WWII Europe: Small, Fast & Beautiful for IV - Discussion & Creation Diary

[Feet]

I know you may have already decided this but Gibralter must be passable by ships. That's the reason for Gibralter straegic importance even being there. The British fleet basically controlled what ships came in and out of the meditaranain. Taking out the Gibralter straits would seriously change the strategic decisions of all factions and would not mirror WW2.

Up to you I guess. The mod looks great and I'm really impressed by your progress.

 

[Paasky]

The "not passable by ships" was supposed to mean "not passable by enemy ships" as your own, and anyone who has an OPP with you can travel through the city.

But making 1 tile, costing 99 movement & adding +100% for the attacker would stop any ship in the straights, giving the defender a good bonus is a good idea. It does have drawbacks, but not that many though. Example: GER & USSR are in war, GER & UK are in war, USSR & UK are in peace, but don't have the OPP. USSR ships gets stuck in the tile & GER ship attacks, giving it the bonuses. But these would be VERY unusual situations.

 

[Aeon221]

I wonder if there is the possibility of making submarines cloak and uncloak.

Cloaked- less mvs, more damage, semi-undetectable
Uncloaked- more mvs, less damage, easily detected

Be kinda cool.

Besides, what with ship and naval movements as they are, do you really need a malus square? The Gibralter Fleet would still be able to pick off any enemies that came near it, assuming it was properly garrisoned with equipment.

 

[Paasky]

A new command for the unit should do it. Yes, you can add new command buttons in civ4! But it shouldn't be switchable except in the beginning of a turn & after a fight though. And a better name would be "submerge"

 

[DarthCycle]

One thing: How can new buildable promotions be added into existing units by constructing them? That is the single largest problem with this idea.

I understand. Battalion cannot be added to existing units. This is after all another abstraction of the promotion system.

This is why I don't think there needs to be a Marine unit, but maybe a "Marine Training" promotion to give it +20% when doing a marine attack?

Or the other way around, marine unit could have a bonus when conducting invasion. I will look into the unit class xml file though to see if there is an invasion flag or something.

Some questions:
1) Can promotions be civ-specific?
2) How to make units/buildings/techs civ-specific?

Promotion can be civ-specific if you make the promotion tech specific. Make the said technology only available to specific civ.

This was done often in CivIII Mod (Warhammer Mod for example), I'll look into the details how this is achieved in CivIV.

All of this is still only brainstorming so far. A lot of thought still needs to go into my proposed battalion system.

 

[DarthCycle]

@DarthCycle
i spent last night brainstorming on how to adapt HoI2 like rules for a WWII, my outcome was something very similar with only a couple of major differences.
Those are: Adv. Light Tanks (Pz II L), Heavy Tanks (Tiger I&II) and Superheavy Tanks (Maus) as promotions, the other promotions would be:
Art, SPArt, Rocket Art, SP Rocket Art, AT, TD (SP AT), AC (Armored Cars), AA and Eng.
Pretty Much the complete list of Hearts of Iron II except the Police attachment

Hehe, I see I'm not the only one that knows that little game. Obviously, it was of great inspiration. Still needs to be fine-tuned though.

I was also thinking about making the Tiger tank a battalion promotion instead of a unit. It would reduce the number of armor units by 2 though. I still haven't make up my mind. Still need to do more thinking on the whole system.

Still good to see other players will be able to challenge my ideas since they are familiar with my inspiration

 

[Paasky]

Anyone noticed the addition(s) into the first post?

Anyways, due to the one major problem with battalions, I'm going to do 2 versions: Regiment & Battallion (is that with tt, t, ll, l???). The first will be the one you gave me, which does have significant pro's, but also one big con (atm atleast). The second one will be like the one on the mindmap.

 

[DarthCycle]

On a different line of thought, since the unit scale is regiment, do we realize the sheer number of units we will have in the scenario? Are we going to try to respect the historical OOB (order of battle)?

For example, the German OOB for the invasion of Poland was about 60 infantry divisions. An infantry division is typically 3 infantry regiments and 1 artillery regiment, plus a bunch of support battalions. If we ignore the support battalions, that makes about 180 infantry regiments and 60 artillery regiments. That's a lot of units. Obviously, adjustment will be required but what rule are we going to follow to do so?

Especially for artillery regiment since they are really powerfull against stacks, and with this much units around on the map, there will be a lot of stacks.

 

[Paasky]

I was thinking about this:
City defence: 1-3 Peacekeeping Force units (cost 1/2 that normal units do, if that's possible)
German Army attacking (north+south+königsberg): 6+6+4 infantry units, 2+2+1 light tank (pz2), 1+1 medium tank (pz3), 2+2+1 bf109es, 1+1 stukas, 1+1 he-111s, 1+1+1 field arty, 2+2+1 transport (opel blitz, carries 2 inf/arty) & 6 peacekeepers to defend the cities after captureing.

