The Hinge of Fate - Playtest/Release Thread

[JPetroski]

Thanks for your feedback, @Konig15

8. Conscripts and minor axis units really should be able to use trucks and halftracks.

Not sure which minor axis unit you're finding can't use them? I went through and looked and I believe each infantry and artillery can, though I certainly could have missed one. Here's a list of the units that can do this. I'm not going to make conscripts able to use them because they build the better infrastructure and I don't want them going all over creation quickly for balancing.

local cargoUnitType = {}
cargoUnitType[1]=true
cargoUnitType[27]=true
cargoUnitType[24]=true
cargoUnitType[45]=true
cargoUnitType[47]=true
cargoUnitType[84]=true
cargoUnitType[116]=true
cargoUnitType[117]=true
cargoUnitType[141]=true
cargoUnitType[145]=true
cargoUnitType[149]=true
cargoUnitType[153]=true
cargoUnitType[158]=true
cargoUnitType[163]=true
cargoUnitType[168]=true
cargoUnitType[161]=true
cargoUnitType[156]=true
cargoUnitType[166]=true
cargoUnitType[171]=true

6. While the sequence of of aligning eastern countries Hungary then Romania then Turkey makes perfect sense, Aligning Spain should just be a first option like Align Finland.

There's no guarantee that Spain or Turkey will ever join you even if you try. The Germans certainly tried to get Franco on their side, and the Turks did a great job of playing both Germany and the Allies for equipment and bribes while never actually joining either side. So, I don't really see an issue with Spain (a historically non-aligned nation) coming after Finland (which did actually).

7. Because of the Propaganda Ministry wonder, I cannot build Reichskommisariats. I don't know if that is a bug or feature though given the wonders lack of expiration I think it might be a bug.

Actually I think this is a bug and that WoW should be removed since I'm pretty sure the default game mechanism is to disallow the building of police stations when Women's Suffrage is built. I'll have to get to that eventually. Maybe just take the WoW out with Civitas (does that let you do that?) for your game?

4. And I have to be honest: the rail modifier on a map this big is just a torment. I got no issue for the road movement, but the ability to redeploy within German the Reich itself is not only a mercy but necessary to simulate those internal lines of deployment and control German y had until the end of 1944. Having vanilla railroad rules was a giant quality of life improvement.

Well, yes, changing the railroad modifier to infinite movement would, I'd imagine, be a great "quality of life improvement" but also akin to spawning in about 100 tigers with the cheat menu if you ask me lol. I wouldn't recommend doing this. Your supposed to have supply issues the further into Russia you go. You can alleviate these somewhat with conscripts and judicious use of kampfgruppe's.

Could I just take out the event? I'm not sure diplomacy is really viable in Hinge, and since the way I'm playing I'm a pleace but not allied with the Minors, if they do attack as the AI is wont to do, I could take a city, they sue for peace, then I use civitas to give it back to them.

What neutrals do you mean? The white neutrals (Switzerland, Sweden) will never attack you and you can't attack them, by events. The yellow neutrals are minor allied nations and you should be attacking and destroying them. No idea why you wouldn't, and no promises your game will function correctly down the line if you don't.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Could I just take out the event? I'm not sure diplomacy is really viable in Hinge, and since the way I'm playing I'm a pleace but not allied with the Minors, if they do attack as the AI is wont to do, I could take a city, they sue for peace, then I use civitas to give it back to them.


If there's probably not an issue, I just need to know what the file name is and which folder it's in. Cause there's at least two dozen Lua files in 4 or 5 folder . I can't find anything, cause if I could I would already have added conscripts to the truck can pick up file.

Your message will look something like this. Just choose 'Yes, clear the saved data from the legacy events.'. There is exactly one legacy event, and it doesn't rely on the state table, so there shouldn't be an issue. If there is an issue, it will only be enabled diplomacy. You can always revert to the saved file before you said yes, anyway.

