid.

It’s all a little bit murky now as it was over a year and a half ago but to be honest, I think this is one of the aspects of the code that when testing that may have caused the fewest problems, at least for me. As the programmer, Knighttime may have had an entirely different experience!

He built such a firm foundation, that though there had to be a few adjustments here and there; it’s not one of the aspects of the code we had to work on the most, or so I recall.

Anyway, a real concern of mine is the fighter issue, mainly because the fighters are some of the coolest and most important units in this game. I'm going to have to address that via events if the AI won't simply build them on their own. I don't think there's much documentation out there about how the AI chooses to build fighter units unfortunately. I might just do something as simple as a check to see if a civ has a certain technology, and then a random turn to build a few fighters for them.

Yes, I agree, this is a serious issue. My battles for air dominance over the Middle East and China are seeing an increasingly large number of dead Soviet attack aircraft with increasingly fewer destroyed air units of my own.

This disparity can only grow as I research Jet Fighters III and above.

Please let me know if either of you notices that they aren't building other units too.

As I mentioned previously, I will produce an overall casualties list after completing this game for you to review.


EDIT: I finally figured out what all those different types of "Massive Protests" messages in the U.S. where doing, i.e. each message was a confirmation that you were randomly deleting a corresponding happiness improvement in an American city, thereby forcing me to rebuild said improvements.

Very clever and very nice touch!

 

[tootall_2012]

There's a bit of a problem. Something wasn't quite right in my SP game, so I cracked it open with Cheat Mode...

Hi Tech,

What did you do to open the Cheat mode? Currently when I look at the Game.txt the @REALLYCHEAT parameter already seems to allow you to turn on the cheat mode:

"
@REALLYCHEAT
@width=320
@title=Confirmation
If you enable cheat mode, this will be recorded in your game score.
Do you really want to enable cheat mode?

No
Yes
"

But when I'm in the game, the "Toggle Cheat Menu" menu is grayed out. I asume this is because it's a Hot Seat game which must restrict this option.

I'd like to have access to the cheat mode so I can test a few theories I may have. Appreciate any help on this matter.

Thanks

 

[JPetroski]

Tootall if you edit the extension of your save from .hot to .save, you can edit cheat mode.

 

[techumseh]

That's correct for a hotseat game. My latest game is SP, so there's no problem using cheat mode.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

I recall asking TNO in the following post whether it was possible for the human player to control more than one nation, as was the case with Fantastic World, but based on his reply at the time, it was never clear to me if the answer was yes or no. If yes, than that would certainly make the usage of the Hot Seat mode obsolete. Does anyone know the answer?

I found a partial answer to this while trying to find an easy way to determine if a game is in hotseat or not.

In the console, you can set civ.game.humanPlayers in order to have multiple active players. For example, in a standard game,

civ.game.humanPlayers = 6

sets the white and green tribes as active, and you can play them both.

However, this doesn't seem to survive saving and loading.

The code

     if civ.game.humanPlayers & 2 == 2 or civ.game.humanPlayers & 4 == 4 then
         civ.game.humanPlayers = 6
     end

Will make it so that white and green are always active simultaneously, if placed in onActivateUnit (supposing that there are active units, I guess). I tried with scenario loaded, but it didn't work. I didn't try very hard, so maybe I overlooked something.

 

[tootall_2012]

Thanks for the tip gents. Changing the file extension to .sav did the trick.

Hi John,

I believe there may be a slight 'error' in the following code,

if turn >=53 and tribe == object.tUSA then
civ.ui.text(func.splitlines(object.xCivilRightsAct))
civ.giveTech(object.tUSA,object.aCivilRightsAct)
end

Because the "xCivilRightsAct" text keeps repeating starting on turn 53. Shouldn't it simply have been "if turn ==53 and tribe == object.tUSA then"

Also though the event grants the "Civil Right Act" advance to the U.S. player, it isn't possible for the player to actually build the "Civil Rights Act" wonder because the prerequisites for the advance are both set to no:

Civil Rights Act, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 3 ; The

They need to be set at least to nil, nil or some other combination for the wonder to become available to build (probably Aut, nil with the former representing "The United States" advance. As such you can prevent other nations from researching the Civil Rights advance).

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi Prof. Garfield,

I recall TNO mentioning something about the sav file not keeping the parameter. It would sure be a great feature to have if it were possible to allow the human player to control multiple powers without having to resort to the HotSeat mode.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Hi Prof. Garfield,

I recall TNO mentioning something about the sav file not keeping the parameter. It would sure be a great feature to have if it were possible to allow the human player to control multiple powers without having to resort to the HotSeat mode.

