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[kobayashi]

Originally posted by Kugelregen
Are the Japanese supposed to not be able to build any infantry units at the start of the game???

All infantry units are free and arrival regularly at Tokyo/Kobe and they can never be built. This is to stop you from rush building garrisons as manpower is supposed to be one of your limitations.

[kobayashi]

Glad to see you putting DST through its paces, looking for alternative strategies. Yep its a bummer when you try not to not constrain the AI. In my test games, either the British or Europeans end up controlling bangkok within the first year. I never went near there until sometime in 1939 when war starts in Europe the game tells you its ok to go takeover IndoChina. Getting hit by the embargo in 37 is a long lingering death.

I suppose in my defense all I can say I can't vouch for the AI if you don't behave according to the historical timeline. As is the case in history, the onus is on the player not to provoke the Whiteman powers until you are ready for all-out war. You are warned at the beginning of the game. My aim is to avoid physical constraints like impassable terrain and stuff and just let the consequences be the primary constraints. As for the White powers, they are just one big happy family who like to gang up on the Japs but enjoy seeing the Yellowmen bash each other in China.

(as a matter of interest, the French always wanted to add Thailand to their Indochina possessions and in fact the first naval pacific battle involved French and Saimese ships)

You can safely take Ulithi but I think the U.S. would get pretty upset if you go for Munda. Its all a matter of proximity. Even leaving you ships near their cities makes them sneak attack eventually.

Engineering the entire system via consequences is not as easy as you think. In the first beta, Eivind went and conquered the US right off the bat and disincentives had to be integrated to discourage that.

The settler is meant for you to put out fires (pollution) when POWs breakout (meltdown). Any other use you get out of them is pure bonus.

[kobayashi]

and while we are on the topic of sneak attacks, let me bring to light some of the goings on with regards to planned improvements.

sneak attacks have always been a nasty consequence of giving the AI free will. In fact the listening posts were incorporated to distract the americans until the time was right. Even so, they have not solved the problem completely.

The original plan was to leave a no-research gap for the U.S. prior to Pearl Harbor as a disincentive to attack early. i.e. when war breaks out, the U.S. will get the prerequisite for a new branch of techs but if the Jap attacks early, the U.S. can skip the 7 to 9 future techs it would otherwise research, putting the Jap at a disadvantage.

The concensus at Civfan now is that the AI is very likely to sneak attack when it has only future tech to research. So to fix this problem

1. a few level 2 (i.e. just above future tech but less desirable than all other techs) will be spliced into the pre-war Allied tree. These will be ignored once the new tech branch is intorduced.

2. Some non unit tech will be shifted from post hostilities to pre-hostilities.

3. The cost of Commander in Chief will be doubled to increase the period at the start when waste is unusually high for the Allies.

[AGRICOLA]

Thanks for the explanation. Don't worry about my whining. I like exploring the the nooks, crannies and idiosyncracies of a scen. Inevitably, I stick my units where wise men shouldn't tread and something unexpected/unpleasant happens. Occasionally it is interesting enough to report, especially tongue in cheek.

I have a fair appreciation of the difficulty of dealing with with unexpected actions by both the AI and players. This time I got an indication that the AI may have have a "sneak attack" flag of some kind and when that flag goes up nothing can prevent such an attack.

One of the workarounds that I tried was to complete the Japanese moves in April and then use the cheat mode to move all Japanese ships back to the Formosa area, giving up on the idea of taking Bangkok but also avoiding a sneak attack. No luck there. In May, when there were no Japanese units within a zillion miles of the nearest European base, a European ship attacked a Japanese one just off Formosa. That's when I gave up on the idea of a workaround and retreated to the Jan '37 save.

[kobayashi]

say, if I gave the U.S. a 1000 gold to start off with, what effect do you think that would have - other than making it much more expensive to bribe them to attack the Europeans.

p.s. I tested the idea of capturing Munda and that lead to a sneak attack by the U.S. almost immediately.

[AGRICOLA]

DST UPDATE

1. Taking Ulithi is a no-no. After the Japanese took it, the US attacked a few turns later with, of all things, a Yorktown class carrier that had been cruising between Japan and Okinawa. I backtracked a few turns and destroyed the city.