If you want to be absolutely sure that the game will still work, open LuaRulesEvents\negotiationSettings.lua, this is the entire file:

local legacy = require("legacyEventEngine")
local negotiationSettings = {}
function negotiationSettings.negotiation(talker,listener)
    legacy.doNegotiationEvents(talker,listener)
    return legacy.canNegotiate(talker,listener)
    --return true
end

return negotiationSettings

Change the line

  return legacy.canNegotiate(talker,listener)

to

return false

and you will achieve the same thing.

 

[Konig15]

Thanks for your feedback, @Konig15



Not sure which minor axis unit you're finding can't use them? I went through and looked and I believe each infantry and artillery can, though I certainly could have missed one. Here's a list of the units that can do this. I'm not going to make conscripts able to use them because they build the better infrastructure and I don't want them going all over creation quickly for balancing.





There's no guarantee that Spain or Turkey will ever join you even if you try. The Germans certainly tried to get Franco on their side, and the Turks did a great job of playing both Germany and the Allies for equipment and bribes while never actually joining either side. So, I don't really see an issue with Spain (a historically non-aligned nation) coming after Finland (which did actually).



Actually I think this is a bug and that WoW should be removed since I'm pretty sure the default game mechanism is to disallow the building of police stations when Women's Suffrage is built. I'll have to get to that eventually. Maybe just take the WoW out with Civitas (does that let you do that?) for your game?



Well, yes, changing the railroad modifier to infinite movement would, I'd imagine, be a great "quality of life improvement" but also akin to spawning in about 100 tigers with the cheat menu if you ask me lol. I wouldn't recommend doing this. Your supposed to have supply issues the further into Russia you go. You can alleviate these somewhat with conscripts and judicious use of kampfgruppe's.


What neutrals do you mean? The white neutrals (Switzerland, Sweden) will never attack you and you can't attack them, by events. The yellow neutrals are minor allied nations and you should be attacking and destroying them. No idea why you wouldn't, and no promises your game will function correctly down the line if you don't.

All right, I have some thoughts on that:
at 500 gold per tile, it doesn't matter how much a single conscript can do, it's how much does it cost? The way I'm playing, I'm making a profit of 4,500 fuel every turn, all I need is 9 conscripts making nine rail tiles per turn in order to eat all that profit up.

I mean look, I turned the Italian Tank into freight because it's in the freight slot, but even doing that facilitating feasible trade with the USSR (giving destroyers carry capacity with house rules cannot be used for invasions and giving the Italian tank 60 movement to reach Moscow and Leningrad in one turn), I'm still down to 2600 fuel as of January 1941. Heck I was down to 9,600 at one point and let me tell you never again. Ever ever ever. If you play the economic game, which is the insurance against a long war, which I am fully expecting, economic improvements are insanely expensive and time consuming to build, and the payback rate is SLOW. And that's with me turning the Schutzen into engineers because of slot, and only saving the conscripts for essential track laying, almost always in hills or preexisting roads on forest tiles.

The way I'm playing, I may be doing way better economically in 1944, but I haven't built an units other than flak and infantry (and an occasional Condor) since I started the game. I have subbed actual unit creation for Kampfengruppe and Fliegercorp, which is expensive. But also, Kampfengruppe work fantastically as economic aid. I put Model on a destroyer, sent him to Helsinki, and used the Kampfengruppe as raw materials to bring Finnish cities up to code. I actually think your in file limits of 50% gold and 10% science is actually a good deal because even with all I'm doing I'm still stuck with a massive guns and butter dilemma that plauges all nations. Hitler historically went full in on guns, I tend to go all in on butter, which is why I love Le Belle Epoch so much.


But there's a big, big important reason I do what I do, and it's not JUST quality of life. You're right the Germans faced huge logistical problems in Russia. That was precisely because they failed to fix the rail system on European gauge as they advanced. Trains in that era ran on coal, which Germany had tons of after conquering France. The move to motorized transport was not a bad idea in and of itself, but this was Nazi Futurism overcoming German pragmatism in the time-frame of the Hitlerzeit. Not only did the Germans come into 1940 with less railstock then their parents had in 1914, but in Barbarossa they failed completely to seize any Soviet railstock of note, because railstock is very easy to move. Hitler banked on a quick victory and didn't invest. I'm not gonna play like him. It's not just GROFAZ was evil, he also failed to learn the lesson of World War I: if you go to war, hope for a short campaign, but prepare for a long one. In going into Russia with a horde of conscripts, you'll be paying out the nose up front, but you'll be able to sustain a war in the East for as long as it takes. That's how the Germans won a war of attrition against three consecutive Russian governments in 1917 and 18.


