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

[Detjen]

Stupid Thing told me I had an invalid thread post

 

[Paasky]

I haven't been doing much lately for this, as the weekend went by mostly by my godmothers 50-year b-day (where I was DJ) & the fathers-day visitings. Any freetime I had was spent playing a totally smoothly working civ4 with 1208x1024 resolution & all details at full. *aaaahhh *

Anyway, I've decided to make 2 versions: Regiment & Default. I hope DarthCycle will be be helping (ie: doing ) with the Regiment version, and it will be released a bit later.

Here's what I've come up during the weekend:
Promotions:

NAME			TYPE	EFFECT

Antihealth I-III	U	-10% Healing on same square, -5%on adjecent
Attack I-V		LS	+10% Strength
Desert Combat		L	+30% Strength on Desert
Open Combat		L	+20% Strength on Grass & Plains
Winter Combat		L	+20% Strenght on Tundra & Ice
Close Combat		L	+20% Strength on Forest & Hills
Medic I-II		LSA	+10% Healing on same square, -5%on adjecent
City Combat I-II	L	+20% Strength on cities
Blitz I-II		TS	Can attack 1 more per turn
Anti-Tank Tactics	IS	+15% Strenght against Tanks
Anti-Infantry Tactics	TS	+15% Strenght against Infantry
Anti-Arty Tactics	LS	+15% Strenght against Artillery
Anti-Fighter Tactics	LS	+15% Strenght against Fighters
Anti-Bomber Tactics	LS	+15% Strenght against Bombers
Anti-Navy Tactics	LS	+15% Strenght against Surface Vessels
Anti-Sub Tactics	LS	+15% Strenght against Subs
Movement I-II		LS	+20% Withdraw Chance
Accuracy I		LS	+1 possible first strike
Accuracy II		LS	+1 first strike & +1 possible first strike
Bombing Accuracy I-II	A	+15% Bomb Damage
Gun Accuracy I-II	A	+15% Air Strength
Manouvering I-II	A	+15% Intercept Chance
Long Range (name?)	I	+20% Strength against Rifles & SpecOps
Short Range (name?)	I	+20% Strength against MG's & SMG's
March			LS	Can heal on the move
Barrage I-III		G	+20 Collateral Damage
Sentry			LSA	+1 Visibility Range
Mobilization		T	MoveDiscountChange (what does that do?)
Navigation I-II		S	+1 Movement

Types: U=Unavailable, L=For Land units, S=For Sea Units, A=For Air Units, I=Infantry Units, T=Tanks Units, G=Arty

 

[jbfballrb]

if it has a U, does that mean you cant get it, but some units will start with that promotion?

 

[Paasky]

Exactly. All prop planes, infantry, arty, sea, special & light tank (+buster) units get antihealth 1. Jet planes, Medium & Heavy Tanks (+buster) get antihealth 2 (-20% on same, -10% on adjecent). and finally the VerhyHeavy Tanks get antihealth 3: -30% on same, -15% on adjecent. I think this is a good way to depict the rising maintaince difficulties with large amounts of units, & hard to up keep units. Maybe the -%'s should be a bit smaller, as atm 3 VH tanks + 1 inf would stop all healing. Don't know if it will start falling, probably not.

 

[Paasky]

I used a bit of time for an image:

Could be better, but I came up with that in about 30mins.


Nowthen, what about the tech tree? I could say that it's my weakpoint, as I don't have any idea how to do it...

 

[Paasky]

And here are the original tech trees:

http://koti.mbnet.fi/peksoft/wwii_air.JPG
http://koti.mbnet.fi/peksoft/wwii_ground.JPG
http://koti.mbnet.fi/peksoft/wwii_naval.JPG
http://koti.mbnet.fi/peksoft/wwii_social.JPG

 

[jbfballrb]

what about it? drawing the lines or placing the techs?

the lines get drawn automatically, and the grid is easy

 

[Paasky]

No, deciding what they are, what they require, what the names are, etc. Unless I'm simply going to copy-paste the original one...

 

[Nuh Uh]

Unfortunately, Civ as it stands, can't recreate wars. Its almost like the developers never played a wargame. The ability to cut-off supply and surround an enemy is fundamental to 'blitzkrieg', and without supply and the ability to tactically gain advantage by out-manuevering your opponent with the advantage of multiple attacks from opposing directions, you can't simulate blitzkrieg. Without blitzkrieg, there is no WW2 past the name and a map.

 

[DarthCycle]

He Paasky, good work on your last few posts. It's starting to take shape, slowly but surely.

I'm still doing some brainstorming on my side of things. Been busy at work lately so don't have as much time as I would like. Life is so imperfect

Actually, I put some thinking in a unit model at division level. The advantage is that we can build more realistics units, but at the price of less unit diversity. From what I get from your design philosophy so far, you prefer to offer more units, even at the price of realism. That's fine with me.

