The Hinge of Fate - Playtest/Release Thread

[Prof. Garfield]

@JPetroski

There were a lot of posts, so you might have missed this fix for moving units across the Atlantic. This bug is probably what is causing some ships to appear in the East of Europe by mistake.

 

[Dadais]

so if you want to try and starve Britain into submissions, attempt to destroy 400 British cargo ships by Turn 80

Considering your words a little upper ("england will never submit"), wouldn't it be enough to picture a starvation by altering city production in UK if conditions are met ?

 

[JPetroski]

Considering your words a little upper ("england will never submit"), wouldn't it be enough to picture a starvation by altering city production in UK if conditions are met ?

Unfortunately that would be totally irrelevant to the AI. Also I think England would have given up if they were starved out.

 

[tootall_2012]

@tootall_2012 more to come later but as you actually made a point to wipe the RAF from southern England, got hit with bad RNG, so to speak, with them all going to Edinborough, and have convinced me to change that, you can add this triggerEvents file to your Hinge of Fate/LuaTriggerEvents folder and you'll have a polygon that achieves the destruction of the RAF. You'll have to start from Turn 9 and I'm not sure how far you are, but you have achieved what you were supposed to achieve.

Edit - this simply changes the polygon to southern England (really, from North Wales down).

I have to run but I thought I'd get this out for you quickly.

Hi John,

I was up to turn 13 but as this is an very important campaign to test out, I downloaded the latest event fix and reloaded my turn 9 saved game and now on turn 10 I get the confirmation that I successfully met the prerequisites to launch Sea Lion!

As such, I'm going to continue from this point on and see if I can successfully conquer England.

On a side note, the Cheat Menu wouldn't let me swap the terrain tile underneath the Villacoublay city because the airfield terrain is number 11 in the sequence and when on a city tile you can't enter more than 1 number. As such, as a temporary measure I simply added the following code in the onTurn.lua file and that did the trick, i.e. the city isn't starving anymore:

if turn == 10 then
    civ.getTile(82,86,2).terrainType = 11
end

 

[tootall_2012]

I certainly agree with the idea of "there is so much to do, and not enough resources for everything." However, strategic movement is somewhat limited in HoF. In some wargames I've played, that's defined as movement that doesn't involve combat, usually over long distances, and mainly conducted by sea or rail. Is there a way to include something along this line?

The more I think about it the less I'm inclined to use fuel for upgrading road tiles. In essence, do I prefer to spent 5000 fuel to upgrade ten road tiles or use those same resources to buy a Kampfgruppe or Fliegerkorps, which will get me either 2 Pz IV, 3 PZ III, 5 PanzerGrendaier, 1 Sdkfz and 2 Artillery OR 6 Me-109 and 6 Stukas.

Time will tell but it seems to me that for a country like Germany always short on resources as compared to the alliance arrayed against it that the better investment is in troops.

Based on Tootall's reports, I have also underestimated the uses of the heavy artillery. Who'da thunk it was so useful to sink battleships and win the Battle of Britain? Seriously, combined with the mobility of truck units, this may well be a war-winning weapon.

Yes, though concentrating this amount of firepower might be more difficult in the expanses of Russia, in the confines of northern France it's proven to be a very successful tactic not only in overcoming both Calais and then Paris but against Dover as well. It also happened that I had another opportunity to inflict serious damage to the British navy when a significant battlegroup entered into the English Channel and once again ventured to close to the French coast.

 

[JPetroski]

I've made an update that I'm attaching here (and I'll put in the first post too I suppose). This is to the events. It is save game compatible. Simply extract this zip to your main HoF folder and overwrite everything. I figured it would be easier on everyone if I simply attached all three of these lua folders rather than giving complex instructions on what to put where.

Changes:
-Battle of the Atlantic mechanism put in place where England surrenders if 350 cargo ships are destroyed by turn 80. At any point, you can press "9" to see how many you have sunk so far (note, it's only going to count ships that you kill going forward). While 350 is the number I'm testing for, you can go into your Hinge of Fate/LuaParametersFiles/parameters.lua file, scroll to the bottom and find "param.BattleOfAtlanticVictory = 350" (line 105) and change the 350 to whatever the number should be for "YOUR" playthrough. Meaning, if you've already killed 20 Allied freighters, "YOUR" number should be 330. This way you don't give them a head start.
I came up with 350 based on the fact that I had quite accidentally managed to kill 148 cargo ships by turn 80 in a playthrough, which is approximately the end of the Second Happy Time. Note, I was not making it my primary focus. Is 350 the right number? I'm not sure. But it's certainly achievable (I didn't send a single ship commerce raiding, I didn't use much of the Luftwaffe to strike freighters, I just sunk them when I could find them with a portion of my resources). Of note at turn 80 the AI in my game had 264 cargo ships on the map plus the 148 I had sunk (412) plus an estimated 160 (roughly 2/turn) arriving either in England or Malta for "probably" 572 units by that point... But call it a range of 500-600 by that point meaning that you need to sink around 60-70% of the Allied ships to win in this fashion. We'll see if it is too easy or not, I suppose.

