The Desert War - Preview and development thread

[Eivind IV]

Originally posted by techumseh
I'm sorry to hear that. Which side is supposed to be played?

Basically, every German unit gets a move order every turn and a reminder anytime any unit from any civ gets killed. All it takes is 2 events. As Nemo said in his tip, the secret is to keep the units moving by giving them repeated commands.

If you'd like someone to have a fresh look at your work and provide some suggestions, I'd be pleased to do it.

That's very kind of you, Tech! Please do, and the same goes to everyone else. Mind that it's in in the very early phases and is far from a functional scenario.

Right now the only playable side is the Axis. That is unless you play multiplayer of course, which I doubt is even topical for anyone.

I suspect the map is too wide for the AI to comprehend it needs to move units to the front instead of taking sunday trips up the nile delta. Yestereve I tried to implement the same technique as is used for the Qattara Depression for the road from Cairo to Alexandria. It only had limited success, but works far better than without. My main problem right now is event space. To maintain a fair flow of unit supplies I need to use the events extensivly. If I had more space I could have more goto events. As it is right now you need to load up the second part of the events after the fifht turn. There are a total of 3 event files.

Maybe if I moved the latter part of the events in the first file to the second one, and moved the rest accordingly into a fourth events file, it might work in the end.

Anyway, here's what I got at this point.

EDIT: Attachment deleted!

[techumseh]

Sorry, Eivind. It crashes my MGE program. The saves will load, but crash when you start moving, the scn. file won't even load.

[Eivind IV]

That's weird. Sounds like a weird error as well. Crashes when you start moving? Works perfectly with my MGE...Any ideas what might cause it? Anyone else experiencing the same?

[techumseh]

I wonder if either one of us is missing a patch of some kind?

[techumseh]

I've had a look at your events file and I think I see why the moveunit command isn't working. You have the rectangle (maprect) in which the units are moved as just a single square:

@IF
TURNINTERVAL
interval=1
@THEN
MOVEUNIT
unit=AnyUnit
owner=Eighth Army
maprect
164,38,164,38,164,38,164,38
moveto
135,31
numbertomove=all
@ENDIF

The maprect should be as big as possible so that a unit stays inside it until just before it reaches it's destination. That way the unit keeps getting reminders in case it "forgets" for some reason and so wandering units get picked up again by the command.

Try this:

@IF
TURNINTERVAL
interval=1
@THEN
MOVEUNIT
unit=AnyUnit
owner=Eighth Army
maprect
136,30,164,30,164,62,136,62
moveto
135,31
numbertomove=all
@ENDIF

This would move every British unit between Alexandria and the column of squares next to your destination (135,31). The maprect runs from the sea to the bottom of the map. In this particular case you might have problems with units moving south of the Quattara Depression and getting trapped, so you might have to adjust. But that's the idea.

I think you can overlap maprects if the event has the same destination.

Let me know if this works.

[Bostero]

Looks like Eivind is having the same problem that i have when i try to implement this feature.
I copied and pasted your example into the events.txt file of this scen, and it is not working yet. i changed the "city turn" for others triggers like city captured or unit killed,etc, nones.
I assume that the command "Move Unit" isnt working for some people for any reason.
Hope that Eivind let us know if Techumesh example worked on his project.

Good Luck.

[Eivind IV]

You know what? This might actually work! Thanks Tech! I think I've understood how to actually use the goto events. I get it now though

The AI still behave strangly, but by far better than before! Will keep you posted!

[Eivind IV]

Any ideas for wonders?

[Eivind IV]

The Desert War, Beta version 1.0

Forget it, I improvised...Anyway...


...Playtesters needed!

After hundreds of agonizing hours on the drawing board for this darned scenario I'm ready to present somewhat of a beta version

What I need now is committed playtesters to help me out locate bugs and suggest alternative methods to handle familiar AI problems. Right now the AI operates more smoothly than before, but of course things could be better. I'd like reports on how the war progress goes and how stiff the AI resitance is. If they are unable to stop the human offensive then I will have to make imporvisations for the game play. Right now everything is just based on historical order of battles, as is the event reinforcements that will come.

I have not done much text file work, so just ignore that. Right now there are no text events either. Everything is filled up with unitkilled events and other unit creating events. Nor have I worked on icons etc. I'll work on these fine tunings as soon as the game play is in order. I also have a couple of free unit slots still, and I havn't yet decided whether to have an actual Rommel and Monty unit, so suggestions of any kind are welcomed with open arms at this point.

It's not a time consuming scenario as many of my other scenarios are, so jump on the playtesting boat everyone!

All you opertunists: grab this chance to be mentioned in the credits

[Eivind IV]

I didn't make this scenario for my self...some help, please?

[techumseh]

Well, I gave it a quick run through up to the first bat file change, which is all I can do for now. Initial comments:

1. great map! detailed enough, you get the feel of how the geography shaped the campaign.

2. looks good. nice units with good variety. terrain is pretty, perhaps too pretty. The desert is brown and ugly, not bright yellow.

3. good feel. I like the feeling of manouverability of the Axis army. relative unit strengths seem ok, I wonder at the high defense strength of artillery.