It can be done, it just takes a bit of effort in the events to make it 'stick' between saved games. I think the parameter gets overwritten when loading a game as a .sav instead of a multiplayer game, but it seems to happen after the trigger for onScenarioLoaded, which would be the most natural place to put the code. A couple lines in onActivateUnit and onKeyPress would, I think, solve the problem, at least if the scenario designer knew ahead of time what powers would be shared.

 

[techumseh]

A couple of minor map errors: roads passing through swamp and therefore impassable to vehicles at 59,29 and 37,47.

A very interesting bug: I transferred a submerged sub to the Pro-east at 4,18 and it died (message about not having a place to go). And it changed the underwater terrain in the tile to land! It remains as ocean terrain on the main map.

And the Pro-East has made peace with the US (I'm playing the Soviets SP). This after the US captured Zagreb. Is that supposed to happen?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Did you have cheat mode on? Pressing 2 with cheat mode active will change the terrain, and then you're trying to give away a sea unit on a land square, and the diplomacy module deletes and re-creates gifted units, but won't create them on incorrect terrain.

 

[techumseh]

Yes, I used cheat mode to clear the 2 swamps blocking my roads. Once activated, I suppose there is no way to turn it off?

(Edit) Of course you can, Tech. Wake up!

 

[tootall_2012]

Here is what should be the final update.

It's April 1967, (turn 61 of 135) and I just captured Quito, the 101st city objective (from the starting position of 34), which granted me a decisive victory. At this point, I didn’t see the advantage of continuing till the end as it seemed very unlikely the Pro-Eastern faction could change the course of events.

For the duration of the game, the Pro-West was at war with the Soviets, Pro-East, Chinese, Europeans and only briefly at peace with the Neutrals. From August 1960, I remained at peace with the Non-Aligned and didn’t attempt to reverse this position as it didn’t suit my purposes.

America, besides the support of two operational carrier battle groups (one in the Mediterranean/Red Sea and the other in the South China Sea), was used primarily to fund Nationalist movements and gift primarily air and some ground units (in the form of Early Jets, F86 Sabres and M-26 Pershing’s).

The following is a brief recap of my main operations per region:

Central America: After capturing San Salvador and San Jose, I didn’t attempt to expand any further and just successfully fought off the occasional Sandinistas rebels or Pro-Eastern revolutionary groups.

Caribbean: After consolidating Port-au-Prince and amassing a contingent of Western Infantry, artillery and F4U Corsair’s, I captured Kingston, which itself served as a spring board into South America. The infantry and artillery were built and supplied by Canada, along with the Freighter which was used to transport them. The couple of F4U’s were gifted by the U.S.

South America: As I indicated, after capturing Kingston, I quickly launched an operation into Colombia by capturing Barranquilla. From there, with the aid of a few extra Nationalist troops raised with American aid, I swiftly went on to capture Caracas, Bogota, Boa Vista, Cali and finally my 101st city objective of Quito. The whole operation probably took no more than 6 or 7 turns and was accomplished with no more than 17 units in total.

North Africa & Libya: Casablanca, Oran, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli remained under my tight control during the remainder of the scenario, and the peace was only disturbed occasionally by Pro-Eastern revolutionaries.

Egypt: The much anticipated Egyptian revolt never occurred within this timeline and as such I was able to maintain control over Alexandria, Cairo, Port Said and even added the city of Asyut to my control.

After completing my capture of North Africa, Libya and Egypt I didn’t need to send additional troops to bolster their defenses.

Middle East: As mentioned, after capturing Syria and Iraq, I initially moved south into the Arabian Peninsula but because of my temporary peace treaty was limited to conquering the cities on the coast, which I did all save Aden, whose access was blocked by large numbers of Non-Aligned troops in the vicinity.

Once war resumed with the Neutrals, I was able to complete the conquest of Saudi Arabia proper. In addition to an initial small force of tanks, artillery, Mideast Infantry and F4U’s deployed from Syria; this operation did require 5 or so U.S. sponsored Nationalist recruitment drives to secure the area as it was rife with Neutral, European and Pro-Eastern forces. The whole operation was equally supported by my U.S. Mediterranean carrier group which I moved to and operated from the Red Sea.