I will definitively continue work on the unit model at regiment level.

Your first draft for the tech tree is interesting, but of course it needs more work.

A few ideas/concept I was working on is the relationship between (ground) unit and technology (the same exercice should be done for other unit type: naval and air).

Tank units are defined by your technology in: tank model, gun, armor and doctrine.
Infantry units are defined by your technology in: Infantry model and doctrine.
Artillery units are defined by your technology in: artillery model, gun, tank model (for self-propelled artillery) and doctrine.

The technology tree should definitely have a branch for gun tech. It would have impact on tanks, artillery, navy surface and fighters. Some branches would be optionnal, some wouldn't be.

Doctrines would most often be roots (or choke points) in the tech tree leading to a lot of sub-branches of technology. Doctrine should be very expensive hence forcing the player to choose between the major doctrines: should I aim for good ground doctrine or should I try a balanced approach?

Lastly, one thing that has been nagging me is the design/usage for anti-tank weapon, even at regimental level. Anti-tank weapons were always deployed as support battalion to infantry regiment or panzer regiment if they were sufficiently self-propelled. Let us remember that no ground unit will actively (seek out to) engage an enemy armor unit. Effective anti-tank doctrine favors the use of anti-tank weapons in a defensive position. Give the weapons to infantry regiment, well dug-in, and let the tank come to you in order to ambush them. If you want to actively hunt the tanks, use air power instead. Tanks are vulnerable to air attack and were the most effective way to destroy them. I want to represent such a reality in the regiment model.

 

[wotan321]

Paasky, you and your co-horts did such a fantastic job on the Civ3 scenario that I have no doubt the Civ4 version will be a treat.

Its still early yet in the use of modding in Civ4, so I expect your scenario will undergo much change over time. I'll bet there is a lot of potential in events for the scenario that we haven't even imagined yet. Unlike Civ3, these scenarios don't have to be so linear and constrained. Its so soon after the initial release of Civ4 that I wonder if lots of folks will take their favorite Civ3 mod or scenario and just fit it into the Civ4 mold. Fortunately, you seem to be wanting to do more.

I'd like to see the scenario start in January 1933 as Hitler comes to power. From what I have read, that's really when WW2 started, it was a done-deal with Hitler. I'd make 3 civs playable, GB, Germany and the USSR. It would be nice to have events and tech trees with a lot of Civ-specific stuff. I'd make it so alternate histories were possible depending on events and decisions based on those events. Civ4 allows so much more than just moving armies around now, so you don't have to start with units perched on the borders like in Civ3.

Once the SDK is released, and some XML editting s/w is available, this scenario is gonna be wide-open in playability. Thanks for putting so much time and attention into it.

 

[Silica_Pathways]

I'd make 3 civs playable, GB, Germany and the USSR.

So wrong. There was one thing i really liked in Paasky's Civ3 WWII Europe scenario - ability to play with small nations and especially, my homeland, Latvia

 

[wotan321]

Well sure... Latvia.

Actually, I stand corrected. Civ4, with its ability to work with alliances means you can play as a small nation and stay in the game. I like that idea, too. I guess I am still stuck in Civ3 in that regard.

 

[NKVD]

Also you could make the healing rate of Tanks really low so that you really consider using them for only the important Battles.

Unfortunately, Civ as it stands, can't recreate wars. Its almost like the developers never played a wargame. The ability to cut-off supply and surround an enemy is fundamental to 'blitzkrieg', and without supply and the ability to tactically gain advantage by out-manuevering your opponent with the advantage of multiple attacks from opposing directions, you can't simulate blitzkrieg. Without blitzkrieg, there is no WW2 past the name and a map.

nice idea..Tanks shouldnt be able to heal. they would never really have time to repair tanks in WWII...

I dont know if there is a way to make supply road some realistic way so that when you encircle an army they just die there since they cant be supply with fuel or food...I have not seen one scenario or opened up one file so I dont know what are the capabilities of civ 4

but on the same idea to get more realistic strategy playing it would be nice since there are not such thing as pincher or encirclement moves in civ4 to make the withdrawal at a higher level than 10% for tanks and infantry (maybe like 30-40%) and 0% for artillery of course since they were always left off in a withdrawal...so to prevent a withdrawal you would have to encircle the ennemy troop so they cannot withdraw. Just like Von Manstein was a genius at. and Von Paulus learnt the hard way...