-Bomber Command: I'm not getting completely rid of it. You're going to have to defend your cities. BUT, I did reduce the number of RAF bombers that show up per convoy to 1 until the USAAF also starts showing up - then it bumps up to 2. So effectively they're half as bad for the first half of the game.

-I fixed the Villacoublay issue.

-I fixed the issue with the generals being wounded and dying in the same attack.

-As mentioned earlier, the Battle of Britain now only counts British fighters in Southern England (Liverpool down).

-I implemented @Prof. Garfield's fix for the units trying to teleport off map.

I still want to make changes to the actual game/map (The Finnish cities as well as the impassable terrain in Norway found) but those aren't things that are going to help any of you. This update right here is plug and play.

Find the update in The Hinge of Fate - Playtest/Release Thread

 

[JPetroski]

It's just that this is a very big map and moving units from one end of the other on a slow road network tends to make the game longer. Hence my request to reduce the cost so that a player could increase the size of the RR network.

The more I think about it the less I'm inclined to use fuel for upgrading road tiles. In essence, do I prefer to spent 5000 fuel to upgrade ten road tiles or use those same resources to buy a Kampfgruppe or Fliegerkorps, which will get me either 2 Pz IV, 3 PZ III, 5 PanzerGrendaier, 1 Sdkfz and 2 Artillery OR 6 Me-109 and 6 Stukas.

Time will tell but it seems to me that for a country like Germany always short on resources as compared to the alliance arrayed against it that the better investment is in troops.

There are certain places where it makes a lot of sense to spend the money to expand the rail network, and certain places where it probably doesn't. You can only really produce units in Germany so there's not much point to building it up in France, for example. I found there to be tremendous value basically building a supply line from Warsaw to Moscow, and would have liked to have built one to Stalingrad, but I didn't have the cash. You do get 250 fuel/turn from Ploesti so just using that you could figure on a tile every other turn. I think in my next playthrough, Africa might be another good place to focus on this.

I found 500 to be enough that I could build some key roads that I wanted, but not every road that I wanted, which is why I landed on it after some testing. Also, conscripts are very cheap so by the time Barbarossa rolls around its quite possible to have enough of them to build up the network quickly if you have cash.

As to the map size, you're probably going to be researching units a few months earlier than they ever showed up in real life so the delay in getting them there is somewhat reasonable, I'd say.

Yes, though concentrating this amount of firepower might be more difficult in the expanses of Russia, in the confines of northern France it's proven to be a very successful tactic not only in overcoming both Calais and then Paris but against Dover as well. It also happened that I had an another opportunity to inflict serious damage to the British navy when a significant battlegroup entered into the English Channel and once again ventured to close to the French coast.

I really need to do something about those battleships. I'd hoped that it was just my game but they sat there awhile. The AI is idiotic with their ships no matter what you do, unfortunately, but it would be better if they weren't sitting ducks!

 

[tootall_2012]

Thanks for the quick turn around:

-As mentioned earlier, the Battle of Britain now only counts British fighters in Southern England (Liverpool down).

Hmm, downloaded latest version as you indicated, and reloaded turn 9 and now on turn 10 it says I failed BoB again. Not sure why?

For now I'ill just continue from turn 10 where I already successfully got the confirmation.

Changes:
-Battle of the Atlantic mechanism put in place where England surrenders if 350 cargo ships are destroyed by turn 80. At any point, you can press "9" to see how many you have sunk so far (note, it's only going to count ships that you kill going forward). While 350 is the number I'm testing for, you can go into your Hinge of Fate/LuaParametersFiles/parameters.lua file, scroll to the bottom and find "param.BattleOfAtlanticVictory = 350" (line 105) and change the 350 to whatever the number should be for "YOUR" playthrough. Meaning, if you've already killed 20 Allied freighters, "YOUR" number should be 330. This way you don't give them a head start.