And as to why I don't want to invade the low countries? Because I don't wanna be a dick. But there are other reasons. See every neutral port that remains open and neutral is a port the British have to plug. Historically in WWII the British had to spend a lot of money buying Portuguese, Spanish and even to a degree Swedish exports by outbidding German purchasers, and both Germany and Britain used the multiple neutrals to play wack-a-mole with each other in the bidding war. But the British got way less marginal utility out of their purchases and essentially made all of them to deprive them to the Germans. If you have two more neutral countries and the ability to functionally bypass most of the North Sea blockade by holding Norway, you open up the lines of supply and communication to Germany way way more. And thus the Reichsmark goes way way further. Now is this mechanically relevant? Not particularly, but Civ 2 isn't set up to model things like this very well.


As for the Civitias, no you can't edit Wonders, more's the pity. I think you might be able to with CivTweak but I can't find a copy of it, not for TOT anyway. I need that to try and make Barbarians good trading partners. But also, apparently Civitas, at least the version I have isn't completely compatible with the new expanded unit line. It stops at industrial center unit I can't build SP artillery on down. For me that's kind of a problem, because even though by your units you don't think cavalry is really important to World War II, but I do, especially in functional versions of Cossacks and German cavalry units. The Wehrmacht only ever had one division of cavalry but they had six brigades, plus SS cavalry units and Cossacks. Also the Russians had HUGE numbers of cavalry units, really mucking things up in the Pripiyat marches. Thing is your French cavalry is going to be replaced with some British unit in 42 or 43 but the Partisan Cavalry is inaccessible.


I'm not asking you to change unit composition but for my own purposes, I would like to know how to configure it so I could produce Partisan Cavalry? I don't know where the partisan units were disabled in the Lua or whether it's a whole ban barring events or just you need to possess certain Yugoslav cities, but it's something I want to have in my army composition. I just can't use Civitas to produce it unless you change the unit rotation or there's a new version. So I need to know the Lua location so I can hack it for my personal use.

 

[Konig15]

Two more things: Went through al minor axis units that should be able to get on transports. Here are the ones that can't get in, by my testing (maybe my game is wonky but I haven't touched the Lua files)
Italian Artillery
Finnish Infantry
Uztache
And the Chetniks (although given their relationship with the Axis they were both enemies and sometimes allies, depending on what Tito was up to)


The second is I have no qualms about Aligning Spain being locked behind Align Finland. However, it's not, it's locked behind Aligning Romania and Bulgaria. And despite it being a small chance, there's no logical reason why any south eastern European minors have to be aligned before you can work on Spain. Cause after all, the time Hitler tried to align with Franco was in 1940, and then only to get Gibraltar. I personally would like the option to INVADE both countries (Spain and Tukrey) by tech, because there were good reasons to do both and as we know Hitler didn't give flip about neutrality when it didn't suit his perceived purposes. And in my estimation, the loss of Turkish Wolfram is more than made up for by direct access to Iraq, Iran and their oilfields.

 

[JPetroski]

I'm not asking you to change unit composition but for my own purposes, I would like to know how to configure it so I could produce Partisan Cavalry?

In the folder LuaRulesEvents, find the file canBuildSettings.lua and then go to line 396, and either put a -- before the tect in that line (which will just allow it to be built by whomever the rules file--which you'll also need to chage--allows, or you can change unitTypeBuild[object.uYugoslavPartisanII.id]={location=yugoslavianCities} to a different location of your suiting. Or, you can just recruit them in the Yugoslav cities (though you'll need to modify the rules:

00010000, 00000110,-1, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 10000000 ;Tito's Cavalry

would become

00010010, 00000110,-1, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 10000000 ;Tito's Cavalry

If you want the Partisans and also Germans to be able to build these units.

