The Hinge of Fate - Development Thread

[JPetroski]

Thank you!

@techumseh @CurtSibling @Dadais @tootall_2012 @civ2units

You may or may not have been aware this exists, but wow! I plugged this in and it simply works. This would be great for scenarios that need different turn timeframes than what is currently available.

 

[JPetroski]

unitType id 143 then ?

Actually yes - do you have a theory of what I've bungled? It must be something silly lol.

 

[Dadais]

Actually yes - do you have a theory of what I've bungled? It must be something silly lol.

No idea. I'll try to recreate that bug first

 

[JPetroski]

I don't believe I've done whatever needs to be done to remove it so that's weird.

Romanian Bomber, nil, 1, 13.,2, 14a,4d, 2h,4f, 27,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000 ;143
00000010, 00000000,-1, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 10000000 ;Romanian Bomber

 

[JPetroski]

Barbarossa Launched on Turn 25... er "Early May, 1941"

The total military strength of Germany at the time of this playtest is 642 total units (485 from Germany, 157 from her Allies). Of course many of these are in other theatres.

We'll see how it goes. I'm already incapable of training veteran pilots as I have less than 30,000 fuel, so I doubt I'll be able to match what I did in the last playtest. My goals are much more limited this time around... Take Moscow, period. Advance at a snails pace in the south, and try to at least encircle Leningrad.

 

[CurtSibling]

Good luck, herr Oberst-General! May the dark gods guide your grey legions!

 

[CurtSibling]

@JPetroski
@Prof. Garfield
Hey, guys - The new date plugin is very interesting indeed. Can it be set up to do the months as "Early, Mid, and Late"?

 

[JPetroski]

I've made it to late October, 1941. This playthrough is going very historically in that I've failed to attain any of my Barbarossa objectives before winter (next turn). Granted, I did decide that I didn't want to destroy Army Group Center trying to take a city, so I have dug in with 59 units in Vyazma. I'll winter there, try to parry expected counter attacks, and try to gather more strength for a renewed offensive in the summer.

Leningrad is under siege and tying up *a ton* of my artillery pieces. It's a tough nut to crack as defeated units have a chance to respawn... All the same, I do expect to be able to at least conquer this city in the winter given my artillery is all within range and there's no reason not to continue the barrage each turn.

My fuel levels are critical (13,428 where units start having a chance to stop moving when less than 10,000). However, I've finally got "War Effort" (Capitalization). In the war, it took the Germans forever to go onto rationing and taking things seriously. I've done a bit better than them, and I can achieve a 553 fuel surplus each turn while quickly researching every 3 turns. I am two techs away form unlocking the Tiger tanks that were so critical in breaking the Soviets in the last playtest, and I hope to have several available by the Summer offensive of 1942.

Unfortunately, this version is harder... Tito has arrived and thrown the Balkans into chaos. Having a general unit that can't ever be completely finished off, in a region where Partisans can't be completely shut down, is going to cause me major problems. I'm already diverting troops to the Balkans that are badly needed in Russia.

The only place where I'm fairly confident of victory is in Afrika... Rommel had a slow start, as he had to wait for several transports to make the long (but safer) journey around the north of Sicily and down the Tunisian coast, but my U-Boats have managed to cut off reinforcements to the British in Egypt and Rommel has sacked Tobruk. What do you folks think? Should the Americans be able to launch "Operation Torch" if the Brits are kicked out of Africa completely? I'm leaning towards "no" - if you win in Africa you don't have to worry about the Mediterranean/Italy/etc. You can't shut off the Allied invasion of NW Europe unless you conquer Britain, so there's still a *lot* to do before turn 80ish if you want to win the game (I'm at turn 36 now).

 

[techumseh]

By what route are you sending reinforcements to N. Africa? The reason I ask is that the historical British supply route was around Africa and through the Red Sea to Suez. The entry into the war of Italy closed the Med to British shipping, with the exception of some high risk convoys to Malta. Air reinforcements crossed Africa via a series of airbases in Free French territory. This may be too challenging to implement, I don't know. It's a very long route.

 

[Dadais]

I don't believe I've done whatever needs to be done to remove it so that's weird.

Romanian Bomber, nil, 1, 13.,2, 14a,4d, 2h,4f, 27,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000 ;143
00000010, 00000000,-1, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 10000000 ;Romanian Bomber

Didn't managed to reproduce your bug.

Spoiler 144th unit (unit !id 143) surrounded by 143th and 145th :

Howether, just checked your .txt parts.

I see you only gave 15 bits values in the first part :
Romanian Bomber, nil, 1, 13.,2, 14a,4d, 2h,4f, 27,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000 ;143

Does giving it the 16th bit its value too solve the issue ?
Romanian Bomber, nil, 1, 13.,2, 14a,4d, 2h,4f, 27,0, 0, nil, 0000000000000000 ;143

 

[JPetroski]

What is that 16th bit for? I ask because every unit in the game only has the 15 slots? Anyway - I don't know that would solve the issue given everything else has it?

By what route are you sending reinforcements to N. Africa? The reason I ask is that the historical British supply route was around Africa and through the Red Sea to Suez. The entry into the war of Italy closed the Med to British shipping, with the exception of some high risk convoys to Malta. Air reinforcements crossed Africa via a series of airbases in Free French territory. This may be too challenging to implement, I don't know. It's a very long route.

Given the limitations in my map, cargo ships that show up south of Lisbon make their way to Malta. If they get to Malta, the Allies get reinforcements in Malta and also in Egypt.

The same mechanism happens in Britain. If cargo ships make it there, the Allies originally get RAF Bomber Command reinforcements to raid German cities, later they get these and USAAF raids to bomb German industry and later they get both of these and reinforcements for D-Day.

