Some suggestions for the next verison of Road to War

[xatsmann]

Things to change in next version:

PBEM play option should be enabled in all versions.

Add the Kasier Wilhelm Kanal in Kiel

Airplanes should be able to destroy (read:SINK) warships but not vice-versa.

Allow for daylight bombing...bombers can try and take out specific buildings but at a higher cost.

Airplanes can hunt submarines (or at least escort ships to reduce submarine attack)

Oil is available provided you have a trade route to any country with oil.

Add oil refineries...each refinary supports up to 100 units or 25 factories or some combination there of...

Add automatic East Balkan-German (assuming Germany has a land boarder with East Balkan) Finnish-German alliance upon German attack on USSR in historical and open scenarios

Automatic Itailian-German alliance at the fall of Paris

Automatic Spanish-German alliance at the fall of Moscow

[Dale]

Hi xatsmann,

PBEM should work in beta 3, try it there.

An automatic Finnish-German open borders agreement will come into force when the Axis invade USSR. An alliance is not possible as that would force Finland at war with the western Allies.

There was never a Spanish-German alliance.

Your other suggestions are worth considering.

[xatsmann]

True on the spanish-german alliance but i thought it makes sense given the spanish did send the equalvent of two divisions to the eastern front and franco was very anti-communist.

[joncnunn]

Re: Some suggestions for the next verison of Road to War

If implemented, The daylight bombing cost if there are fighters in the target city should be extremely high in terms of units. Such bombers should basically be dead-meat.

Agreed that during WWII bombers could sink a taskforce of warships while their AA guns would not have completed destroyed an entire airwing.

Fighters during WW II should definately have detect invisible units flag on.

I'm not sure if the mechnics of Civ IV will support trade route with oil is sufficent and the proposed Oil Refinery supports Panzers.

The proposed Finland triger is backward, historically Finland allied with Germany because the USSR invaded them. Had the USSR not invaded them, Finland would not have declared war on the USSR.

The proposed Italy triger is also wrong, The Italian - Germany miltary alliance should take effect as soon as the Italian military runs into problems against the British in North Africa. It also wouldn't be that far off historicaly to have Italy & Germany start with such an alliance in both 1936 & 1939.

Spain never did fully join WW II, they remained netural (favoring Germany). For that matter, the Germans never captured Moscow either, but only came within around 10 miles or so, enough to see one of Moscow's talest structures. I would think that if you as the Germans were actually able to capture and hold Moscow that the USSR would be doomed. More precislely I'd make it such that if the Germans held Lenin, Moscow, and Stalingrad that the USSR would automaticaly capitulate to the Germans.

Originally posted by xatsmann
Things to change in next version:


Airplanes should be able to destroy (read:SINK) warships but not vice-versa.

Allow for daylight bombing...bombers can try and take out specific buildings but at a higher cost.

Airplanes can hunt submarines (or at least escort ships to reduce submarine attack)

Oil is available provided you have a trade route to any country with oil.

Add oil refineries...each refinary supports up to 100 units or 25 factories or some combination there of...

Add automatic East Balkan-German (assuming Germany has a land boarder with East Balkan) Finnish-German alliance upon German attack on USSR in historical and open scenarios

Automatic Itailian-German alliance at the fall of Paris

Automatic Spanish-German alliance at the fall of Moscow

[joncnunn]

Franco was basically a German pupet. But the Germans didn't really want serious help from Spain. Especally after the USSR cut off Stalnigrad by carving thru the portion of line held by those troops.

If there isn't already such an event, there should be one to give the germans a couple of (weak) Spainish Inf units around March 42 or so.

Originally posted by xatsmann
True on the spanish-german alliance but i thought it makes sense given the spanish did send the equalvent of two divisions to the eastern front and franco was very anti-communist.

[xatsmann]

The reason for the taking of political capitals to trigger alliances is that these alliances were triggered by political events, e.g. the surrender of a major power, and not by military events (the exception being Finland). I will give you two examples:

Mussolini had an alliance with Germany but opted not to declare ware when Britain and France declared war on Germany. Clearly Italy was waiting for the decisive German victory against France and Britain. If Mussolini had suspected that England would not be forced to negotiate within a year it is unlikely he would have declared war. Indeed, it was this believe that Britain could not be forced to surrender, even by an invasion of the British Isles that kept Franco on the sidelines.

(As an aside, Hitler did attempt to get Franco to enter the war on Germany's side, see Operation Felix, the German plan to take Gibraltar, however Franco, realizing Spain's exhaustion from the recently ended Spanish Civil War, use the same trick Mussolini used in September 1939 when Italy did not wish to go to war. Namely, he handed the Germans a huge list of supplies that Spain would need Germany to supply if Spain entered the war including large quantities of wheat and grain that Spain was currently getting overseas from Canada and the US.)

Japan signed a the Anti-Comintern alliance with Germany and Italy in September 1940 but did not enter WWII at the time. Treaties often do not explain the behavior of states, in fact, I would argue political events such as states surrendering make better markers for such events. I also realize that the Germans never captured Moscow--the whole point is to increase the political value of the capture of Moscow by linking it to another event.

The point about daylight bombing was simply to make it available and to increase the value of fighter cover over cities. I would not allow AA to fire on night bombers as flak was generally useless at night. I also agree that unescorted bombers are easy pickings during the day. AA guns should also reduce the effect of bombing rather than shoot down planes as that was the primary effect of AA guns throughout WWII--not nearly as effective as fighters in shooting down planes but very good a making planes miss their targets.

As for Finland, for games I guess I would agree, although the Finns were actually controlled by the Whites at the end of the Russian Civil War, I doubt they would attack Russia unless attacked first. I guess the same goes for Romania (East Balkans) since they would not have attacked Russia without the loss of Besserbia to egg them on either.