 

[Patine]

All right, I have some thoughts on that:
at 500 gold per tile, it doesn't matter how much a single conscript can do, it's how much does it cost? The way I'm playing, I'm making a profit of 4,500 fuel every turn, all I need is 9 conscripts making nine rail tiles per turn in order to eat all that profit up.

I mean look, I turned the Italian Tank into freight because it's in the freight slot, but even doing that facilitating feasible trade with the USSR (giving destroyers carry capacity with house rules cannot be used for invasions and giving the Italian tank 60 movement to reach Moscow and Leningrad in one turn), I'm still down to 2600 fuel as of January 1941. Heck I was down to 9,600 at one point and let me tell you never again. Ever ever ever. If you play the economic game, which is the insurance against a long war, which I am fully expecting, economic improvements are insanely expensive and time consuming to build, and the payback rate is SLOW. And that's with me turning the Schutzen into engineers because of slot, and only saving the conscripts for essential track laying, almost always in hills or preexisting roads on forest tiles.

The way I'm playing, I may be doing way better economically in 1944, but I haven't built an units other than flak and infantry (and an occasional Condor) since I started the game. I have subbed actual unit creation for Kampfengruppe and Fliegercorp, which is expensive. But also, Kampfengruppe work fantastically as economic aid. I put Model on a destroyer, sent him to Helsinki, and used the Kampfengruppe as raw materials to bring Finnish cities up to code. I actually think your in file limits of 50% gold and 10% science is actually a good deal because even with all I'm doing I'm still stuck with a massive guns and butter dilemma that plauges all nations. Hitler historically went full in on guns, I tend to go all in on butter, which is why I love Le Belle Epoch so much.


But there's a big, big important reason I do what I do, and it's not JUST quality of life. You're right the Germans faced huge logistical problems in Russia. That was precisely because they failed to fix the rail system on European gauge as they advanced. Trains in that era ran on coal, which Germany had tons of after conquering France. The move to motorized transport was not a bad idea in and of itself, but this was Nazi Futurism overcoming German pragmatism in the time-frame of the Hitlerzeit. Not only did the Germans come into 1940 with less railstock then their parents had in 1914, but in Barbarossa they failed completely to seize any Soviet railstock of note, because railstock is very easy to move. Hitler banked on a quick victory and didn't invest. I'm not gonna play like him. It's not just GROFAZ was evil, he also failed to learn the lesson of World War I: if you go to war, hope for a short campaign, but prepare for a long one. In going into Russia with a horde of conscripts, you'll be paying out the nose up front, but you'll be able to sustain a war in the East for as long as it takes. That's how the Germans won a war of attrition against three consecutive Russian governments in 1917 and 18.


And as to why I don't want to invade the low countries? Because I don't wanna be a dick. But there are other reasons. See every neutral port that remains open and neutral is a port the British have to plug. Historically in WWII the British had to spend a lot of money buying Portuguese, Spanish and even to a degree Swedish exports by outbidding German purchasers, and both Germany and Britain used the multiple neutrals to play wack-a-mole with each other in the bidding war. But the British got way less marginal utility out of their purchases and essentially made all of them to deprive them to the Germans. If you have two more neutral countries and the ability to functionally bypass most of the North Sea blockade by holding Norway, you open up the lines of supply and communication to Germany way way more. And thus the Reichsmark goes way way further. Now is this mechanically relevant? Not particularly, but Civ 2 isn't set up to model things like this very well.


As for the Civitias, no you can't edit Wonders, more's the pity. I think you might be able to with CivTweak but I can't find a copy of it, not for TOT anyway. I need that to try and make Barbarians good trading partners. But also, apparently Civitas, at least the version I have isn't completely compatible with the new expanded unit line. It stops at industrial center unit I can't build SP artillery on down. For me that's kind of a problem, because even though by your units you don't think cavalry is really important to World War II, but I do, especially in functional versions of Cossacks and German cavalry units. The Wehrmacht only ever had one division of cavalry but they had six brigades, plus SS cavalry units and Cossacks. Also the Russians had HUGE numbers of cavalry units, really mucking things up in the Pripiyat marches. Thing is your French cavalry is going to be replaced with some British unit in 42 or 43 but the Partisan Cavalry is inaccessible.