Turkey: Once the Arabian Peninsula secure, I decided to refocus my attention northward and bring Turkey into the Western sphere of influence. As I mentioned previously, there already was an air war going on in Turkey and Iran with the Soviet air force and that would only continue to escalate.

As this operation brought my forces into more direct contact with the Soviet forces, it required more direct aid either through the gifting of U.S. units or through Arms purchases.

Like my support for China in the early stages, I would say the operations into Turkey were probably the ones that required the most aid to be able to sustain them. By the end, I had managed to capture Istanbul but lost it to a fierce Soviet counter-attack and as such, I would need to provide even greater aid to the region if I was going to lay a solid claim on that country’s historic city.

South Africa: After securing Swakopmund and Windhoek, and noticing that the opposition in the area appeared to be relatively weak, I decided to launch an aggressive campaign across the entire southern continent and as such between August 1960 and April 1967 I went on to capture Beiria, Harare, Lusaka, Ambovombe, Lilingwe, Pemba and finally went all the way up the coast to Mombasa in Kenya.

I was then targeting to capture the cities of the African Horn when I captured my final objective city.

Of all my operational regions, South Africa is the one that require the least support of all. In the entire game, I only bought 3 M-26 Pershing’s for the region as the rest of the operations were supported by South Africa itself. In particular, the African Nat’l infantry were of great assistance, as they were 2.5 times cheaper than Western Infantry to build yet possessed the exact same abilities. Otherwise, Bloemfontein and Pretoria’s factories provided the necessary air support in the form of F4U’s and Spitfires to dominate the battlefield.

China: After securing Qiqihar, and thereby the defeat of the CCP, I gradually extended my operations into Mongolia and by the end of the scenario managed to conquer all three Pro-Eastern cities of Nomonhan, Ulaanbaatar and finally Khovd. The main Soviet opposition, in this area was manifested through air power and a few armored units, which required me to maintain a somewhat regular stream of air and armored units, primarily F86 Sabres and M-26 Pershing’s.

South East Asia: In the meantime, Soviet activity near Urumchi gradually subsided, perhaps because the AI either ran out of air units in the area or was tired of its mounting losses. In any case, the respite allowed me to refocus my efforts in the South China Sea.

Most of the forces, that would take part in the operations, N. Asian Nat infantry, artillery, F4U’s would be provided by the factories of China itself, though the U.S. carrier group would aid in eliminating any Pro-Eastern forces in the region.

The first step would begin with the conquest of Hong Kong, which may have taken 4 or 5 turns. With this base secure I was able to move into Manila in the Philippines and then all of Vietnam. Finally, I captured Singapore and Taiping in Malaysia.

The following is a series of observations and possible recommendations for you to review:

FINANCIAL COMPARISONS on April 1967:

Pro-West
Treasury = $171,934
Tax/Science/Luxury Rates: 50% / 50% / 0%
Income to cost = $3,479 to $861 for a surplus of $2,618 per turn
Research Rate = 1 tech every 18 turns
Owned 11 tech from an original 6 (3 gifted by the USA)

USA
Treasury = $53,838
Tax/Science/Luxury Rates: 0% / 80% / 20%
Income to cost = $12 to $1090 for a deficit of $1078 per turn
But with Pro-West Proxy credit of = $3150 per turn - $1078 = $2072 surplus per turn
Research Rate = 1 tech every 6 turns (with at least 14 techs still to research)
Owned 26 techs from an original 13 (Civil Rights Act granted for free)

Soviet:
Treasury = $5936
Tax/Science/Luxury Rates: 30% / 50% / 20%
Income to cost = $738 to $1054 for a deficit of $316 per turn
With Pro-East Proxy credit of = $50 per turn - $316 = $266 deficit per turn
Research Rate = 1 tech every 11 turns
Owned 20 techs

Pro-East:
Treasury = $3129
Tax/Science/Luxury Rates: 40% / 60% / 0%
Income to cost = $35 to $13 for a surplus of $22 per turn
Research Rate = 1 tech every 1094 turns
Owned 7 techs

West vs East revenue ratio:
$225,772 / $9,065 = 24.9 times greater

With such a huge income disparity, it’s hard to see how the East could ever come out on top in any scenario where the human player controls the Western Bloc (be it in MP or SP).

The great source of the Pro-West power is its form of government, i.e. Poxy Nation (aka Fundamentalism). Not only does this type of government establish complete happiness in your cities but it generates huge gold surpluses at the same time, with its main drawback being very low science output (which I don’t believe is a huge concern as its research tree is much more limited than the US one).

