Problems simulating World War II

[techumseh]

Wow, that's a lot of sounds. The imp's are a great touch as well.

I thought I'd offer a campaign update: After clearing the Soviets up to the Urals, I set up a defensive line and diverted ground and air units to the Caucusus front. These fought their way across those mountains and took the British in the mideast from the north.

Our Afrika Korps had been stalled at Jerusalem, trying to defend what it had captured from the British who were greatly strenghtened by the newly developed Lancaster bomber. With the units from Russia capturing Mosul, British resistance in the mideast collapsed.

Our forces now moved in two directions - towards Teheran and down the Nile towards Khartoum in an effort to link up with the heroic Italians who had defied the odds to hang on to Ethiopia. Unfortunately , this division of forces resulted in slow progress in both axes of advance.

The campaign against the Allies in France has been especially tough. Each turn, in the three squares between Paris and the English Channel, multiple units, including air units, are created. All of France was "liberated" before I could stabilize the situation. (It didn't help that D-Day came over a year early - Attention Curt! )

To defeat the allies, I had to get control of the beaches. To do this I attacked each of the 3 beaches in turn. Since each had a large stack, with more coming each turn, it was tough to clear them. First I attacked the air units flying cover. Then I built 4 Bismarck battleships in London which had the ability to make multiple attacks on the beach. Combined with bomber attacks, after 2 or 3 turns, I was able to clear one beach. Then I dropped 2 para units on the beach and pillaged the "stackable" or fort terrain.

I repeated this for the other 2 beaches, and after that I could clear each beach square with a single air attack. Then with growing air superiority, I was able to control the beaches and prevent allied reinforcements. A sustained offensive has now recaptured Paris and the other French cities will inevitably fall as well.

The elimination of China and the fall of Moscow has transformed the eastern situation. Japan, with a huge airforce, has pushed into India and Siberia. This has forced me to rethink my defensive strategy in the Urals. I've been feeding mobile reinforcements to the eastern front and have resumed the offensive, trying to beat the Japanese to Irkutsk.

It's now June 1945, and I'm one VP short of a decisive victory. Since the only remaining objective cities are in the US or Japan, I think I'm going to have to settle for a marginal victory.

Despite a few flaws, it's a playable and fun scenario. The biggest area for improvement is the US civ. The Pacific conteroffensive needs events to make it happen. I don't know how much events space is still available, but this should be a priority or Japan in the hands of a human player will be unstoppable.

Also, the US Torch event went to Monrovia. Almost the entire US Atlantic fleet spent the entire game stuck in west Africa. That should be an easy fix, Curt.

Nice work!

[curtsibling]

I think the Torch event goes to Monrovia if the Axis still hold various cities in North Africa.

I am actually putting together Dictator IV, that will try to
address all previous issues, and create a new style of play.

It will have far more streamlined events too, with big WW2 attacks having more logical triggers.

This thread will be a massive help in the total overhaul I am planning...!

[Arthedain]

IIRC that US fleet problem was fixed in the latest version.

Looking forward to Dictator IV nontheless. Don't forget to rename the Commonwealth to neutrals (in the lates version you didn't use the commonwealth but there was a neutral civ with that name).

[curtsibling]

I am going for a new slant on the factions this time around...

Australia will be playable as a civ, and Canada, while non-playable, will spawn troops.

[techumseh]

IMHO, you've almost got this one nailed. A bit of fine tuning is what's needed.

I see you're short on events space. Some of the text only events (eg. "Hitler declares a blockade of the British Isles") are expendible. You might want to consider a second events file, something I never thought would be needed in ToT!

Here's a few suggestions for the next version:

If the Germans hold Britain, the US invasion should come either in Ireland/SW England or on the west coast of France.

Once a port is captured in France, the allied reinforcements should go there, rather than on the beach.

The Soviets need help. I suggest a winter counter-offensive in Dec '41 near Moscow and another in winter '42 near Stalingrad.

The US Pacific counter-offensive is a tough one. I know that moveunit events work well with naval units. If land units and transports are created together in a port, with a moveunit command, they will sail where you send them. Getting units to cross the "date line" will be tricky. Can you move the Hawaiian Islands so that there's a city on either side, close together? That might get some 'cross map edge' fighting going.

Or it might be simply a matter of starting the US counterattack around Guadalcanal, rather than Hawaii.

[Eivind IV]

1. May I ask why you would leave Canada and Australia independent from a larger Commonwealth civ (with a larger commonwealth civ I mean including Britain, and not a seperated one as you did in another Dictator version)? Imo having a large Commonwealth civ makes for better joint manouvers etc. Spawning AI Candian troops here and there, would the way I see it, be good for nothing. The AI will completley screw it up, and most likely manouvre them in another direction then you'd want them to (asuming your playing Britain). My preference would at least be a large allied commonwealth civ. It opens for more functional civs. Just a thought, but maybe a Free French and Vichy French civ could be instead? At least they won't stay in the way and be an obstacle to the world war going on, as I'm afraid Canada/Australia would. On the contrary it would give more flavour to the scenario and would be a better use of sorely needed civs than Canada/Australia.

Ignore my rambling if you have already tested this with success!

2. Another thought: Merge USA and Britain, and have another Colonial Theatre civ instead!

3. Another thing, it seems Britain needs help as well. I get the impression it falls very easy. At least by judging from other battle reports, and now this one. A simple create unit of some sort when another one is killed would heavily increase British defense. You could have a British isles only Home Guard unit, and whenever it is killed, a spitfire is created. Or something else along those lines.