I'm not asking you to change unit composition but for my own purposes, I would like to know how to configure it so I could produce Partisan Cavalry? I don't know where the partisan units were disabled in the Lua or whether it's a whole ban barring events or just you need to possess certain Yugoslav cities, but it's something I want to have in my army composition. I just can't use Civitas to produce it unless you change the unit rotation or there's a new version. So I need to know the Lua location so I can hack it for my personal use.

This sounds what they call, "gamey," as Hell...

 

[JPetroski]

Italian Artillery
Finnish Infantry
Uztache
And the Chetniks (although given their relationship with the Axis they were both enemies and sometimes allies, depending on what Tito was up to)

Thanks for helping with this. I figured I'd miss a few! This will add in the Finnish Inf, Italian Art and Ustase. The Germans don't get the Chetniks.

If you go to LuaRulesEvents --> transport lua and replace the fields starting at line 53 with these, that'll fix the issue. I'll probably hold off on uploading a fix for everyone until you've played a bit more in case you notice other errors.

cargoUnitType[1]=true
cargoUnitType[27]=true
cargoUnitType[24]=true
cargoUnitType[45]=true
cargoUnitType[47]=true
cargoUnitType[48]=true
cargoUnitType[79]=true
cargoUnitType[84]=true
cargoUnitType[116]=true
cargoUnitType[117]=true
cargoUnitType[141]=true
cargoUnitType[145]=true
cargoUnitType[149]=true
cargoUnitType[153]=true
cargoUnitType[158]=true
cargoUnitType[163]=true
cargoUnitType[168]=true
cargoUnitType[161]=true
cargoUnitType[156]=true
cargoUnitType[166]=true
cargoUnitType[171]=true
cargoUnitType[181]=true

This sounds what they call, "gamey," as Hell...

As long as he's having fun!

 

[Konig15]

This sounds what they call, "gamey," as Hell...

Can I ask what gamey means in this instance? Cause as far as I understand things from the Narrative-Mechanic-Simulationist triangle, what I'm doing is mostly Simulation, trying to explore other means of achieving the objectives. It's this mechanics to serves as simulation fodder. I had my best experience with this in Victoria 1 where I was having a WWI with Germany, and was slowly kicking it's ass after dominating the game everyday since 1836, and I quickly discovered that World War is a BAD idea, no matter how good your strategy is, nor how successful it is. I was after two years mopping the floor with Germany, it's whole northern coast was occupied and I was a few miles outside of Berlin.

The real cost of a World War is not all the money you lose, all the money you don't make while your workers are mobilized, it's not the loss of material, it's the human cost. Mass Casualties destroy a county's future. You are destroying the country's labor pool and the pool of population that can make babies. It's so crippling that I personally would not dare try and fight a World War I style war, because victory can only be Pyrrhic. It hit every organ in my body in ways I cannot forget, how many opportunity costs come with war, even heartless Machiavellian/Hobbesian terms. It was sobering, but enlightening.

 

[Konig15]

In the folder LuaRulesEvents, find the file canBuildSettings.lua and then go to line 396, and either put a -- before the tect in that line (which will just allow it to be built by whomever the rules file--which you'll also need to chage--allows, or you can change unitTypeBuild[object.uYugoslavPartisanII.id]={location=yugoslavianCities} to a different location of your suiting. Or, you can just recruit them in the Yugoslav cities (though you'll need to modify the rules:

00010000, 00000110,-1, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 10000000 ;Tito's Cavalry

would become

00010010, 00000110,-1, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 10000000 ;Tito's Cavalry

If you want the Partisans and also Germans to be able to build these units.

Everything's working. I thank you highly!

 

[JPetroski]

Can I ask what gamey means in this instance? Cause as far as I understand things from the Narrative-Mechanic-Simulationist triangle, what I'm doing is mostly Simulation, trying to explore other means of achieving the objectives.