As you say, will have to see, though at first glance 350 cargo ships seems a lot more feasible target than 500.

-Bomber Command: I'm not getting completely rid of it. You're going to have to defend your cities. BUT, I did reduce the number of RAF bombers that show up per convoy to 1 until the USAAF also starts showing up - then it bumps up to 2. So effectively they're half as bad for the first half of the game.

For my part, it wasn't about eliminating the campaign but merely tuning it down somewhat, as I believe Bomber Command has been far more active in the scenario's first year than they ever were historically.

 

[JPetroski]

Hmm, downloaded latest version as you indicated, and reloaded turn 9 and now on turn 10 it says I failed BoB again. Not sure why?

Smacking my head. I'm uploading fixed files now.

 

[tootall_2012]

There are certain places where it makes a lot of sense to spend the money to expand the rail network, and certain places where it probably doesn't. You can only really produce units in Germany so there's not much point to building it up in France, for example. I found there to be tremendous value basically building a supply line from Warsaw to Moscow, and would have liked to have built one to Stalingrad, but I didn't have the cash. You do get 250 fuel/turn from Ploesti so just using that you could figure on a tile every other turn. I think in my next playthrough, Africa might be another good place to focus on this.

I found 500 to be enough that I could build some key roads that I wanted, but not every road that I wanted, which is why I landed on it after some testing. Also, conscripts are very cheap so by the time Barbarossa rolls around its quite possible to have enough of them to build up the network quickly if you have cash.

As to the map size, you're probably going to be researching units a few months earlier than they ever showed up in real life so the delay in getting them there is somewhat reasonable, I'd say.

Obviously I don't have your experience with the game as of yet so you may be right. It's too early for me to make a well informed judgement as I've only played a max of 13 out of 144 turns.

I'll try to keep an open mind for now.

I really need to do something about those battleships. I'd hoped that it was just my game but they sat there awhile. The AI is idiotic with their ships no matter what you do, unfortunately, but it would be better if they weren't sitting ducks!

This is one of the reasons I like to give some play by play feedback to the developer so they can see if the game is behaving as expected and if not where they feel they might want to make adjustments. Unfortunately, as we know, controlling the AI's use of naval units is by far one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish.

 

[tootall_2012]

Smacking my head. I'm uploading fixed files now.

Ok, it works now. Thanks.

After at least my 5th start today I can finally continue to play from turn 9 and proceed with Operation Sea Lion!

 

[JPetroski]

Hate the sin, love the sinner! My bad......

 

[tootall_2012]

Hate the sin, love the sinner! My bad......

No hate to be had here. Just much appreciation and admiration!
Besides it's all part of the testing process.. or as they say in the QA teams.. just another day at the office!

Just a quick update and a question:

The update: It's Early November 1940 and I was able to succesfully capture Dover. But as you can see the British are putting up a lot more resistance in the area than I thought they would, including a new batch of 8 Sptifires operating out of Portsmouth.

I've managed to offload 16 units in the city so far, including Guderian this turn, so I hope be able to generate my very first kampfgruppe in the city next turn. The 1 MP per turn for the transport is obviously making the build up difficult and slow. Basically, at this time, I'm only moving units between Calais and Dover (I lost one transport from Le Havre when I tried to move the units loaded on it to the hill tile south-east of Portsmouth).

In addition, the Britsh navy has been sending a great deal of vessels in the Channel, making all crossings risky. But so far I've been managing to kill most of them with a combination of my artillery, subs and planes (i.e. they've lost 25 destroyers, 14 light cruisers, 10 heavy cruisers and 7 battleships to date). How long they will be able to keep up the pressure I don't know but they have to be running out of ships at some point.

I also brought a portion of my fleet from Kiel to protect the transports, including the Bismarck. Unfortunately, it was just destroyed by 3 DD's last turn.

I'm already worried about how I'm going to prepare my front for operations in the East and the Balkans since the conquest of England appears as though it's going to be a much more difficult fight than I anticipated.

The question: How do you generate Cargo ships in Taranto? The Italian's already launced their invasion of Egypt and Cunningham as launched his Operation Compass counter-attack and captured Bardia.

 

[JPetroski]

I've managed to offload 16 units in the city so far, including Guderian this turn, so I hope be able to generate my very first kampfgruppe in the city next turn.

You're going to want to move Guderian back to Europe's mainland - he can't form a kampfgruppe in England, America, or Afrika (this is in the readme and the initial events I believe, but there's a lot to take in).

