Playtesting "The River War v4 beta (for ToT)"

[Boco]

Okay, I finally started a new playtest, but didn't get very far. Probably because I spent a lot of time looking at the new unit stats. The new weaker CC stats are more suitable. Those old 5a4d seemed artificially high. Need to throw out the old tactic of using the CC as the high defensive units in the van.

I had two games: one with very bad luck (lost Tambuk, Tokar, and two gunboats against Akasha) and one with very good luck. Guess which one I continued. In both, I used Agri's ploy of selling markets to raise the cash to RB in both cities.

It might be useful to allow city walls to be built, but at great expense.

So, on the reload (with amazing good luck in the NE), I was able to capture Kerma in May 1896.

Like Agri, I'm also not wild about so much dependence on luck to achieve a decisive victory. If my luck is bad on turn 2, then as he said, I'll have to capture all of Darfur to win big. IIRC, it took the Brits a while in RL to get control there. Just going to Shirkela, Kordufan, involved huge risk. Looking at the scenario map, I suspect it requires a Rwy to capture Darfur. I'm a little doubtful that such a line has ever been built. Wingate only talks about plans to do so in his 1916 memoirs.

My guess is that you have no withdrawal mechanism in the scen. After Omdurman, most of the Brits left, leaving the Egyptians to mop up. The operations turned into shoestring affairs, with barely enough troops to attack Fedil or chase the Khalifa. Instead of marching across Kordofan and Darfur, it could be more fun to simulate the historical final stage: a race against time with weaker but veteran forces (and no Rwy Engs). Can the Egyptians capture the Blue and White Nile regions before time runs out?

Having a withdrawal mechanism would also have an additional benefit. If the Sirdar dies, you could simply remove Brits and leave the Egyptians on their own.

A simple mechanism could involve a few British cities to serve as homes for the units to be withdrawn. A more involved one, which would make Fairline and me drool, would have cities named after individual units. To withdraw a unit raze its home with a ChangeTerrain. The main requirement is to disallow rehoming.

This may be much too much work for little benefit. However, if Agricola's observations are on target, you might want to revise the end game and/or victory conditions a little.

[AGRICOLA]

I appear to be playing the second download of 59_RiverWarv4beta2.zip. It would simplify matters if successive download zips would have slightly different names.

I don't think that I can implement the subsequent update without restarting the scen. I got an error message when I replaced RULES and EVENTS with the updated versions. For consistency, I'll keep going with the second download.

Like Boco, I've taken a hard look at the A/D's of units in the update. Some of the changes are warranted, such as the greater firepower for artillery. Previously, they ran a high risk of being killed if they attacked cities.

However, I question the concept that CC (the icons suggest that they carried rifles) have D=1 when Dervish spearchuckers and shieldbeaters have D=2 or 3. The same comment may apply to cavalry if they carried rifles as well as lances (the icons suggest that they did carry bandoliers of ammo).

I sympathize with Boco's troubles in the Suakin. IIRC, this has been described as a bit of a sideshow to keep players entertained while they get their act together farther north. If Tokar is not razed by the Dervishes capturing it, then it cannot be recaptured by the British without razing it. Tambuk would also be razed when recaptured if its city walls are destroyed when the Dervishes take it. There is nothing that players can do except trust to luck that they won't lose 1 or 2 OBJECTIVE cities.

This sideshow is not really necessary because the British units are stuck in the 4 towns until a RR is built to provide an exit route. Alternately, Tokar and Tambuk could be removed from the OBJECTIVE list.

[Allard HS]

Whoa. That's a whole lot of new stuff I have to change. I can't handle all of the stuff yet. You guys sure know how to keep a man busy

First of all, again, thank you all very much for all the valuable advice. When I released the first thing, I thought it was pretty ok, now it seems there's so much still to improve....