2. Abandoning the attempt to capture Munda had its bright side when it led to my discovery that Japanese ships have some unexpected features. Eventually the US destroyed the city by attacking it from land squares. That event caused considerable joy in Tokyo.

3. In this scen it really pays to carefully check everything each turn. I was delighted to discover that a state of war with China had suddenly come into existence during Japan's Dec '37 turn without any international uproar, sanctions or Chinese sneak attack (I did eventually figure out how and why).

The immediate massive Japanese attack (Japanese units were in position because I was following your instructions to crowd Chinese cities in order to provoke a sneak attack) ended in March '38 with the destruction of the Chinese civ. I believe that this negated the popup about the Burma Road .

However, after Nanning was captured in Feb '38, the Europeans sneak attacked it in April. I was concerned about this possibility but have no idea of how much of China a player can capture before triggering a European response.

4. This really p****d me off because Type 97's were already staging a fun x-country race towards the 3 westernmost Unaligned (Soviet) cities; amphib forces were being organized for sightseeing cruises to Magadan and Vladivostok; and hastily repaired ground and air units were starting to move towards Yenan, Sinching and Harbin to get away from the hot summer weather in southern China in favour of the much cooler Siberian climate and world famous Russian vodka.

Japan has a powerful military and, judging from the tech tree, no useful employment for it until Sept '39. Getting rid of the Soviets will remove concern of a backstab, add production and provide support for more units. The remaining Unaligned cities in North America are landlocked and pose no threat. Is this historical? No, but it is the correct strategic move within the confines of this scenario.



A. The European sneak attack has me in a Catch 22 situation. As long as I don't kill their Inf units either by attacking or defending, there is no Oil Embargo. As you said, getting embargoed in '38 means a slow death to Japan and an effective end to the scen.

If I want to keep playing, the only choice I seem to have is to each turn use the cheat mode to destroy any European units that are in position to attack. I really don't want to backtrack, leave the Chinese civ in existence and have to continually deal with the Burma Road and any other Allied help.

Alternately, I can destroy only any European Inf that could kill themselves by attacking and carry on a desultory undeclared war with them elsewhere, mainly at sea and in the air. Their cities must have Inf units in them so capturing them is out of the question. This seems to be the better option.

Do you have a better idea on how to handle this?

B. This is probably debatable but I have decided that the Warrior Culture (Sun Tzu) wonder is worth more than the improved units that Japan can build after discovering the New Fleet Carrier tech that cancels the wonder. Stopping all research will result in a steady monthly income of 150+ gold and allow a more rapid buildup of both military and industrial strength. I may yet regret doing this but vet units have always had the highest priority for me.

C. I have no definite answer for

say, if I gave the U.S. a 1000 gold to start off with, what effect do you think that would have - other than making it much more expensive to bribe them to attack the Europeans.

I think that the question may be academic bacause paying the US 200 gold almost emptied the Japanese treasury. With money so scarce in this scen, that is a price that I would not pay for very questionable and brief US help. Beyond making bribery impossible, I doubt if the extra cash would have much effect on the US war effort.

D. The above may sound like this scen is a bit of a lark. Far from it. It is extremely tough and requires major logistical and industrial planning. In Dec '37, when the balloon went up in China, there were no a/c left in the Pacific islands. Only a BB, two CA's and minimal other naval and ground units remained. Everything else was in China. Without ground, air and naval reinforcements from the islands the China operation would have been too risky.

It is a damnably difficult scen and, apparently, the worst is yet to come. Congratulations.

[kobayashi]

Based on your experience, I'm going to change the European unit trigger from infantry to flak for the Embargo. That should allow limited skirmishes but still discourage attacking Indochina.

On my end, I've been doing some more detailed research and I'm going to give the U.S. more free cruisers and light carriers (post 41) instead of transports based on what i've read about the Solomons and Guadalcanal campaigns from this website.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/map.htm

Actually there was a military effort to make a Mongolian puppet state just like Manchuria but this was turned back after very heavy attrition inflicted by the Russians. You'll see that the Mongolian capital is one of the objective cities.

If I was in your situation, I'd just do my best to wipe out the Europeans and live with the embargo using war bonds to prop up the economy.

It was my intention to mimic the problems of Japan's limited manpower and industrial capacity so its good to here your assessment about difficulties in this department.

