Empire of the Rising Sun v1.1 Ready for Playtest

[AGRICOLA]

There may be other problems with the latest downloads.

For example, in 2EVENTS there is the following event:

@IF
TURN
turn=25
@THEN
TEXT
^At the end of this turn, save a game as SR.sav, retire, check your
^victory status, then activate the Sunrise.bat, and select option 3
^if you have won, when you retire, a Japanese stalemate or any level
^of defeat, or select option 4 if you have won, when you reitire, a
^Japanese marginal or decisive victory, then reload the SR.sav file
^and begin the next turn.
ENDTEXT
JUSTONCE
@ENDIF

I don't know what 'option 4' refers to because there are no 4EVENTS or 4RULES files. Or, is this taken care of in the missing CHOICE file?

Also, there is no need to retire to determine the level of Japanese success. Just use the WORLD/CIVILIZATION SCORE pulldown.

[Patine]

First, I've attached the 'Delevent' and 'Choice' files for those that don't have them. As for 4Events and 6Events, if you read the opening post of this thread, that fork of events is not yet ready for playtest, as I recently scrapped my idea for it. Please, just playtest the 3Events-5Events fork, if you could. Sorry for any inconvenience.

[AGRICOLA]

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Originally posted by Patine
I must admit I'm a little concerned. There were a lot of downloads of this version, but in almost three weeks, no playtest results. Has anyone actually begun playtesting this version of the scen? If someone has, or soon plans to, PLEASE post here.

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
Possibly you may have yourself to blame for this one. I just downloaded the 4 latest downloads, tried to play EOTRS and got vanilla TOT unit names and other garbage.

When posting files for downloading it might be prudent to actually download the files yourself to see if everything works properly. Two critical files seem to be missing in the latest downloads: DELEVENT and CHOICE

On Jan 23, there was the following exchange of e-mails

Hi,
I’m having a problem with the latest EOTR and I have no idea whether the problem lies in the .scn file or my computer. The Civilopedia/Military units pulldown does not show all the units listed in the units section of rules, including many naval units specific to Japan as well as landing craft, USS Arizona etc.. If I replace the latest .scn file with the previous .scn file, everything is OK.

Can you please check this out for me because, otherwise, I cannot proceed with the scen.

Cheers,

John,

John,
This .scn file, the one currently on my PC, works fine. Try it. The other one may have been corrupted somehow. If that doesn't work, then it may well be your computer. E-mail me back, or post on the thread, or PM me (any of those) with the results.

Patine.

The .scn file you sent didn’t work any better. You obviously didn’t pay any attention to my suggestion that “When posting files for downloading it might be prudent to actually download the files yourself to see if everything works properly.”

After 4 days of trying to sort things out, I finally discovered out that your download was missing not only DELEVENT and CHOICE but also a DESCRIBE file. Believe me, TOT scens don’t work without it.

Good luck with the rest of the scen.

[Patine]

Ah! The describe file. I thought something was wrong. I just forgot that little technicality. Please don't jump ship on me. I'll post a full, working, and complete .zip file today. Promise!

[Patine]

As promised, here's the FULL version, downloaded and tested. What caused confusion previously is that I unzipped, without even thinking, the files into my original folder, where the missing files were. This time I made a separate folder to test them. Please give this a try. I know I've disappointed, but this should clear it up. Please do NOT playtest the events fork of 3Events.txt and 5Events.txt, but feel free to read those text files and give suggestions. The link to the scen files is here:

http://evo-games.net/Home/viewtopic.php?p=31802#31802

It's the second last post by myself, not the first.

Thanks!

[Patine]

My mistake; it's the 4Events and 6Events fork you shouldn't playtest; I intend the 3Events-5Events one to be tested. Sorry, typo!

[Patine]

I made a mistake, here! I included all files actually NEEDED to play, but in my haste forgot an important file nonetheless. Here is the title.gif file for the title screen. Truly sorry, especially to Chris, who made it. An absent-minded mistake on my part. So, before Chris arranges a mafia hit on me, here it is.

[Patine]

@AGRICOLA: Don't mean to nag, but how's the playtest coming along? I've almost got v1.2 ready, save for what to change from your input. Should I just release what I've changed, or wait?

[AGRICOLA]

Hang on for a few days if you can and think it worthwhile. I finished LOTR about an hour ago and will be starting EOTR immediately.

[Patine]

Right-O, Admiral AGRICOLA-sen! Awaiting your report!

[BillyBud]

Patine:

The forum EDIT function is your friend.

[Patine]

AGRICOLA, have you forgotten about me and my humble little scenario?

[AGRICOLA]

Not at all. It's just that it takes so long to play one turn: I'm able to do about 1 per day. Right now the game is at the start of the Nov '43 turn. The Japanese have a marginal victory with 78 objectives. They have conquered China, ChiCom cities in Asia, India, Australia (except Sydney) and all Pacific islands except the Aleutians. You may have preferred a marginal defeat but I really don't want to have to play the first 24 turns a third time to test 4Events and 6Events.