1.
Anyway, first the artillery. As you have noted, I know absolutely ^&%#nothing about this. I have tried to use the information I had, but as you saw, it all keeps getting messed up. Anyway, I think I get the picture now, more or less, so here's the idea:

The different units active in the Sudan were:

5th Bombay Mountain Battery Indian ?no idea?
no 1 - 4 Field Battery Egyptian first: 6x krupp 65mm guns, later 6x maxim-nordenfeldt + machine guns
Egyptian Horse Battery Egyptian 6x krupp 65mm guns
32nd Field Battery RA British 2x 40-pounder guns + 3x 12-pdr QF or 12-pdr RBL
37th Field Battery RA British 6x 5" howitzers
(not assigned) British some normal maxim mg, some galloping maxims

Therefore the units in-game will be

Maxim .303 MG 1a 4d 2h 1f
Krupp 65mm 4a 1d 1h 3f
Maxim-Nordenfeldt 4a 1d 1h 4f
5" howitzer 6a 1d 1h 5f
40-pounder 6a 1d 1h 5f
12-pdr RBL 5a 1d 1h 4f
12-pdr QF 6a 1d 1h 4f

Does this mini-OOB seem reasonable? And what do you think of the stats?

2.
Boco's idea of using home cities for unit ordering is absolutely brilliant! And it is even better suitable for this scenario especially. Indeed the need to retire troops after Omdurman was an important thing not rightly represented as it was, while using this system, a whole battalion can simply be returned home. I need to experiment with this idea, especially with the advances. I was also thinking to assign them to "Nature" cities instead of British cities, not to disrupt gameplay, but that too I will have to experiment with.

3.
On the gameplay front, I think I might just give all cities zeribas, and most units override-city-walls flags. I shall also have a look at the NE front, maybe I was a bit excessively enthusiastic there.

So.. That's my short-run TDL for the moment. All other things will have to wait, because I should actually be busying myself with other things than playing games...

[Boco]

Originally posted by Allard HS
Whoa. That's a whole lot of new stuff I have to change. I can't handle all of the stuff yet. You guys sure know how to keep a man busy

The trick as you know, Allard, is to tell particularly obsessive playtesters to shut up (in polite terms). The main thing for the TDL is to tweak the victory conditions (via objective count or preventing objective razing) and unit stat balance.

Much of the rest is a lot of work for historical accuracy, the worth of which is really your call ( or ). The important aspect is the fun meter. You've already done an excellent job on history. I'm kinda eager to see how the French, Italians, and Ethiopians fit in v4.

The OOB cities as they are in El Aurens represent a lot of work. These cities are on map1 with one-way transport sites to map0. In your case, sites would lie under Wady Halfa, Abu Hamed, only you know where else. In EA, the cities remain under Allied control so that the player can see at a glance what units will become available. When the tech is discovered, events wake up units in a city by creating another civ's 0a1r air unit adjacent to it. At the same time, ChangeTerrains create a viable route between the city and the transport site. By telling you this, I'm hoping you come up with some more creative and/or easier ways to accomplish this. If it really seems daunting, but you still want to do it, then I could put my money where my mouth is and offer to do some of the grunt city-founding work then send it over for you to refine and integrate.

@Fairline: Did the 5th Bombay field 9pdr Screw Guns? Allard's arty OOB looks close to that in the Osprey book, except for the following: the 32nd appeared to have 2 x 40pdrs and 6 x 15pdr (possibly 12pdr 6cwt); the EA HA was initially equipped with 77.5mm Krupps (aka 7pdr's), which were lousy. No mention of a EA HA upgrade. At Atbara there was a battery(?) of 24pdr rockets, but these were more for show (and Beatty's resume).

@Agricola: I suppose you could rationalize that the 1d CC companies represented only 150 men. The infantry battalions represented over 900. How to portray the CC depends on the role you want them to play: recce, mtd inf (i.e. fast, reasonable defence), or shock troops (like cavalry). If they're recce, than squadron sized units are appropriate. I personally like the Mtd Inf role, and would like fewer more powerful units (e.g. double or quadruple squadron unit(s) ), but let me check out the new stats work on my current playtest.

When I released the first thing, I thought it was pretty ok, now it seems there's so much still to improve....

Of course it is! On the other hand, do you know of any playtester who won't try to overstuff your TDL? It looks like a great improvement over an excellent v1. No one's going to flame you for opting to keep the TDL to a reasonable length.

[Allard HS]

Boco, not that I mind... The main worry is really that I should be studying for my exam but just can't be bothered, so I put all my time in, as we say in dutch, study-evasive behaviour.