It's an imperfect solution but I think it's one that gives the Battle of the Atlantic true meaning. It's exciting that with lua there can be a legitimate strategic reason to need to win this aside from getting the usual cash bonus which was all we could really do with macro.

However, I'm contemplating if I give the Allies some of their historical reinforcement arrivals as well just to keep things challenging. Again this play test was marred by an issue - I thought I had way too many convoys due to the probabilities I was using, but in fact I had way too many because I was running the probability for each tribe's turn, so it ran 7x more than it should have per turn. To "fix" this I cut the probability way down, until I realized what I did, so, long rambling short, I'm still not certain I've balanced things completely because only now are Allied convoys starting to emerge near Malta in number.

 

[Dadais]

What is that 16th bit for? I ask because every unit in the game only has the 15 slots? Anyway - I don't know that would solve the issue given everything else has it?

16th bit (on the left) is for "Hide the HP bar"
Strange thing is, it shall be by default (if not set) to "0" thus showing it. "1" value hides it.

 

[JPetroski]

When you're right, you're right! That did solve it. Not sure why that one of all of them got locked into the wrong way, but thank you very much for helping with the solution!

Now after work I'll have another nice pass through 12 rules files lol

 

[countmc]

On your thought about should the Americans be able to launch Operation Torch if the Brits kicked out of Egypt. You might think of rerouting the Torch effort to the Middle East. If Egypt fell, it would seem to reason the Brits might have screamed loud enough to get the Americans to push reinforcements into the Middle East to allow the Allies to hold the oil fields of Iraq, keep a Japanese and German link up, and to create a force to launch a counter-attack to free up the Suez canal.

If you like alternate history, The Moscow Option by David Downing, has somewhat of this scenario.

Btw the scenario looks amazing.

 

[JPetroski]

On your thought about should the Americans be able to launch Operation Torch if the Brits kicked out of Egypt. You might think of rerouting the Torch effort to the Middle East. If Egypt fell, it would seem to reason the Brits might have screamed loud enough to get the Americans to push reinforcements into the Middle East to allow the Allies to hold the oil fields of Iraq, keep a Japanese and German link up, and to create a force to launch a counter-attack to free up the Suez canal.

That's not a bad idea at all. It only really makes sense after Pearl Harbor, however (Frankly, probably slightly after Pearl Harbor for realism). Perhaps the event only fires a month or two after Pearl (I'll likely select the date for balance/gameplay--I appreciate this would probably be impossible immediately after Pearl, but it loses its bite if I push it too far in the future) so that the Afrika Korps has a bit of a looming deadline to finish up Egypt if they don't want this to happen. A real sense of urgency, so to speak. I'm only 3 turns away from Pearl Harbor and I don't think I can capture Egypt yet on account of a blunder in overextending past my fighters' range earlier in the campaign.

Btw the scenario looks amazing.

Thank you - I'm definitely enjoying myself on the playtests and I hope all of you will too.

 

[JPetroski]

(Just to clarify what I'm thinking @countmc )

-If the Germans capture Alexandria after a certain turn (when America in in the war) an event fires that brings significant American reinforcements around Suez. So, it's in your best interest to capture it before the Americans enter and gain strength and can do anything about it. If you happen to capture Alexandria before that time, then congrats, your war is shaping up well.

 

[civ2units]

Looking forward to your scenario, especially how everything works together and making it to a real strategic game.
I will definitely loose when I will play your scenario as I'm a complete strategic amateur, but it could be funny.

 

[tootall_2012]

(Just to clarify what I'm thinking @countmc )

-If the Germans capture Alexandria after a certain turn (when America in in the war) an event fires that brings significant American reinforcements around Suez. So, it's in your best interest to capture it before the Americans enter and gain strength and can do anything about it. If you happen to capture Alexandria before that time, then congrats, your war is shaping up well.

By the same token, in addition to the Malta convoys, you could provide England with regular replacements in Egypt so long as it controlled say Alexandria and/or Suez, for example. In essence they would represent the troops that were being sent there around the Capetown/Red Sea/Suez route.

The Malta convoys could be used as the extra reinforcements that allowed the British to mount their numerous desert counter offensives.

That would make it more flexible for the AI than having to rely exclusively on the Malta convoys, which it seems gives potentially too much power in the human player's hands to control?

 

[JPetroski]

That would make it more flexible for the AI than having to rely exclusively on the Malta convoys, which it seems gives potentially too much power in the human player's hands to control?

I don't think you're going to be powerful enough to win the Battle of the Atlantic, at least without making cuts elsewhere that can hurt you, but I do think there's a good cause to put a few units in randomly at Suez just as a failsafe so you don't have a cake walk either. Perhaps a 25% chance each turn of a few units showing up should do the trick.

 

[JPetroski]

Once again in a playtest, General Winter rears its ugly head. Unfortunately for me, it does so while I'm badly stretched thin. Army Group South had pushed towards Kiev, taking it a few turns back, but this left it with a weak right flank that was exploited by the Soviets as they retook Odessa with a counter offensive. I had nothing of note standing between them and Romania, so I had to hastily form a kampfgruppe which I rushed to Kishinev. Unfortunately, I also needed a Gefechtsverband in Leningrad as the Soviets had air superiority there. Bringing both of these forces on line (which was, I maintain, necessary to stave off disaster) meant that I dropped well below the 10,000 fuel threshold where units start to refuse to move... Things are bad. So bad, in fact, that I have no choice but to delay research of the Tiger tanks and instead concentrate on fuel for the next several turns to replenish my stocks.

When you all get a chance to play this, do not underestimate the Russian Bear.