As a test, I tried to switch the government type to Developing (aka Monarchy) on 2 save games, i.e. the starting turn April 1947 and my final turn of April 1967. The only adjustment I made for these 2 saves was the luxury rate (from 0 to 20%) and the number of citizens required to make certain none of the cities were in unrest and right away we can see that this power went from huge gold surpluses to minor deficits:


Pro-West as a Developing government

Stats for April 1947:
Tax/Science/Luxury Rates: 40% / 40% / 20%
Income to cost = $372 to $477 for a deficit of $105 per turn
Research Rate = 1 tech every 15 turns

Stats for April 1967:
Tax/Science/Luxury Rates: 40% / 40% / 20%
Income to cost = $950 to $1001 for a deficit of $51 per turn
Research Rate = 1 tech every 5 turns

The consequence of this change would make the Pro-West much more dependent on establishing trade routes through the Freight unit and probably direct American financial aid to be able to purchase arms.

It would reduce its productive capacity because it would need to support more units but this could be offset by increasing the minimum units that a Monarchy can sustain which is currently set at 3 (up to a maximum of 8).
3 ; Monarchy pays support for all units past this (max 8)

It would certainly compel it to spend more of its resources on happiness improvements which were previously used for building units.

In my humble opinion, this would certainly be much more in line with the actual economic and social reality of these Pro-Western nations of the time (rather than the more utopist workers paradise where everyone was happy and flush with cash).

TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH and the TECH PARADIGM:

This section is more devoted to the American side as I haven’t played the Soviets to date, though I suspect they may be afflicted with the same research limitations.

If I’m not mistaken I calculate that the U.S. can research around 48 new techs during the game. As I indicated above, I researched 12 by turn 61 and currently have a research rate of 1 tech for every 6 turns. Given that there are still approximately 36 advances to discover I would need 216 turns to research them all, which is somewhat problematic given that there are only 74 turns left.

As I indicated above, my science slider is set at 80% (the maximum allowed). My 39 cities combined possess 34 Primary Schools, 21 Universities and 9 Research Labs. My nine largest cities are producing a minimum of 200 science beakers each with Boston, NY and Chicago producing 554, 412 and 355 beakers by themselves and roughly a fifth of my 450 citizens are set as scientist. In essence, there is little chance that I can improve that rate any further.

On the other hand all the techs included within the scenario were historically introduced within the time period and as such should be available. So why the disparity in terms of the research time?

Basically, I believe you’ve set the tech paradigm too high at 400/10. If it was your intention that the player be able to research most if not all techs then I would recommend you reduce the paradigm to 200 or 250, which should reduce the research rate to around 1 tech for every 3 or 4 turns respectively throughout the game.

INTERNATIONAL vs NON-INTERNATIONAL PORTS:

I like the concept behind these ports as I find it very realistic. The only caveat I have is with regards the transport costs between the two types. In my game, I basically shipped at least 99% of all my arms to international ports thereby bypassing the great majority of transport costs and when needed used freighters to move my newly acquired units to nearby hotspots (assuming I shipped close to a hundred units to the Pro-West that represents a huge saving of over $50,000 credits).

As such, I would recommend you boost the transport cost to at least half that of the non-international ports.

THE AI FIGHTER GAP:

As was reported earlier and you will notice in the attached casualties excel file, the AI powers built very few if any fighter units at all, thereby facilitating my ability to achieve local air dominance in most of the conflict regions.

The Soviets, who started with 10 Yak-9’s even seem to have disbanded these fighters and though they researched both the Jet Fighter I & II advances built none of these units. Paradoxically, after discovering the Air transport tech they built 57 Cargo Planes!

As discussed, it seems, in this regard, that all the AI powers will require some assistance from the events file to restore some equilibrium in the all important fighter war.


Finally, similarly to what Tech reported, the swamp tiles at 219,39 and 220,40 near Thunder Bay are preventing Freight units from moving along the road network between eastern and western Canada.

These are my personal recommendations for making what is already a great game into an even more challenging one, at least for the Pro-Western faction. As usual, feel free to use as little as much of my feedback as you deem appropriate.

In addition to the excel file, I’ve attached the final turn hot seat save file along with the two modified sav. game where I converted the Pro-West power to the Developing form of government.

I will wait for your feedback on your intentions moving forward before I attempt to play as the Soviets/Pro-Eastern factions.

Truly inspiring scenario with some amazing concepts and features implemented!

