DICTATOR ToT - DEVELOPMENT THREAD!

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by rmsharpe
It's beautiful, Curt.

My only little bicker is that Minneapolis is on Lake Superior. You could probably shove it over to (52, 58) to help represent it's actual location.

It shall be done!

[rmsharpe]

Boy, and leave it to me to be as blind as a bat. You've also got a typo on Minneapolis. You've got it spelled at "Minneaopolis."

[CapTVK]

Wow, talk about a huge set of soundfiles

I think I'll have a go as the commonwealth. Is there any particular goal playing as the commonwealth (helping GB) or do you simply head out to were the action is?

[typhoon]

Playing as the UK and am in possession of Italy, North Africa, the Balkans, and the northwest corner of France by October 1942. The V2s are a big nuisance. The Germans have mass produced them and are using them on everything in sight. I think they're vastly overpowered, each can sink a battleship or an aircraft with pinpoint accuracy when they historically weren't even guided.

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by typhoon
Playing as the UK and am in possession of Italy, North Africa, the Balkans, and the northwest corner of France by October 1942. The V2s are a big nuisance. The Germans have mass produced them and are using them on everything in sight. I think they're vastly overpowered, each can sink a battleship or an aircraft with pinpoint accuracy when they historically weren't even guided.

You have the same "omniscient cruisemissile effect" in normal civ2 games. That's the way the AI works. You can't really do anything about it. The best way to escort/protect ships is with aircraft.

[AGRICOLA]

I've been taking an initial look at general and US playability considerations.

Congratulations, the scen looks to be extremely finely crafted, from the game map to the unit icons. That said, and meant, here is my nitpicking contribution.

The resource window in the city window has caused me to make modifications to ICONS and TERRAIN to remedy the following problems.

1. The trade arrows are the same color as the food icons.
2. RRII are too faint to be seen easily. This also applies to the game map where, IMO, the RRII's should be darker than RR's.
3. The red markings which indicate that a square is in use by another city are too cluttered. I would suggest removing the X in the centre and make the entire perimeter of the square red or, preferably, white. That way one can more easily see what is in the square.


I've edited the PEOPLE file with icons from another scen. IMO, most of of the people look like nearly identical, unshaven vagrants from a police lineup. For example, the entertainer (US) is at first glance identical to one of the contented US citizens because the “MP” on its helmet is faint and yellow as opposed to the bold white letters on actual MP helmets. The same holds true for some of the other civs. The beancounters and Einsteins look like hit men from one of Eivind's Mafia mobs and their icons show nothing that might indicate their fields of expertise. It would also help a great deal if the background colors were different for happy, content and unhappy citizens as well as for each type of specialist.


I think that in order to be consistent with other civs, Roosevelt and Hirohito should be the heads of state for the US and Japan. I can live with Tojo but Eisenhower seems to be a particularly poor choice; in 1940 he was either a colonel or brigadier general, not a head of state.


This has been mentioned before. The complete absence of any intelligence on other civs seems a bit unreal. By all means eliminate all communication with other civs but please consider reinstating the Foreign Minister’s report so that there is a very moderate amount of info for it and for the Demographics pulldown. It is interesting to see if one is making any progress against ones enemies. There is always a certain amount of intelligence available, even in wartime.


I realize that you don’t have much "wiggle" room for unit A/D’s but some of the numbers could be seriously questioned, such as the identical A’s of battle cruisers (13" guns) and battleships (14"- 16" guns) and the identical A/D of the Russian I-16 and the Japanese Zero. The one was obsolete in 1940 while the other was a world class fighter.


I really regret to say this when I'm about to start playing the US, but I have a feeling that the US civ may be a bit too powerful. It is just a gut feel and is based on the three great wonders that they have . . . . Pyramids, Adam Smith, Michaelangelo . . . . their large initial treasury and their seeming immunity to the unhappiness due to absent units, bombers or nukes that usually plagues a democracy. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.


Finally, I am nearly apoplectic that Canadian units are on US soil near Boston and Pittsburgh at the start of the scen. We Americans won the War of 1812 so either send the damned intruders back to where they belong or we’ll torch Ottawa. Fortunately, the Mexicans appear to be more respectful of US territory so there are no current plans to send marines to level the Halls of Montezuma.

[curtsibling]

Many thanks, good gentlemen!

I am pressed for time at the moment, but you all have been busy, I am impressed! :B

I will be back tomorrow to fully deal with all the bugs and comments in turn...Many thanks for the feedback!

PS
Just for the record, the naval and V2 unit powerss have been scaled back...

[Exile]

"unshaven vagrants from a police lineup"



Hey! Some of my best friends are unshaven vagrants.

[Boco]

Originally posted by Eivind IV *
How'd you make the partisan unit invisable?

Originally posted by curtsibling
It is a ToT unit flag...

Typically, you can only see the unit when it attacks. It's also visible from the city view screen. IIRC, when you first try to move a unit into a square containing such a unit, your unit appears to be nonresponsive. The second attempt causes combat. After an invisible unit has been spotted, it remains invisible, but its label appears in the status frame when the square it occupies is selected.

It's a far more effective flag at hiding than the submarine flag. In fact you might consider giving subs this flag along with the naval superiority or attack flag. That is, if you don't mind shore bombardment.

Vagrancy is highly underrated. Razors just the opposite.

[rmsharpe]

And just where the heck is Instanbul?

[Broken_Erika]

Originally posted by rmsharpe
And just where the heck is Instanbul?

35 mile southwest of outstanbul,

[Patine]

Curt, why can't the Germans develop atomic weapons? In fact, in every WW2 scen I've come across, they can't. Many seem to forget that Germany was racing the US to the bomb in late '44 and much of '45, and only their surrender ended this. I can't understand why no one allows them the possibility of building A-bombs before or coterminous with the US. They came very close, historically. Can you or anyone shed light on this mysterious convention?