I'll complete carefully playing the second year of the scen and then do a run-through of the rest of the scen, with Japan playing a relatively passive role as if it didn't have the strength for further offensive actions.

From what I can tell from 3Events and 5Events, the spawned US forces are going to be incapable of successfully attacking Japanese held islands, all of which are garrisoned by a minimum of 3-5 fortified AA units, 1-2 Shindens and where city squares have been transformed to forest for a 50% defensive bonus.

I've seen how little effect the US forces spawned in New Guinea to recapture Hollandia and on Bougainville have on the Japanese. The Bougainville landing was a particular disaster as the Imperial Japanese forces already held all the surrounding islands. A couple of carrier-based Shindens destroyed the whole US force. If the New Guinea force had not already been eliminated before Hollandia was captured, there is no way that it could have recaptured Hollandia from the Japanese with the weak forces that were spawned.

After you make what changes you deem desirable in 1Events and 2Events, you may want to find someone else to playtest them. I have become so familiar with this part of the scen that my opinion on its difficulty may not be valid.

I'll get you a full report, including saved games, when I finish the scen.


The following is what I had written up so far.

A. GENERAL

1. I like what you have done with removing roads and almost all RR's over much of the map. It has somewhat slowed the unrealistically high speed of the Japanese advance.

2. The changes in the shield cost of Engineers and Freights are also appropriate and slow down both the Japanese attack and the Japanese economy. However, I'm wondering if freights should become an unbuildable unit for the Japanese. The lucrative trade routes with Sydney are still generating a lot of cash and flasks. Maybe, adding two or three spawned freights would be adequate.


3. Do you want to bring in a house rule that medium bombers cannot make carrier take offs or landings? I assume that it is OK to land on carriers the Bettys involved in the Pearl Harbor attack or do they have to land at Midway, after the US Marines have been eliminated?

4. Submarines didn't work a damn until I changed their role from 2 to 0 (attack) and gave them the "can attack a/c flag" in mid '43. With the new role, they no longer immediately run for the beach at Waikiki but mill around near where they are spawned. The "can attack a/c flag" negates players' tactic of stacking a/c with freighters or other ships so that subs are unable to attack them.

This forced me to do several things:
• end every turn with all freighters and aircraft in cities.
• found additional port cities in Burma, Malaya and Borneo.
• start anti-sub patrols using DD's to locate subs and Shindens to attack them.

Anti-submarine warfare became an interesting though time consuming part of the game.

5. Balikpapen is still misspelled.

6. The free Freight/Freighter house rules may have a loophole. What's to stop a player from disbanding the Freights in the Japanese home islands rather than delivering them. 50 shields may be worth more than ~200 gold.

7. In capturing Chungking, after Howies and a/c killed all enemy units in and around the city, 8 Kihei (Mv=4, road multiplier=6 plus x-country) from Shenchang (12 squares NE) and 6 Kihei from Wuhan (5 squares E) moved to block the spawning of Partisans when the city was taken. This seems more or less reasonble.

However, during the same turn, the defenders in and around Shunyuan (11 squares S of Chungking) were eliminated by Howies and aircraft. Then the 6 Wuhan Kihei had the range to move to Shunyuan, help block the spawning of Partisans and then move into the captured city. This seems a bit unrealistic. These units can actually move 24 mountain squares in one turn, even through the Himalayas. IMHO, that's a bit much. Maybe Kihei should be Mv=2?

8. In May '42 (Turn 6), 2 American landing craft were sunk east of Sapporo. One was carrying 4 fortified units that looked really funny as they bobbed around in the Pacific. How did you manage to get fortified units onto ships?

9. Can you decrease the size and darkness of the shadows under the AIF Forces and Brit and Canadian Inf to something like the Dutch KNIL or Engineers? They look less realistic than the other units.

10. The events files are less than half their maximum possible size so there is lots of space for additional events.



B. SLOWING THE JAPANESE ADVANCE

Despite the changes that you have made, the scen is still much too easy for the Japanese. I think that you may have to make a difficult choice as to whether to keep the Allied forces at historic levels and accept an unrealistically rapid Japanese expansion or slow the Japanese by increasing some Allied strength much faster than actually happened.

1. China remains too easy to capture. Consider adding an event to 1Events and possibly 2Events that randomly spawns maybe 20 Nationalist Chinese Garrison units in major cities every turn (not in small ones like Lhasa, Urumchi and Kashgar). This way, despite building roads and RR's, it will become increasingly difficult for the Japanese to capture cities as they penetrate more deeply into China. The last city remaining in Chinese hands will be adding 20 units per turn. This is the only way that I can see of modelling increasingly difficult logistics.