The way I have it now is as follows; it's perhaps easier than your way, but requires some hex-editing.

I created some 50 cities (I can still found plenty of cities, so that's ok), obviously all named VIIth Battalion, 32nd arty, etc. I made them all size 0, first by hex-editing, then I found out the simple cheat menu allows the same. This way, no unhappiness occurs, and no workers are set to produce anything.

This doesn't work yet, though. The real trick is that you must found the city on terrain with 0 food production (and 0 trade and 0 shields, but that's just flavour, not essential). That way, it cannot grow, or shrink. The only problem is that it still has 1 shield, even though terrain should produce nothing. I can't really explain that, must be some kind of a terrain bonus.

Of course, I was stupid, I founded the cities on the wrong terrain, so I had to hex-edit all the terrain under the cities to waterwells. Quite a stupid boring job, but I took advantage to hide them from the map by hex-editing, as with the trade-route cities, so that you cannot capture them, too.

You can also buy units in the city, which is the reason why I gave the cities to the AI. You can still bound units to cities of other civs (by hex-editing), strangely, as you probably know, and the AI won't disband them. Unfortunately, binding the Events.txt-created units don't seem to work with assigning them to AI-cities, so for all Events-given units I had to give the cities to the British. This, again, means that the player can buy units at odd places, which forces an ocean or anyway impassable barrier around the area to keep it clean.

One last problem, to which there seems to be no solution, is the re-homing of units, or the renaming of cities. I dislike house rules, but it's probably necessary to prevent a smart player to retain units in the Sudan that are bound for a triumphal return in London.

[fairline]

Originally posted by Boco
Much of the rest is a lot of work for historical accuracy, the worth of which is really your call ( or ). The important aspect is the fun meter. You've already done an excellent job on history.

@Fairline: Did the 5th Bombay field 9pdr Screw Guns? Allard's arty OOB looks close to that in the Osprey book, except for the following: the 32nd appeared to have 2 x 40pdrs and 6 x 15pdr (possibly 12pdr 6cwt); the EA HA was initially equipped with 77.5mm Krupps (aka 7pdr's), which were lousy. No mention of a EA HA upgrade. At Atbara there was a battery(?) of 24pdr rockets, but these were more for show (and Beatty's resume).

Sounds about right I think. Allard - you have 1 civ arty unit per battery, right? (I still can't keep ToT from overheating my PC, so I'm speculating here ) If so, here's what I propose -

32 Btty RA - 1 x 15-pdr. (or maybe use the 12-pdr QF icon, as it's long barrel marks it out as a toughie). Highest stats.

37 Btty RA - 1 x 5" howie. I'll make up an icon. Lower stats to 32 Btty.

The 4 Field Bttys EA - 4 x Maxim-Nordenfeldts. 3rd highest stats

HA Btty EA - Krupp icon. Lower stats but most mobile.

Bombay Fld Btty IA - 1 x screw gun. I've got a screw-gun icon somewhere . Lowest stats (?)

If this is what you already have, ignore me!

@Agricola: I suppose you could rationalize that the 1d CC companies represented only 150 men. The infantry battalions represented over 900. How to portray the CC depends on the role you want them to play: recce, mtd inf (i.e. fast, reasonable defence), or shock troops (like cavalry). If they're recce, than squadron sized units are appropriate. I personally like the Mtd Inf role, and would like fewer more powerful units (e.g. double or quadruple squadron unit(s) ), but let me check out the new stats work on my current playtest.

Mtd Inf gets my vote too (mobile, good def)

[AGRICOLA]

As Boco suggested, by all means tell me to dry up the the suggestion stream and go back to playing the scen like a good boy.

I agree with

Originally posted by Boco
I personally like the Mtd Inf role, and would like fewer more powerful units (e.g. double or quadruple squadron unit(s) . . . . .

Weak units are just cannon fodder. I don't know about the fewer, there are only 6 of them in the OOB.