4. better unit differentiation would help. Where's the German artillery? 88s were AA and AT guns - defensive, not seige weapons. All armies had seperate AT guns and offensive artillery. AA batteries could also be included. I wonder why did you left out the recon units?

5. most city improvements should be eliminated. What's the point of building "industrial agriculture" in a place like Beda Fomm? I suggest replacing 90% of the towns with airfields and reducing the size of the few larger towns such as Bengazi substantially. Give the British the Great Wall wonder so the AI always has city walls - this is so towns don't get wiped out.

6. I have to say this - sorry. I find the multiple events files frustrating. they would be absolutely unnecessary if you used Test of Time. So would the pollution covered ocean terrain. Lots of new design options would open up as well.

[curtsibling]

Hmmm...Imagine that awesome bitmap desert terrain....

The Panzers and Brit armour all in lovely sand-coated bitmap glory...

The near-endless 100kb events file eliminating the need for multi-files...

It is not so hard to convert this baby to ToT format and make it a real winner.

[Boco]

Originally posted by techumseh
Well, I gave it a quick run through up to the first bat file change, which is all I can do for now. Initial comments:

5. most city improvements should be eliminated. What's the point of building "industrial agriculture" in a place like Beda Fomm? I suggest replacing 90% of the towns with airfields and reducing the size of the few larger towns such as Bengazi substantially. Give the British the Great Wall wonder so the AI always has city walls - this is so towns don't get wiped out.

Sometimes you can simply make improvements not economically viable for the tiny burgs. If the maintenance cost exceeds the benefit of a Marketplace in Beda Fomm, then a smart player won't build it.

GW is a good idea. Might want to use CivCity to make sure British cities are founded by Germans. That way size 1 cities won't be razed when the player conquers them.

Tech, after seeing the scen, do you think the AI still play reasonably if the city density is cut by 90%?

[techumseh]

Boco, I honestly hadn't considered that. I assume all Brit units are event created, rather than built in cities. Do you think it could change the way the AI uses the Brit units?

[Eivind IV]

Originally posted by techumseh
Well, I gave it a quick run through up to the first bat file change, which is all I can do for now. Initial comments:

Thanks for taking the time!

As you didn't play through the second and third events you probably didn't meet much allied units on your way. They start their march from Cairo with the units stationed from the beginning of the scen and you should enconuter them around Sidi Barini, which would be somewhere in the second event.

What I need the most is game play reports. AGIROCOLA? Around? You're always good at these kinds of playtest!

Originally posted by techumseh
1. great map! detailed enough, you get the feel of how the geography shaped the campaign.

Grazie!

Originally posted by techumseh
2. looks good. nice units with good variety. terrain is pretty, perhaps too pretty. The desert is brown and ugly, not bright yellow.

It was just to give the impression it's a hot sandy hell.

Originally posted by techumseh
3. good feel. I like the feeling of manouverability of the Axis army. relative unit strengths seem ok, I wonder at the high defense strength of artillery.

Not all artillery has high defense. I realise the German artillery has a bit too high def. I'll reduce the defense on German artillery and the attack on the 88.

Originally posted by techumseh
4. better unit differentiation would help. Where's the German artillery? 88s were AA and AT guns - defensive, not seige weapons. All armies had seperate AT guns and offensive artillery. AA batteries could also be included. I wonder why did you left out the recon units?

I gave the Germans a generic 75mm field gun. Teh 88 has higher def than attack, but as I said above, I'll reduce it's attack a bit.

I left out recons simply because they took up too much event space when to be created for every regiment. And besides, it's role in civ2 doesn't play that big a role.

Originally posted by techumseh
5. most city improvements should be eliminated. What's the point of building "industrial agriculture" in a place like Beda Fomm? I suggest replacing 90% of the towns with airfields and reducing the size of the few larger towns such as Bengazi substantially. Give the British the Great Wall wonder so the AI always has city walls - this is so towns don't get wiped out.

Good ideas.

Originally posted by techumseh
6. I have to say this - sorry. I find the multiple events files frustrating. they would be absolutely unnecessary if you used Test of Time. So would the pollution covered ocean terrain. Lots of new design options would open up as well.

Hmm, I don't understand what the problem is. You save the game, load new events, reload load the turn and play on again.

I know TOT has that impassable terrain feature, but if I were to convert this to TOT, wouldn't this mean I would have to have a single impassable terrain anyway? i.e. I would have to give up one of the terrains I already use?

Originally posted by Boco
Sometimes you can simply make improvements not economically viable for the tiny burgs. If the maintenance cost exceeds the benefit of a Marketplace in Beda Fomm, then a smart player won't build it.

Sorry, but what does "burgs" mean?

Originally posted by Boco
GW is a good idea. Might want to use CivCity to make sure British cities are founded by Germans. That way size 1 cities won't be razed when the player conquers them.

Great idea!

Originally posted by curtsibling
Hmmm...Imagine that awesome bitmap desert terrain....

The Panzers and Brit armour all in lovely sand-coated bitmap glory...

The near-endless 100kb events file eliminating the need for multi-files...

It is not so hard to convert this baby to ToT format and make it a real winner.

I hear you on the events. 100kb sounds like heaven. Maybe after I get the game play in order for MGE, I can go crazy with TOT