2. India is also a piece of cake for players who are both willing to build a lot of Engineers and experienced in pre-charging them. They can push a RR from Cheng-tu to Shillong in a few turns and conquer India on the next turn. It would help if you removed even more of the roads in India and changed city terrains to increase the defensive bonus. This will slow down the Japanese a bit but the only way to really make it more difficult is to get many more troops into the cities. Short of introducing impassable mountain terrain, I can't see any other way to model the logistical horror show that the Japanese actually encountered in their ill-conceived invasion.

An option may be to every turn have events randomly spawn 10 or so Garrison units in Indian cities. As in China, this would make the last few Indian cities extremely difficult to capture. You may have to rationalize that Churchill, a diehard imperialist if there ever was one, had to promise Indian independence at the end of the war in return for Indian help in resisiting Japanese aggression.

3. Conquest of Australia is too easy if the Japanese manage to land at Perth. Change the Perth - Adelaide RR to a road or, preferably, remove it entirely. Also, 5-10 Garrison units randomly spawned each turn in Aussie cities in1Events and 2Events would make conquest much more difficult. Need a rationale? If Japanese invasion appeared inevitable, would Australia and New Zealand:
A. Let their best troops remain in North Africa
B. Demand immediate return of the Australian and New Zealand units. If Churchill doesn't agree, order the units to stop fighting. Wouldn't that have been an interesting political situation in early '42?

4. By 1943, the 10 US cities in the Port Moresby - Rabaul - Funafuti - Pago Pago - Noumea area should be so heavily fortified and garrisoned that it would take a maximum effort by the Japanese to capture even one of them. The US would have had a full year to arrange the defences. I would suggest adding 3 events to turn 13 (2Events) to randomly put 40 vet US Marines, 40 vet Shermans, 20 vet AA in the 10 cities. The cities should have Barracks and Coastal Fortresses at the start. These improvements would have little effect in '42 because the garrisons are so small.

I'm suggesting that, by '43, if the Japanese are still on the offensive, they should have the same difficulties in capturing US cities as the US had in capturing/recapturing Japanese held islands.


C. UNITS

I think that your naming convention is unnecessarily convoluted for the 2 Chinese factions. "Neutral/Communist Chinese Neutral Garrison" is quite a mouthful. Why not make the following simplifying changes:

1. Remove "Nationalist", "Communist", "Neutral" and "Chinese" from all unit names. None of these names appear in EVENTS files so there are no extra complications.

2. This leaves the following uniquely Chinese and Neutral/Communist (Barbarian) names: Infantry, Cavalry, Garrison and Insurgents.

3. Interchange the slots for ChiCom Insurgents (Barbarians) and Nationalist Inf so that the Insurgents are in the Partisan slot. Right now, the Partisan slot is wasted on Nationalist Inf when these units are spawned after a city is captured. They have none of the flags usually associated with guerrillas. Spawning Nationalist Insurgents with guerrilla flags would make more sense.

4. Instead of spawning US Marines in China, spawn ChiCom (not Nationalist) Insurgents. Having US Marines in there seems a bit farfetched and they certainly don't do anything useful. Hopefully, the Insurgents would do some decent pillaging. Don't spawn them on the same squares as the US Liberators and Warhawks, spawn them in the mountains so they are much harder to locate and kill. With the alpine flag, they have lots of mobility.

5. Change spawning sites for the US Liberators and Warhawks so that they are NOT spawned on air bases or on poor defensive terrain. Some players pillage air bases as a standard procedure, because they both obstruct direct flights (%#*&/ accidental landings) and may be used by the enemy. I pillaged air bases on all Pacific islands and in China as soon as I could. I do this in all scens where there is any possibility of enemies using them. Of course, pillaging also removes stackability so that units spawned on air bases can be wiped out as a stack. Isn't that a dirty, rotten but highly useful tactic? My heart bleeds for the AI!

6. Spawning of US Liberators and Warhawks should stop if Delhi is captured. There should be no way for the Americans to get a/c to western China if India is captured by the Japanese.

7. Also, you might rename US Home Forces to the more accurate term National Guard.

8. I couldn't easily tell a Hayabusa from a Zero so I gave the Hayabusa a bright red spinner. Very pretty.

[Patine]

Thanks for the thorough review so far, AGRICOLA, as usual! I think a lot of this lore can be used in my v1.2 to make things a lot harder for the Japanese and to clean things up a bit. I'm also considering using a Monarchy gov't for Japan so they won't be as stable or rich, especially in occupied territories (of course in that case, I'd return the ability for them to build contentment improvements, which I took away in v1.1 to cut down on their riches). Please, keep up the good work!

[curtsibling]

I have added an item about the scenario on the SL News page!

http://www.apolyton.net/civgroups/news.php?s=&civgroupid=55