If a player's actions (e.g. the capture of Omdurman) may have an undesirable consequence (e.g. British withdrawal), there is a strong likelihood that a player will neutralize the city (kill all defenders and keep on killing any that show up later) but not capture it. IIRC, that strategy was very successful in Market Garden where capture of certain German-held cities could blow up critical bridges needed by XXX Corps. A subtler, unavoidable trigger than the capture of Omdurman might be in order.

There is a possibly unwanted downside to no rehoming. In Sept '97, RR Engineers were IRB in Assuan and Wady Halfa. When they appeared in Oct '97, Wady Halfa could not supply enough food to support its unit. The Engineers were immediately rehomed to Semna, which had a food surplus, before boarding a very slow train to Atbara Camp. This would have been impossible without rehoming.

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by Boco

The trick as you know, Allard, is to tell particularly obsessive playtesters to shut up (in polite terms).

Those particularly obsessive playtesters are a completely priceless resource!

[Boco]

Silly question, but does ChangeTerrain destroy hexed nocity cities the same way that it does conventional cities?

Perhaps you've already anticipated it, but Agricola's dead on about sneaky players avoiding obvious triggers. Maybe the direct trigger for a withdrawal should be a flag, which can be triggered by a number of devious ways.

Study-evasive behavior! In Babelfish its "Studie-ontwijkend gedrag". What's the Dutch equivalent to "An die Arbeiten"? Consider it a plea. It's hard work keeping your TDL full! I need time to work on EA!

@Fairline. Why not break out the 32nd into a 40pdr and a 15pdr?

I've uploaded a an xls file that I use to test unit stats in EA and have adapted to RW. It calculates the odds of success for a given combat.

[Allard HS]

Still directing my attention at the homing aspect and the removal to England after Omdurman.... So, no time yet for the rest, until I get this done neatly.

Yes, and now you can see why I haven't actually finished a scenario in such a time, I can never stop, to see it as "finished" and releasing it for real...

Silly question, but does ChangeTerrain destroy hexed nocity cities the same way that it does conventional cities?

Hehe, I assumed it would, of course, but you're right, I shouldn't have assumed it cause it doesn't .
Well, then I'll just have to make them size 1 cities and starve them out by the same changeterrain trigger, it has the same effect but is slightly less neat.

There is a possibly unwanted downside to no rehoming. In Sept '97, RR Engineers were IRB in Assuan and Wady Halfa. When they appeared in Oct '97, Wady Halfa could not supply enough food to support its unit. The Engineers were immediately rehomed to Semna, which had a food surplus, before boarding a very slow train to Atbara Camp. This would have been impossible without rehoming.

Yes, but if I understand you correctly they were the ones you built yourself, not the ones from the events or given by technology.
Actually, I forgot all about it, that I allowed the player to build his own RR Engineers after a while. That's a stupid idea, actually, cause it removes the need for more RR technology, gives the player far too many of them, and doesn't allow the new "return to England"-trick. So I think I won't allow that anymore the next version.

If a player's actions (e.g. the capture of Omdurman) may have an undesirable consequence (e.g. British withdrawal), there is a strong likelihood that a player will neutralize the city (kill all defenders and keep on killing any that show up later) but not capture it.

Yes, yes, I think I'll use the form of a delayed trigger.

My first idea was that the cities would be given, say 10 food. When the army at Omdurman is created for the Dervishes, the cities will simultanuously be "changeterrained" to desert, thus starving them out. After precisely 10 turns, the cities will really starve and the units disbanded.

I don't yet understand ToT completely, though, and this might probably be done better with the help of events, which would allow a clearer pop-up box.

Well, I'll just continue puzzling on this, and we'll see what comes out.

[AGRICOLA]

I have serious doubts about the avisability of including a British withdrawal in the scen. Like the real war, wouldn't that make the scen end with a whimper rather than a triumphal victory? As a player, I don't see that as either a particularly fun or satisfying end to an otherwise excellent scen.

The time line is part of the problem. I'm guesstimating from my game (now on Turn 25) that Omdurman and Khartoum can be captured around Turn 30. Even with a somewhat delayed British withdrawal, it means that there would be no British units after ~Turn 35-40. The effect of this would be that any techs which create British units will not be researched.

I'm at the stage where I've researched

Rail Engineer 1-4
Egyptian Recruitment 1-2
Ship Building 1

and am working on Ship Building 2.