Congratulations to the both of you!

 

[JPetroski]

Like my support for China in the early stages, I would say the operations into Turkey were probably the ones that required the most aid to be able to sustain them. By the end, I had managed to capture Istanbul but lost it to a fierce Soviet counter-attack and as such, I would need to provide even greater aid to the region if I was going to lay a solid claim on that country’s historic city.

It's good to see that they will put up a fierce attack when near their borders at least.

China: After securing Qiqihar, and thereby the defeat of the CCP, I gradually extended my operations into Mongolia and by the end of the scenario managed to conquer all three Pro-Eastern cities of Nomonhan, Ulaanbaatar and finally Khovd. The main Soviet opposition, in this area was manifested through air power and a few armored units, which required me to maintain a somewhat regular stream of air and armored units, primarily F86 Sabres and M-26 Pershing’s.

I hadn't really contemplated the thought that China wouldn't stand any chance if they were AI and the Pro-West was human. I think the AI is going to need substantial reinforcements in the SP game assuming China isn't human.

Pro-West
Treasury = $171,934

Holy toledos imbalance, batman!!! This is why we playtest before setting up a MP game!!!

Soviet:
Treasury = $5936
Tax/Science/Luxury Rates: 30% / 50% / 20%
Income to cost = $738 to $1054 for a deficit of $316 per turn
With Pro-East Proxy credit of = $50 per turn - $316 = $266 deficit per turn
Research Rate = 1 tech every 11 turns
Owned 20 techs

Pro-West as a Developing government

Stats for April 1947:
Tax/Science/Luxury Rates: 40% / 40% / 20%
Income to cost = $372 to $477 for a deficit of $105 per turn
Research Rate = 1 tech every 15 turns

Stats for April 1967:
Tax/Science/Luxury Rates: 40% / 40% / 20%
Income to cost = $950 to $1001 for a deficit of $51 per turn
Research Rate = 1 tech every 5 turns

The consequence of this change would make the Pro-West much more dependent on establishing trade routes through the Freight unit and probably direct American financial aid to be able to purchase arms.

It would reduce its productive capacity because it would need to support more units but this could be offset by increasing the minimum units that a Monarchy can sustain which is currently set at 3 (up to a maximum of 8).
3 ; Monarchy pays support for all units past this (max 8)

It would certainly compel it to spend more of its resources on happiness improvements which were previously used for building units.

In my humble opinion, this would certainly be much more in line with the actual economic and social reality of these Pro-Western nations of the time (rather than the more utopist workers paradise where everyone was happy and flush with cash).

Well, you've convinced me to move them the developing government model. While the Pro-East don't seem to have this issue with the crazy amount of cash, I suppose something similar would also make sense for them. Perhaps, as they are smaller, they could simply have the Communist government? From my reading, it does seem that many of the Pro-West "democracies" established by the U.S. were in fact often more corrupt than what the Communists may have put forth. But, mainly this is an attempt to balance. The Pro-West gets more cities but worse government. The Pro-East has fewer cities but better government?

Basically, I believe you’ve set the tech paradigm too high at 400/10. If it was your intention that the player be able to research most if not all techs then I would recommend you reduce the paradigm to 200 or 250, which should reduce the research rate to around 1 tech for every 3 or 4 turns respectively throughout the game.

That's fair enough - it's the sort of thing I find challenging to get right up front and find a few playtests are needed, so thank you.

he Soviets, who started with 10 Yak-9’s even seem to have disbanded these fighters and though they researched both the Jet Fighter I & II advances built none of these units. Paradoxically, after discovering the Air transport tech they built 57 Cargo Planes!

As discussed, it seems, in this regard, that all the AI powers will require some assistance from the events file to restore some equilibrium in the all important fighter war.

Seeing as how the cargo plane is completely worthless in AI hands, I might write an event to swap these out with modern fighters. I was also thinking perhaps when the AI builds an attack aircraft, it also builds a fighter via events? This might be a bit better option than some arbitrary balancer, and would at least reflect that the AI is investing in aircraft. What do you think?

Also, I noticed Europe doesn't seem to have done much of anything in your game, though I suppose this isn't as critical as the Soviets not putting up the best fight.

I'm going to digest what you and Tech came up with for a day or two and then write a post with my thoughts for substantive changes for 0.2 with a goal of implementing them shortly in case you're interested in trying a Soviet game.

I'm very appreciative of all your help and am glad that you both seem to be enjoying this!