The question: How do you generate Cargo ships in Taranto? The Italian's already launced their invasion of Egypt and Cunningham as launched his Operation Compass counter-attack and captured Bardia.

So, as in the real war, you're going to find that the high command isn't as enthused about Afrika as perhaps you are. Each turn after the Afrika Korps is formed (which will happen after the British really trounce the Italians), you'll have a decent chance of getting a text box asking you if you want to spend 1000 fuel to send reinforcements to Afrika. Then, you need to actually get those cargo ships to a N. African port. They have the trireme flag unless Malta is neutralized (you'll start getting a text box each turn telling you if it is or isn't). They're also of course vulnerable to regular attacks. Bring them to a North African city with docks and press 'k' to unload.

Congratulations, you now have the same logistical and supply nightmare that Rommel had (at least when Greece and Crete are captured you'll have a chance to fly in the Luftwaffe if you want).

 

[tootall_2012]

You're going to want to move Guderian back to Europe's mainland - he can't form a kampfgruppe in England, America, or Afrika (this is in the readme and the initial events I believe, but there's a lot to take in).

Yes, I just found out that I can't build a KG in England (probably read it in the ReadMe file but forgot).

Of course, it makes perfect sense, otherwise it would kind of make the whole transport system a little moot once you carried a General to any of England, America, or Afrika.

I'm not out of available troops to move to England just short on transports, so no point in bringing Guderian back to France, especially since I just received Model in Berlin the previous turn.

So, as in the real war, you're going to find that the high command isn't as enthused about Afrika as perhaps you are. Each turn after the Afrika Korps is formed (which will happen after the British really trounce the Italians), you'll have a decent chance of getting a text box asking you if you want to spend 1000 fuel to send reinforcements to Afrika. Then, you need to actually get those cargo ships to a N. African port. They have the trireme flag unless Malta is neutralized (you'll start getting a text box each turn telling you if it is or isn't). They're also of course vulnerable to regular attacks. Bring them to a North African city with docks and press 'k' to unload.

Congratulations, you now have the same logistical and supply nightmare that Rommel had (at least when Greece and Crete are captured you'll have a chance to fly in the Luftwaffe if you want).

The British have managed to reduce the number of subs I had operating west of Gibraltar down to just one. I'm in the process of sending a couple more but in the meantime cargo ships have been slipping by and reinforcing Malta so I don't particularly look forward to trying to run the gauntlet to Lybia.

 

[techumseh]

Gosh, that's a lot of snow in Sicily and Corfu.

 

[Locopath]

Possible bug (or perhaps a known limitation): On the Europe map, I can fly an aircraft onto a mountain tile, teleport to Daytime Skies with N, but I cannot then teleport back onto the mountain tile. I must fly to a non-mountain (on the European map) tile before I am allowed teleport back.

I would guess that the 'impassable' mountains are blocking the teleport back, even though it's a valid tile for an aircraft to occupy.

It's no big deal (could even be explained as bad weather in the mountains restricting air operations!), I just noticed it while flying over the Maginot Line and said I'd note it here.

 

[JPetroski]

That probably is an error with the rules. I'll check it out a little later. Thanks for reporting (though it is possible you might be over an enemy unit? There are a lot of Swiss units on the only mountains you'd be near).

 

[Locopath]

(though it is possible you might be over an enemy unit? There are a lot of Swiss units on the only mountains you'd be near).

Nope, empty mountain tile, that I can (1) initially move onto in Europe ground map, (2) teleport to Europe Daytime Skies, (3) unable to teleport back to the same empty mountain tile.

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi John,

Here’s another update:

It’s Early January 1941 (turn 17) and I finally managed to capture London. It was a very difficult fight as the city was well defended and for a while I was uncertain whether I would be able to break its resistance. I’ve said it before and will say so again, combined arms plays a vital role in this game, i.e. using the right combination of units in your offensive against the enemy is crucial for success.

Part of this success was my ability to successfully transfer a large number of land troops onto the British isle (the current total stands at 48 including 6 trucks and 1 Sdkfz 251), and that was only achieved by inflicting large casualties on the British navy in a titanic struggle in the English Channel. As it stands to date, they’ve lost overall 31 destroyers, 16 light cruisers, 10 Heavy Cruisers and 9 battleships though certainly not all exclusively in this battle (some where undoubtedly lost in the Mediterranean against the Italian navy and others in the battle of the Atlantic). I estimate, in addition to the Bismarck, that I may have lost 3 subs, 1 Leichte Kreuzer, 1 transport and 3 Stukas in the battle to defend my transports.