[Broken_Erika]

alternate unit file if anyone is interested,

[kobayashi]

ha ha

I have found the holy grail of AI island warfare. Give transport the following

holds
submarine flag
attack role
attack factor of 1

This is the way to make them transport units to enemy locations for amphibious attacks. And if they should bump into one of your warships and attack, well any merchant ship coming across an enemy ship would be sunk immediately of course. The only minor hiccup is the torpedo sound - well your ships launched torpedoes to sink them then.

Agricola, you should edit the rules file to incorporate the last two items to give yourself a good second half game.

[Broken_Erika]

they didn't want to waste shells on the merchant ships,

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by kobayashi

I have found the holy grail of AI island warfare.

Holy s**t! No kidding? Wow!

Originally posted by kobayashi

Agricola, you should edit the rules file to incorporate the last two items to give yourself a good second half game.

I will certainly do that. It should make for an interesting time trying to stop enemy invasions. Hopefully, that is still 3-4 years in the future.


Meanwhile, the Soviet operation ended in August '38 with Urumchi razed and the rest of the Soviet cities in Asia captured. There may yet be a few of their infantry units wandering around in the boondocks. All Japanese BB's and most CA's are now vets, not to mention just about all Imperial Marines.

Holding Lhasa should be a blast unless the Brits get touchy about it. A garrison of 10 or so Type 97's as well as Zeros and Bettys should cause serious headaches for the defenders of northern India when Operation "Dump the Raj" gets going. Looking forward to that one.

I opted to delete 6 or so European units rather than lose ~1000 gold due to the effect of the Oil Embargo. I thought it fairer to let the AI suffer due to the sneak attack problem, not me. Admittedly, I may be a little biased on what is fair.

Research has been turned down from 2 turns per tech to 8 turns per tech. Sale of all Public Schools as well as Fortifications in interior cities netted around 1200 gold, a most welcome addition to the threadbare Japanese treasury.

Why is it that the British have been perfect gentlemen about the many Japanese units that have been operating near Hong Kong (only 1 request to remove a trespassing unit) while the Europeans, Soviets and Americans are much more belligerent? It was a Soviet sneak attack that initiated the brief Russo-Japanesse war.

Now that the Japanese hold Huge Population (United Nations), it will be interesting to see if that wonder will let them negotiate their way out of a losing war with the Americans. I'm sure that you have figured out that I've been trying to eliminate one enemy at a time. With the Chinese and Soviets disposed of, Indo China will be a minor operation and will be followed by an attempt to eliminate the British civ and to capture Australia. Subsequently, the islands should be relatively easy pickings. I have no idea what comes after that.

Could you please give the following some consideration. The capture of China gives the Japanese control over a huge potential work force. An enterprising occupation government would certainly raise and organize labor brigades to fix roads etc. Why not enable the building of Civil Defense units in Chinese cities? The single such unit that the Japanese have has been laboring mightily since the beginning and should soon enable Mukden to produce more than 60 shields per turn. A few more CD units would help a lot and not be too unrealistic. After all, the lazy sods work at the rate of settlers, not engineers.

BTW, I think that you have a lot of nerve charging 60 shields for an Army Brothel. Any self-respecting divisional commander would simply clear out the nearest hospital. There would be no equipment to buy and minimal personnel expenses. Beds and bedding are in place and blankets could be used for the odd curtain in the wards. There are times when the lads aren't all that fussy.

[kobayashi]

the only thing I can't figure out now is why the Japanese player can see the attacks of the Japanese(P) listening post.

[curtsibling]

There are a few Improvement name typoss in the rules that
need fixed, like 'Foundry' and 'Co-Prosperity-Sphere'...

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by kobayashi the only thing I can't figure out now is why the Japanese player can see the attacks of the Japanese(P) listening post.

Please don't worry about it. I rather like to see a US unit wiped out by the stout Japanese(P) defenders. I don't mind knowing that there is one less damnyankee B-17 to worry about in the future.

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by curtsibling
There are a few Improvement name typoss in the rules that
need fixed, like 'Foundry' and 'Co-Prosperity-Sphere'...

Noted. In fact Eivind pointed out the 'Foundry' mis-spelling during the beta and I forgot to fix it.


And a warning to all current players about a potential problem. Do not stack tanks outside the Japanese(P) city or its single defending flak unit will kill itself by attacking. This will be fixed in version 1.3