I don't really care how you play the scenario or what you do in your free time, nor is it any of my business, but you're absolutely not "exploring other means of achieving the objectives," at least not in any way that's any different than simply activating cheat mode and spawning in whatever you need.

-You've changed the railroad parameter to allow for infinite movement.
-You've added a freight unit so you could acquire more fuel even though the scenario is designed to simulate fuel constraints and place tough choices on players.
-You've decided that random AI-only units should be for you.
-You've elected to make peace with lands you're supposed to conquer and just eliminate that whole hassle.

Again, it's really not my business how you play and frankly the way I got into making scenarios in the first place was by tweaking them to my liking, so honestly I encourage you to have a ball. However, and I want to be really clear about this -- there is no need to give me giant walls of thoughts or feedback because (other than bug reports), it's not getting implemented.. You've modified this in such a way that your experiences won't be consistent with that of other players, or consistent with the designers' wishes (that took several years to implement, btw), so the feedback has very little value to me in terms of changing things.

But by all means, have a ball hacking away at it and feel free to ask questions about where to find things if you need any more help, though I'd prefer if you did that in another thread, given I don't really want someone to come into this one in the future and wonder what on earth is going on or why their experience is totally different than the one you're writing about.

 

[Konig15]

Bug reports only go here, and any modification I should open new thread? I am willing to comply if I understand correctly. Just like this post if this is what you've requested.

 

[JPetroski]

Well I'm just saying if you want to tweak the scenario and need some help I'm happy to help you but maybe start a new thread or put it in small questions or somewhere just so we can keep this on topic. Thanks!

 

[Patine]

Bug reports only go here, and any modification I should open new thread? I am willing to comply if I understand correctly. Just like this post if this is what you've requested.

I must ask. Have you stuck an Atomic Bomber unit in @McMonkey and I's Korean War scenario? You had been going on about the issue a while ago.

 

[ruivasconcelos]

Hi JPetroski, congratulations for this scenario, it's amazing.
I'm playing in nov.1940 and it asked to launch bat.file, but it said 0 files copied. I opened the file with admin, and it said it was unable to find location.
Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[JPetroski]

Hi JPetroski, congratulations for this scenario, it's amazing.
I'm playing in nov.1940 and it asked to launch bat.file, but it said 0 files copied. I opened the file with admin, and it said it was unable to find location.
Any ideas?

Thanks!

Oh goodness I completely forgot this post as I was traveling when it was sent originally - honestly I do not know why you are having that issue but it looks to me that nothing copied which in my mind would mean you don't have all the files. Can you screen shot the files that are in your Hinge of Fate folder and then maybe we can see if they are there or not? This is more or less what it should look like.

 

[ruivasconcelos]

Hi JPetroski!
Thanks for your help, another user helped me: i had my ToT files in C:/ProgramFiles, that caused the problem. I change the location and everything was ok.
If you are considering update this amazing scenario, i can give some suggestions. Thanks!

 

[JPetroski]

I'm glad it worked out! At some point (not soon) I'll likely update it, so feel free to fire away

 

[ruivasconcelos]

This is my first suggestion:
An semi-historical influence over Portugal, just like Spain and Turkey: after "align Spain", an "align Portugal" (after Franco joins Axis) that can have some consequences: civil war, Portugal join allies or Portugal join Axis, if England is defeated. And some portuguese units, of course!
Keep the nice job.

 

[Patine]

This is my first suggestion:
An semi-historical influence over Portugal, just like Spain and Turkey: after "align Spain", an "align Portugal" (after Franco joins Axis) that can have some consequences: civil war, Portugal join allies or Portugal join Axis, if England is defeated. And some portuguese units, of course!
Keep the nice job.

I get the feeling - having talked to a Portuguese-Canadian - that Salazar wasn't that committed or that brave in foreign military affairs (he didn't seem to view the Portuguese Colonial Wars as foreign, and he honestly expected a good show of power would, "scare the Natives back to work," and probably would only have joined the war if both the cusp of victory was near for one side or another, AND he felt some tangible gain was likely.

 

[techumseh]

Portugal has historically been aligned with Britain, despite its neutrality. I'm not sure that changed very much during the Salazar dictatorship.