[rmsharpe]

I kind of liked that in the old ToT Dictator that everyone had jet bombers, atomic bombs, etc.

[AGRICOLA]

Curt, could you please take a second look at these items? They have a huge impact on the game, particularly for the US.

a. Designating mountains as impassable terrain for engineers.
b. The absence of roads and RR’s in areas where they did exist in 1940.
c. The topography of some parts of the game map

a. Designating mountains as impassable makes it impossible to mine any resources on mountainous terrain or to build a road through mountains. I think that engineers should have the same impassable terrain override as some other ground units.


b. The US transport network is grossly misrepresented. The US had an excellent RR network in 1940's (230,000+ miles = 30% of the world's RR mileage), not the sparse system of roads with illogical gaps shown on the game map. The Northern and Central Pacific railroads have been eliminated so that there are no direct links between Helena and Spokane or between Salt Lake City and San Francisco. Pittsburgh has no link to the east coast. N-S routes are completely lacking in the central part of the country. There is no way that in 1940, it would have taken months to move an American unit from the east coast to the west coast. The same argument applies to the absence of the Trans-Siberian RR in the Soviet Union. Without that RR, the Soviets could not have have moved their Siberian divisions to the Moscow front by December 1941.

There are similar examples elsewhere on the map. There is no road between Germany and Italy; the two Swedish cities; the Spanish cities; Kuala Lumpur and Singapore; Sendai and Aomori; Rangoon and Mandalay; and Ankara and Istanbul. There are no road links whatsoever to Budapest and Athens. Chelyabinsk certainly had a RR connection to the west. Two Canadian transcontinental RR’s seem to have disappeared.

My suggestion is that:
- roads be added where they actually existed
- either the road multiplier be at least doubled or a few major RR’s put on the map where they existed in ’40.
- if the Trans-Siberian RR would unbalance things, a few sections (river crossings?) could be left as roads in order to slow down the traffic.


c. Making mountains impassable is ok if they are restricted to areas where they truly were impassable to 1940’s armies. However, there are no impassable mountains in the eastern US. The name Appalachian Mountains is a misnomer, Appalachian Hills would be more accurate. What the map shows as impassable mountains south of the Great Lakes are actually rolling hills with pretty decent farmland, at least in the valleys.

India is a special case. The atlases that I have checked show only small areas of non-agricultural land in central and southern India, not the massive jungle/tropical rain forest shown on the game map. That part of the country does not get enough rain to have jungle. There were roads (and RR’s) throughout the area in 1940. The map of India is simply incorrect. Hyderabad and Madras were not isolated from the rest of the country by difficult terrain.

I would suggest changing all mountains in the eastern US to hills, changing the Indian jungle to grassland or plains and adding roads to the two isolated Indian cities.

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
Curt, could you please take a second look at these items? They have a huge impact on the game, particularly for the US.

a. Designating mountains as impassable terrain for engineers.
b. The absence of roads and RR’s in areas where they did exist in 1940.
c. The topography of some parts of the game map

a. Designating mountains as impassable makes it impossible to mine any resources on mountainous terrain or to build a road through mountains. I think that engineers should have the same impassable terrain override as some other ground units.


b. The US transport network is grossly misrepresented. The US had an excellent RR network in 1940's (230,000+ miles = 30% of the world's RR mileage), not the sparse system of roads with illogical gaps shown on the game map. The Northern and Central Pacific railroads have been eliminated so that there are no direct links between Helena and Spokane or between Salt Lake City and San Francisco. Pittsburgh has no link to the east coast. N-S routes are completely lacking in the central part of the country. There is no way that in 1940, it would have taken months to move an American unit from the east coast to the west coast. The same argument applies to the absence of the Trans-Siberian RR in the Soviet Union. Without that RR, the Soviets could not have have moved their Siberian divisions to the Moscow front by December 1941.

There are similar examples elsewhere on the map. There is no road between Germany and Italy; the two Swedish cities; the Spanish cities; Kuala Lumpur and Singapore; Sendai and Aomori; Rangoon and Mandalay; and Ankara and Istanbul. There are no road links whatsoever to Budapest and Athens. Chelyabinsk certainly had a RR connection to the west. Two Canadian transcontinental RR’s seem to have disappeared.

My suggestion is that:
- roads be added where they actually existed
- either the road multiplier be at least doubled or a few major RR’s put on the map where they existed in ’40.
- if the Trans-Siberian RR would unbalance things, a few sections (river crossings?) could be left as roads in order to slow down the traffic.


c. Making mountains impassable is ok if they are restricted to areas where they truly were impassable to 1940’s armies. However, there are no impassable mountains in the eastern US. The name Appalachian Mountains is a misnomer, Appalachian Hills would be more accurate. What the map shows as impassable mountains south of the Great Lakes are actually rolling hills with pretty decent farmland, at least in the valleys.

India is a special case. The atlases that I have checked show only small areas of non-agricultural land in central and southern India, not the massive jungle/tropical rain forest shown on the game map. That part of the country does not get enough rain to have jungle. There were roads (and RR’s) throughout the area in 1940. The map of India is simply incorrect. Hyderabad and Madras were not isolated from the rest of the country by difficult terrain.

I would suggest changing all mountains in the eastern US to hills, changing the Indian jungle to grassland or plains and adding roads to the two isolated Indian cities.

I will definitely give the RR networks another look and
make sure all the cities mentioned have a good link.

I don't have many maps of 1940's tranport networks
kicking around and I have to make do with what the CIV2
engine can represent. But there are some real flaws in the
map features that can be fixed...