Don't know how correct that is though...

 

[Imperator666]

i would love to see many Panzer units such as Panther - Jagdpanher - Königstiger (most powerful Tank in WWII) - Stug Tank Destroyer - KV I and II - Josif Stalin Battle Tank - T34 (of course). Also you could make the healing rate of Tanks really low so that you really consider using them for only the important Battles.

 

[jbfballrb]

where did you find that Europe map?

 

[Paasky]

Made it. Quite easy actually, the rivers were a bit tricky though.
Check the utility area.

 

[NP300]

I wonder if there is the possibility of making submarines cloak and uncloak.

Cloaked- less mvs, more damage, semi-undetectable
Uncloaked- more mvs, less damage, easily detected

I don't understand why so many want this ability to submerge or surface a sub. It's needless micromanagement. Diesel-Electric subs only submerged to escape an enemy or to attack at night. That's quite predictable so it should be reflected in the Sub's strength and bonuses, not micromanaged.

 

[Paasky]

And it would create extra work.

ATM there isn't a way to make a unit see more than 1 type of invisible. Unless someone has a way. Now there are 2 subs: Diesel & Electric. The Diesel one has 50% chance to retreat. The Electric one has a 70% chance. Also, two Destroyers: Destroyer can see subs, while the Adv. Destroyer has a +50% against subs. There are some other changes too.

 

[NP300]

And it would create extra work.

ATM there isn't a way to make a unit see more than 1 type of invisible. Unless someone has a way. Now there are 2 subs: Diesel & Electric. The Diesel one has 50% chance to retreat. The Electric one has a 70% chance. Also, two Destroyers: Destroyer can see subs, while the Adv. Destroyer has a +50% against subs. There are some other changes too.

I thought maybe you could just keep adding "seeinvisible" lines. Is that not so? I'm waiting for tutorials before I try to mod anything.

Strictly speaking all WWII subs were Diesel-Electric. They ran on batteries when underwater and used Diesel to recharge the batteries and when on the surface. The electroboats just had a lot more batteries, hence the name. 2 subs is probably good enough. But if you use only 2 subs, the Allies should also have a similarly limited number of upgrade lines, to maintain game balance. Of course, with upgrades the real number of units could be greater.

 

[Aeon221]

Why do people want the ability? Because it would be cool!

Cave before the mighty masses! ;p

Besides, it would be a fun use/test of the modding power of civ4. In addition, it just might add some strategery.

Also... not sure how to say this... but would you mind keeping unit types to an absolute bare bones level? I mean, variety is great, but too much variety means wasted effort. Rather than two subs, just keep it to one sub with an upgrade! Or even just one sub with a promotion! Save the processing power for other stuff (like pushing back late game crawl)

I'd vote division level personally (I know this is a bit late, but whatever, I'm American, be glad I vote for anything these days), simply because it would save some processing power for late game when the number of units involved will become truly redonculous.

It would reduce the choices per turn spent on the supply end of things and increase available time/processing power for the... a$$ kicking end of things.

Or you could take the line offered by Rocoteh with c3c and make two versions, division and regiment.

 

[Paasky]

NP300: Tried it, gave a huge error
Apaprently, if the number or text is stored like this: <insertname>NONE</insertname> you can only have 1 of them. If it's stored like this: <insertname/> then you can add as many as you want.

Aeon:
Would you rather like a) a cool button to make the sub submerge, or b) a working WWII Scenario?
Anyway, I checked the xml's, yes it's very possible, and quite easy. Just create a new button and tell what can use it and what it does.

 

[Aeon221]

Haha, you win!

... although that was definitely a false dilemma, as you showed yourself! A HA!

Get back to work you! ;p

 

[Paasky]

Aye aye, sir! Tally ho with a bing and a bang and a buzz buzz buzz!

 

[Detjen]

This looks like it has some fun potential, I just got IV myself and was a little dissapointed they didnt have the standard Europe WWII map, and I would like to help out in whatever way I can, unfortuantly I have no programming abilities, nor any art abilities, I am just a great fan of games like the civilizations series and I study alot on WWII, I have to say its one of my most favorite timeframes in history. I to have a thought though regarding things like artillery. If you were to go with the things like artillery, anti tank guns and stuff being the promotions on your units would you be able to add the bombardment ability to the unit as well? if not you could make the towed artilliery a unit and self propelled some form of promotion, although I like the idea of promotions being Combat Doctrins.

I was also thinking about rainks and chain of commands. Would it be possible to impliment some sort of bonus for having generals nerby, I was thinking maybe linking all of the healing/logisitics idea into this COC, Generals would heal stacked units at greather rates then a lower ranked one, just an off idea, if you can think of anything for me to help out with just let me know ill do my best.