Now that I pierced this critical line of defense, I expect be able to capture Bristol, Coventry and Birmingham in the next turn or so and possibly overrun England in the next 6 to 9 turns? At which, time I will be able to transfer the more important combat elements eastward, especially the 10 artillery pieces situated on the island proper.

In the battle of the Atlantic, I’ve managed to sink 53 cargo ships but have lost 31 Type VII subs in the process. From my original, 38 subs I started with I’m done to 21 (which means I managed to build a further 14 since the beginning). I also recently added a second Fw200 Condor to patrol the oceans (with the two sinking 3 of the aforementioned lost cargo ships).

My English breakthrough comes at a vital time for the following 2 reasons:

The first because I thought I had recently secured Yugoslavia’s alliance and had begun to transfer forces eastward, when I was betrayed by the former. Now I find I’m scrambling to reassemble a force to delve deep into both Yugoslavia and ultimately Greece which is controlled by England.

Secondly, because the pressure to prepare operation Barbarossa is mounting. As it stands, I currently only have 1 Me-109, 40 infantry, 5 PzGrenadier, 14 armored and 2 artillery units (with two more on the way from France). I will continue to send any further units I produce eastward but as I only have 8 to 9 turns before Early June comes around, I plan on using Model to build 4 KG and 2 Fliegerkorps (for a cost of 30,000 fuel) which should net me a further 20 armored, 20 Pz Grenadier and 8 artillery units along with 12 fighters and 12 Stukas. Not enough to overtake Russia but enough to at least win the border battles while I transfer a large part of my army from England.

Fortunately, I recently activated both Hungary and Rumania. I’m using Hungarian forces to support my effort in Yugoslavia while sending a sizeable part of its army force to support Barbarossa. Meanwhile, I’ve started to position most of my Romanian force eastward against Russia.

I'm currently researching SP Artillery, which should allow me to build two very useful units for my battle against Russia, i.e. the Mobile Artillery and SP Anti-Tank units. Afterwards, I plan on researching the Align Finland advance, which should provide further forces to deploy for Barbarrossa. I've managed to maintain a 1 advance per 3 turns since the beginning of the game, partly in due to the fact that I've been building Library and University improvements in all cities were it was justified to do so, though at the cost of almost zero growth per turn in Fuel (hence the reason why managing my Fuel stock remains so important at this time)

Finally, after England captured Benghazi, the OKH finally released Rommel and the Afrika Korps which deployed directly in Tripoli in Late December 1940. I’m in the process of moving them towards El Agheila with the goal of recapturing Cyrenaica from the British (though I'm not certain what impact defeating Britain in England would have on my African campaign, i.e. would a British defeat there also mean they surrender in Africa and Greece as well?). I also already agreed to pay 3000 fuel for my first new shipment of Afrika Korps reinforcements (as seen with the 2 cargo ships in the right side of the image below)

Simultaneously the High Command deployed the X Fliegerkorps in Sicily, and they’ve already bagged 3 cargo ships in the vicinity of Malta (though I’m not certain how close they have to get to the island before they are automatically converted to British units).

As they say plans never survive the first contact with the enemy but this is the direction I'm going for the time being. How successful my short term plans will be only time will tell!

I will say this again as well, this game magnificiently portrays the conflict at the strategic level. Few modern games on the market are capable to reproduce this level of complexity in such an eloquent manner. There are so many aspects of the war that a player has to manage, from science, production, strategic warfare, maritme warfare, combined arms, etc, that have made playing this scenario so far, for me, a truly unique experience.

A few extra questions:
As I captured London, I noticed 2 things:
1. I see you associated the WoW, Winston Churchill, with the Manhattan Project (aka the ability to produce the Atom bomb). That seems like an odd choice. What prompted you to do so?
2. I also captured the British Parliament WoW (aka the Oracle), which doubles the effect of temples. Should the Germans be able to benefit from this wonder, i.e. should it be made obsolete if they capture the city?

I may be mistaken, but the British AI seems to have difficulties when it comes to rebuilding improvements after their corresponding Housing District, Urban and Industrial Centers have been destroyed. Have you noticed or experienced the same thing?

Why can Flak shells only fire on the night map but not the daytime bombing map as well? Pressing 5 automatically places the shell on the night map.