4. Btw, how is it possible to redirect the US invasion of Europe to England if the Axis controls England?

[jim panse]

Mhm, Australia as a civ ... maybe it would be better to have an European Theatre of Operations civ consisting of the UK, the Mideast and the Eastern US and a Pacific Theatre of Operations civ, compromising the Western US, British India, ANZACs.

On the other hand, ignore my rambling

[Eivind IV]

That is an intriguing idea, Steph! Almost the same as my #2 thought, but yours seem more functional!

I think the AI would make use of this system better as well, if you kept the Pacific theatre at peace with Germany and only and war with Japan etc. Hencely your Pacific problems would be solved

[Eivind IV]

I'm quite exited about this idea, so I just made a quick edit of a Blitzkrieg world map to see how it could be divided. Something like this?

I hope you won't hang me if I use this idea for a possible update for Bk1942, Steph!

Ignore the state of the world map for the Dicator setting as this was just a quick and dirty edit of a 1942 map.

(The dark colours indicate allied countries, while the lights are colonies or occupied territory).

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by Boco
This is only half-thought out, but I'll spout off anyway. I'd try this on a separate 'economic' map that contains only relevant 'air', flak, and economic units.

Target cities on this map would be essential for supporting cities on the main map.

Like Eivind, I'd also use spies as bombers. They'd get a choice of improvements to attack. Have to prevent city-bribing. That's no problem if the bomber's human. If we're dealing with AI bombers...

Since spies must be ground units (right?), terrain would need to have one cost. On the economic map, just pretend everything is an air unit.

A while ago I tried to see how far the spy slot could be altered to make some kind of strategic bomber. I could see no way to create a unit that has both role 6 (diplomacy) and can fly.

However, it is possible to make a pseudo strategic bomber using the spy slot. By modifying the GAME file, it is possible to limit the available options to the following (all other buttons are completely inoperable):

MISSION: Photo recce (investigate city) or Bombing (sabotage an improvement).
TARGET: Specify target (usually suicidal) or let pilot select (maybe 50% chance of surviving and returning to base).

I think that it would work on an economic map that is all land.

Simulating operational range with a land spy could be tricky. One key is to make them very vulnerable on defence and high on the AI target list. They'd have to hit their target in one turn or get destroyed.

It may be neccessary to have a house rule that, if a bomber leaves its base, it must either attack or return to base before the end of the turn. If it attacks, a bomber/spy either
-- succeeds in its bombing/sabotage mission and automatically returns to the nearest city
-- succeeds but is captured (destroyed)
-- fails and is captured.

The posts can be found here

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=115641

Several of the cities, Seoul, Khabarovsk and Fushun, have strategic bombers in them for testing. Having strategic bombers (not flak) in a city may decrease the chances of of a successful enemy bombing attack just as spies can help prevent sabotage by enemy spies.

[Boco]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
4. Most of the time, the AI does not seem to know what to do with it. Only on a very few tests it has done a creditable job in destroying city improvements of a human controlled civ.

As you found in your tests, Agri, the whole scheme of using a economic land map is most likely viable for humans but not AI as the bombing force. Out of curiosity, though, was the AI government Communism?

I'd suggest the spy as the primary human (only) bombing plane. A Dips could serve as FlaK. A house rule may be necessary for range, but I'd first play with setting up a situation that has the AI discover and destroy any spies present on the map outside of human civ cities.

[Mercator]

[q=techumseh]2. How do you ensure that the right units are built and are used by the AI as intended?[/q]

May I be so bold as to suggest my own Orbis Terrae scenario?

Admittedly, the different civs don't have too many different units, but IMHO, I did a pretty good job making sure all of them are available for the AI. I can't remember if I thoroughly tested to what extent the AI actually uses those units but still...

Another interesting thing, in my "beta" version of it, the AI Vikings made massive use of their longboats. They would constantly attack the Roman coastline. Unfortunately, I lost that in the "release" version. I never really tried figuring out what did it, though.

[kobayashi]

Anyone mention para-able or domain 3 spies to overcome the flight/diplomacy conflict?

I'm sure about the para-spies cause I've used them before. Its possible for para units to launch from an airfield and the parajumping limit (I believe the lower end is six squares) would do away with the need for a house rule.

I don't recall if a domain 3 unit can work as a spy.

My own idea at one point was to somehow combine pillaging with aircraft to simulate strategic bombing but even a domain 3 unit is not able to pillage making the scheme almost impossible. Unfortunately a unit that has parajumped is not allowed to pillage in the same turn so the jumping unit had to be a transport which then ferried another land unit (the bomb) to do the pillaging. Entirely cumbersome and then there was the problem of getting back to base.

[techumseh]

@Kobi: On another subject, how satisfied have you been with your use of powerful surace units for AI controlled carriers in your latest Pacific scenario?

@Merc: Did you use any particular formula with Orbis? Alternatively, can we use it to find the formula?

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by techumseh
@Kobi: On another subject, how satisfied have you been with your use of powerful surace units for AI controlled carriers in your latest Pacific scenario?

In a nut shell, the AI carriers in DST are AI surface combatants with beefed up attack and poor defense and a dive-bombing sound. Other attributes are x2 defending vs planes and ability to attack planes. They can kill a battleship for sure when attacking and will sink when attacked by even a cruiser but can kill several bomber squadrons before sinking.

I'm pretty satisfied with the way the AI uses them, but this scheme will only work well when there are many AI carriers, preferably CVLs rather than CVs and lots of open sea.

One more thing is you must give them a high attack factor leaves them prety much undamaged after an attack and enough movement allowance to move away after battle.