If there is going to be a withdrawal, I see little point in researching any of the 21st Lancers (1-2), British Troops (1-4) or Royal Artillery (1) techs. Why bother if the troops won't be around long enough to matter? After Ship Building 2, the only remaining tech worth reseaching would be Soudanese Irregulars (I'm assuming that RR Engineers will be withdrawn). After that, Tax=100% and start to RB units, especially in cities with Barracks.

This scen is already very heavily events driven. Players options are limited to fiddling with the Tax/Science ratio and building Soudanese Inf, Native Guides, RR Engineers or useless Naziriyahs. Contrary to your concern, there is little risk that players will build too many RR Engineers; at 300,000+ each to IRB they are extremely expensive; and, in most instances, no more than 4 can be usefully employed in building a RR. I've built 2 (for a total of 8) and may build 1 more.

RR Engineers provide what little "elbow room" there is in the scen for player ingenuity and initiative. Having completed the vital Berber - Handub RR, I'm now building what is probably a historically incorrect RR from just south of Atbara Camp to the fertile ground directly east of Omdurman. I'm debating whether or not to build a port city at that location (Kitchener Camp?).

IMO, a (historically correct?) RR west of the Nile would create a logistical bottleneck because the distance between Atbara Camp and Metemma is 7 squares and a Steamer has Mv=6. The 3 Steamers would take at least 9 turns to move an army of 25+ units to Metemma. There goes any idea of a decisive victory. Also, a RR from Metemma to Omdurman would have to fight its way through the hordes of hostiles who infest the west bank of the river, not an appealing prospect.

I'm suggesting that, at some point, historical accuracy be damned in favour of player fun. One of the most finely and cleverly crafted scenarios that I've played is Nemo's Second Front yet I gave up after playing for a while. It is so heavily events driven that it literally forces players to fight the Normandy invasion the same way that Montgomery did. Frankly, it became an incredibly boring $#@&* straitjacket for anyone whose instincts are more like Patton's.

As I said before, Riverwar is already to a great extent controlled by events. The main challange is to simultaneously fight the Dervishes and develop the long supply lines. The capture of cities along the Nile and its tributaries is pretty routine with gunboats wiping out defenders and steamers landing an invasion force. Having carefully husbanded my ground units for the inevitable, difficult land campaign, I don't particularly relish the thought of losing some of those units just when they are needed the most.

Shorten your TDL!!!
F*** the withdrawal!!!

[Allard HS]

Hmm, just when I was about to start creating effects for the withdrawal of the troops, suddenly this... What's more, I partly do agree with you, especially on the aspect of "alternative history".

One of the strong points in playing a scenario in civ2, is indeed the fact that it is a scenario; a starting situation from which to depart to test oneself to true history. After all, every historian's hobby is always to think of what-if situations.
Indeed, every event.txt in a scenario is necessarily not needed, because it should be left to the player's decisions. Only events that are happening outside of the reach of the player should be added as events in the game. All other events allowed should just be added flavour, like messages.

This has always been my philosophy when building scenarios, and these are the scenarios I like to play most. That's also the reason why I tend not to play ww2 scenarios, and why I like the crude, open "ancient" and "imperialism" scenarios. They are large-scaled and identifiable. The player usually feels he's doing better than the real great leaders, which of course is fun.

River War, however, is deliberately very different stuff. Because it focuses only such a small area, and the whole theatre is essentially just a side-role where many decisions are being forced upon from higher on, and extensive events.txt is much more necessary than in other scenarios.
Another great difference is the goal. The goal of this specific scenario is not to be better than good old kitchener: the best possible situation is to achieve the same result. How you do that, should be left to the player.

In these ways, I am being forced to accept certain limitations in design and playing. My aim, however, is and always has been to allow the player as much freedom as possible, within reasonable space. I allow the player to build three different railways from Wady Halfa to Wad Hamed, only one of which is historical, I allow the player to build a RR to Suakin, though the reasonability of that is a bit questionable, I allow a RR east or west from the Atbara, I allow the building of cities (though I discourage it).

Well, that was a bit a theoretical framework on which to base my argument, just to prove that I'm not as evil as I might seem.