 

[NKVD]

If there were a lot of Lend-Lease traffic going on (which there will, believe me), it won't be as useless. I'll start researching on the subject (wikipedia, here I come!)

western sources says probably that the US gave a lot but they gave about 10% of the weapons that the soviet produced. I have the numbers with me

YEAR TOTALS - PERSIAN GULF - PACiFIC -NORTH ATLANTIC (murmansk) ARTIC
1941 360,778 - 13,502 - 193,000 - 153,000 - 64.107
1942 2,453,097- 705K - 734k - 950K - 117K
1943 4,794,545 - 1,606,979 2,388,000 681K - 127K
1944 6,121,622 - 1.788,684 - 2,848,181 - 1,452,775 - 142K
1945 3,673,819 the war was over

so the soviet didnt start to receive large amount untill late 1942 when the german was already beat at stalingrad. and by december 1941 the Soviet were already producing more planes and tanks than the german...not even talking of the military reserve in men...

and also usually in WWII games the soviet T-34 arrive late in the game but the T34 was already seen on battlefield as soon as mid 1941 since armies received 1,000 of those and KV1 heavy tanks...

I thought Persia (Iran & Iraq) were a part of the British Empire. And the British used "Air Police" to control the vast deserts there in the 20's-30's (If a village disobeyed the crown, a notice was air-dropped so that civilians could leave, and a few days later it was bombed/strafed. The only glitch was that no-one could read...). I read it from a "History of the RAF" book that I have, but I could've read wrong and it was only talking about African colonies.

yeap they were with the german...main thing why they went into caucasus..they were trying to meet with their troops in Alexandria

It stores the Gold, so why not Oil, Food & Ammunition reserves aswell? A "If OilReserve =< 0 Then Do FreezeAllOilUnits" perhaps? And add: "If AmmoReserve =< 0 Then Do StopAllFighting" and of course "If FoodReserve =< 0 Then Do KillAllUnits " OK, maybe the last two are not options... But FreezeProduction & maybe FreezeAllOilUnits should happen. The thing with that is that I don't want to make it too complicated. KISS my friends...

Think about how it would make the battle for the skies as, or more, important as the battle for territory

this part of the war is so IMPORTANT! thats why hitler divided Army South to Army B (to be defeated at Stalingrad) and army Group Don and went into Caucasus...the bigest mistake of the WWII...in 1942 germany's oil requirement was 15 milions tons and they received less than 10 millions!

hum will you name all the german abd russian division to their real name ?
anyway if you need any info on the soviet p.m. me or any info on Barbarrossa meaning before the attack on USSR I have read like 15 books on that subject so I surely can help...

 

[Robo Magic Man]

The scenario sounds great, and I can't wait to see it in Civ IV, but a few questions:
- Are paratroopers only available to the British and if so, why?
- Is spain a civ in the game (playable or AI)?
- Any idea when the mod will be ready for download?

Keep up the good work!

 

[Paasky]

Unfortunately, Civ as it stands, can't recreate wars. Its almost like the developers never played a wargame. The ability to cut-off supply and surround an enemy is fundamental to 'blitzkrieg', and without supply and the ability to tactically gain advantage by out-manuevering your opponent with the advantage of multiple attacks from opposing directions, you can't simulate blitzkrieg. Without blitzkrieg, there is no WW2 past the name and a map.

Which is exactly why we need to come up with a simple yet effective way to depict that.

So wrong. There was one thing i really liked in Paasky's Civ3 WWII Europe scenario - ability to play with small nations and especially, my homeland, Latvia

Unfortunately there is no Latvia anymore... As the max is 18civs, the Baltic & Benelux states are now in 2 civs, like Spain-Portugal & Norway-Denmark. But Riga is the capital though

... Waiting for the add-on ...

I will definitively continue work on the unit model at regiment level.

Good, because Ilike the sound of it.

Your first draft for the tech tree is interesting, but of course it needs more work.

A few ideas/concept I was working on is the relationship between (ground) unit and technology (the same exercice should be done for other unit type: naval and air).

Tank units are defined by your technology in: tank model, gun, armor and doctrine.
Infantry units are defined by your technology in: Infantry model and doctrine.
Artillery units are defined by your technology in: artillery model, gun, tank model (for self-propelled artillery) and doctrine.

The technology tree should definitely have a branch for gun tech. It would have impact on tanks, artillery, navy surface and fighters. Some branches would be optionnal, some wouldn't be.

Doctrines would most often be roots (or choke points) in the tech tree leading to a lot of sub-branches of technology. Doctrine should be very expensive hence forcing the player to choose between the major doctrines: should I aim for good ground doctrine or should I try a balanced approach?

That tree is from civ3 (as you might see)and when Idid that,Isimply created a tech for every unit & building & then connected them. Thistime I would like it to be a bit better...

Lastly, one thing that has been nagging me is the design/usage for anti-tank weapon, even at regimental level. Anti-tank weapons were always deployed as support battalion to infantry regiment or panzer regiment if they were sufficiently self-propelled. Let us remember that no ground unit will actively (seek out to) engage an enemy armor unit. Effective anti-tank doctrine favors the use of anti-tank weapons in a defensive position. Give the weapons to infantry regiment, well dug-in, and let the tank come to you in order to ambush them. If you want to actively hunt the tanks, use air power instead. Tanks are vulnerable to air attack and were the most effective way to destroy them. I want to represent such a reality in the regiment model.

This could be quite easy to do actually: The AT-Infantry atm has a strength of 7 and a huge bonus against tanks. So, why not make the strength into 3, give it a bonuson all terrain but only while defending in addition to the huge bonus vs tanks. Problem solved.

Paasky, you and your co-horts did such a fantastic job on the Civ3 scenario that I have no doubt the Civ4 version will be a treat.

Its still early yet in the use of modding in Civ4, so I expect your scenario will undergo much change over time. I'll bet there is a lot of potential in events for the scenario that we haven't even imagined yet. Unlike Civ3, these scenarios don't have to be so linear and constrained. Its so soon after the initial release of Civ4 that I wonder if lots of folks will take their favorite Civ3 mod or scenario and just fit it into the Civ4 mold. Fortunately, you seem to be wanting to do more.

Hopefully it won't become too hard to make, as then I prob would call it quits

I'd like to see the scenario start in January 1933 as Hitler comes to power. From what I have read, that's really when WW2 started, it was a done-deal with Hitler. I'd make 3 civs playable, GB, Germany and the USSR. It would be nice to have events and tech trees with a lot of Civ-specific stuff. I'd make it so alternate histories were possible depending on events and decisions based on those events. Civ4 allows so much more than just moving armies around now, so you don't have to start with units perched on the borders like in Civ3.

Actually WWII did begin in 1933, or was it 1936, in Asia when Japan started to be imperialistic.

Now that I start to think about it, it would be a nice time to start, but... meh It would require some AI adjustment, and many other things.

nice idea..Tanks shouldnt be able to heal. they would never really have time to repair tanks in WWII...

I dont know if there is a way to make supply road some realistic way so that when you encircle an army they just die there since they cant be supply with fuel or food...I have not seen one scenario or opened up one file so I dont know what are the capabilities of civ 4

but on the same idea to get more realistic strategy playing it would be nice since there are not such thing as pincher or encirclement moves in civ4 to make the withdrawal at a higher level than 10% for tanks and infantry (maybe like 30-40%) and 0% for artillery of course since they were always left off in a withdrawal...so to prevent a withdrawal you would have to encircle the ennemy troop so they cannot withdraw. Just like Von Manstein was a genius at. and Von Paulus learnt the hard way...

I think that, for now atleast, the antihealths depict the supply lines quite well. Also, I'm going to make a new improvement: Army Hospital, which will add a +100% healing speed, so that units can be repaired, but only in cities with an infastructure.

Unfortunately making those encirclements & flank attacks would be very difficult to make, maybe even impossible.

The scenario sounds great, and I can't wait to see it in Civ IV, but a few questions:
- Are paratroopers only available to the British and if so, why?
- Is spain a civ in the game (playable or AI)?
- Any idea when the mod will be ready for download?

Keep up the good work!

- I forgot the paratroopers! But civ4 doesn't have them, does it? So making them work would be very hard. So they're going to have the same fate as the Flamethrower Infantry & Missiles: they're not included until it's possible to make them work properly.
- Yes, as Spain-Portugal. All civs are playable.
- Tomorrow *hi-hi, let's see how many fall for this* Ever heard the expression: "When it's ready" ?

 

[Paasky]

Oh yeah:

 

[Silica_Pathways]

Unfortunately there is no Latvia anymore... As the max is 18civs, the Baltic & Benelux states are now in 2 civs, like Spain-Portugal & Norway-Denmark. But Riga is the capital though

Not bad either That would just mean less alliances & more concentrated power And some alliance ideas between Baltic states existed in those times, so such alliance would not be pure fiction, but just an alternative history

But interesting is the fact, that u are not able to add more than 18 civs. Devs said that Civ4 will be very modable... So this proves they lied ?

 

[wotan321]

Hopefully it won't become too hard to make, as then I prob would call it quits

I think that is gonna be a real problem for lots of the folks trying to bring Civ3 scenarios to Civ4. It took years and years for them to evolve, like yours, the TAM mod, and others. And modding in Civ4 is much more involved.

Just be patient and start off small and let folks help. Even the scenarios that shipped with the game barely scratch the surface of the things Civ4 can do, so there is a lot of learning to be done.

In any case, what you have so far looks great.