I allow the player to do most things that he practically can do, as I said, and with that I shall admit to you , but I have two things I do not wish the player to do.

Firstly, I do not wish the player to build too much RR. Though a RR to Darfur should be possible, it should not be made too easy. More broadly, looking at the incredible technical problems faced when just building the "Desert Railway" to Abu Hamed, I feel that it's not realistic to paint the whole map black with RR's. Being unrealistic also takes away a part of the atmosphere, and the fun.
Therefore, I want to limit the amount of engineers to a handful.

Secondly, as I said before, because the scope is narrowed, the player cannot decide things happening outside the covered area. Leaving an excessive amount of troops in the Sudan wouldn't be a bad idea when handling only the Khalifa, but please do not forget the time period in which this scenario plays. Tensions between Britain and France, Germany, and other major powers were tense. Several minor wars were being fought out elsewhere meanwhile. And, while this scenario is still playing, the Boer War broke out in SAfrica, forcing the UK to enormous military constraints in other parts of her empire (an area which I have covered in my other almost-finished scenario, functioning the same way, the "Natal Field Force", ). All of this justifies the withdrawal of at least some of the British troops from the scene.

As I said, I do agree on this with you though, and therefore I would propose a compromise, being a true Dutchman.

What about removing just the Sirdar unit (cause he definately has to leave) and, say, half of the British infantry units and artillery. After Omdurman, they will be pretty useless anyway, cause you'll have far greater need for fast mobile units. Research is not useless afterwards; it will still result in good free units, just less than before.

Also, it's probably better to trigger this by date, not by event. In September 1899, turn 44, these units will be sent away. There are only 4 more turns anyway to play afterwards, so it's more for show than for gameplay.

Can you live with this compromise?

[AGRICOLA]

What about removing just the Sirdar unit (cause he definately has to leave) and, say, half of the British infantry units and artillery. After Omdurman, they will be pretty useless anyway, cause you'll have far greater need for fast mobile units. Research is not useless afterwards; it will still result in good free units, just less than before.

Also, it's probably better to trigger this by date, not by event. In September 1899, turn 44, these units will be sent away. There are only 4 more turns anyway to play afterwards, so it's more for show than for gameplay.

Can you live with this compromise?

Of course I can. You might even recall the units a bit earlier to be more historically correct.

Here's my evil thought for the day. I hope that it gladdens your day.

I understand that the units to be withdrawn will be homed to cities that will be destroyed through starvation. I would suggest that all such cities be named "NONE" rather than an assortment of names. This would prevent enterprising players from telling which British units are "doomed" and using them in a most depicable way.

If I knew that I had x doomed units, they would be sent out ASAP to explore unmapped territory, a rather dangerous task. I would not be in the least concerned that they might be killed because I'd lose them anyway. This way they might actually accomplish something useful before they disappeared.

[Boco]

Allard, your compromise sounds good to me. If you want to keep the Darfur cities in, you might want to have techs create more Raiders in Kordufan (if you haven't done that already). Or even allow their purchase at this point. IIRC post-Omdurman, some of the Kordufan tribes were fighting the Khalifa.

Yeah, Agricola's going-out-in-a-blaze-of-glory strategy was what made me switch from objective-based to points-based victory in EA. The latter scoring system allows you to subtract points for units lost in combat. That may fit the political climate of 1896-9 even more than 1915-1918.

You can tweak the point settings in @COSMIC

   5    ; Value of each citizen to the Civilization Score.  
 100    ; Value of each wonder to the Civilization Score.  
 -50    ; Cost to Civilization Score (+ or -) for each extant non-AI controlled polluted tile.   
  50    ; For each turn of peace after turn 199, this amount *3 is added to Civilization Score.  
  50    ; Value to the Civilization Score of each future tech researched.  
-100    ; Penalty assessed to Civilization Score each time player betrays another race.  
-100    ; Cost to Civilization Score (+ or -) for [U]each unit destroyed[/U] (0-100).

Note that you can reward researching Future Tech, which is a way of giving a bonus to the Dutch frugal player who tries to win without researching all the best techs. You can also stack obsolete WoW's in particularly valuable cities to increase their point value.

Btw, I have a strange idea of fun. I like the idea of racing up the Nile on boats with limited capacity to capture the last remaining holdouts in 1899. Forces you to make hard choices about what units to send. After the climactic battle near Omdurman, Kitchener's regatta seems more fun than laying yet more track.

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
IMO, a (historically correct?) RR west of the Nile would create a logistical bottleneck because the distance between Atbara Camp and Metemma is 7 squares and a Steamer has Mv=6. The 3 Steamers would take at least 9 turns to move an army of 25+ units to Metemma. There goes any idea of a decisive victory. Also, a RR from Metemma to Omdurman would have to fight its way through the hordes of hostiles who infest the west bank of the river, not an appealing prospect.

This is an important point both playing- and history-wise. In RL, the AE army fought at Adarama in 4/98. By 8/98, the bulk of the army was at Abu Hamed. By 9/98, they had marched from Abu Hamed to Omdurman. None of this is easily simulated in RW, but I thought the v1 solution of encouraging ahistorical Rwy building (a Metamma-Omdurman line) worked well in terms of playability. The player had to work a bit to cover your line of communication, but that was fun and strategically accurate. In v4, it looks like you're encouraging a Rwy in square 72,60. If you haven't already done so, you might consider giving the Allies a chance to research NP or capture/build Magellan so that the Atbara-Metemma shuttle is a single turn voyage.

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by Boco
In v4, it looks like you're encouraging a Rwy in square 72,60. If you haven't already done so, you might consider giving the Allies a chance to research NP or capture/build Magellan so that the Atbara-Metemma shuttle is a single turn voyage.

I looked at using 72,60 as a starting point for a RR to Wad Hamed and Omdurman. My decision to run the RR from 78,58 to 74,80 was based on the the fact that a steamer at Atbara Camp can transport 6 units across the river to the RR each turn and a single steamer at 74,80 can each turn move 6 units from the railhead into Omdurman. That is quicker than freighting from Atbara Camp to 72,60 or Metemma and then using the RR to Omdurman.

The British do get Magellan when they capture Omdurman. Unfortunately, that is a bit late to speed up the movement of units from Atbara Camp.

My game is now in June '98 (Turn 28). At a cost of 3 banged-up gunboats, Omdurman was captured and garrisoned this turn (slightly ahead of history) and Khartoum will be attacked in July. A RR from 74,80 to Rufa'a will be completed in July. Six rush built Native Guides are systematically (no cheating on this; I want to know if the 4 hidden cities can be located legitimately) exploring unknown territory and have just located Gadaref.


My main concerns at this point are:

1. The new numbers for CC and Cav don't seem to be working very well. Their D=1 has made them dead meat if they happen to end their turn next to any enemy unit, even non-vet spearchuckers. Brit Scouts have D=2 and all Dervish Cav have D=2 or even 3. I can't seem to find a useful role for the Brit fast units.

2. I have serious doubts that the [time available] vs [distance to be covered] equation for this scen is realistic.

I don't think that the Darfur can be captured before the end of the scen without building a RR from Omdurman to El Fasher (sorry about that AHS). The distance from Omdurman to El Dueim is 8 squares and 34 squares from El Dueim to El Fasher. Even if the CC and Cav (Mv=2) were strong enough to be sent out on their own and departed Omdurman in July (Turn 29), they cannot reach El Fasher by Turn 48, the end of the scen.

The weak CC and Cav dictate that artillery and infantry (Mv=1) will have to be used in the Darfur and on any other landlocked cities. Without a RR, which can be built at the rate of 4 squares per turn, it is impossible for these units to reach El Fasher before the end of the scen.

3. I got an unexpected kick in the teeth this month. Research on Ship Building 2 was completed in May and a gunboat and steamer were spawned this month. However, instead of spawning in the Abu Hamed area or even farther south, where ground units are spawned, the ships appeared at Assuan. The ships cannot get to Khartoum before May '99, much too late to be of much use. Had I known that they would have to waste 11 months in transit, I would not have researched the tech.


Perhaps CC and Cav should have at least D=2 and some consideration given to extending the scen by at least 6 months.