NEW - WWII Europa Scenario released!

[McMonkey]

Just going off subject slightly here. I am making a Vietnam scenario and plan to have a few snaeky units such as Ambush and Landmines (both of which could feature in a WWII scn!) and am trying to work out the best way to use them. I have a few ideas but was wondering if these type of units have been made before and what were the pros and cons.
I may use the landmines as a cheep and relitively harmless harrasment unit but I would like to find a way of making the Ambush deadly!
If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it.

Agri.
The Turks did not do this when I played, the Soviets did attack Trabzon for ages and as there was no AA Battery the city looked threatened, somehow the Turks held on though.
Hows the Balkans campaign going?

[AGRICOLA]

I know of 2 designers who have used mines.

Eivind in his Norwegian Campaign and Captain Nemo in Red Front and Second Front.

IIRC, Eivind's are visible but hard to see and will sink any ship (and plane??).

In Red Front, Nemo has both visible ones (barriers) and one b***ard that is invisible but stationary (river mine). Either one easily kills a ship or plane.

In Second Front, Nemo again has visible mines to form barriers and a second, nasty, invisible type that can move a bit. The barrier ones are deadly; the 'movers' not quite so bad with their A/D=8/6. The latter can be safely blown up (killed) by a/c.

Of course, on mines, you don't want health bars to show. BTW, I put health bars back on your bunkers as I could see no reason why they should not have them.

In the game (Turn 21), the Allies have taken 3 Turkish cities and are casting a greedy eye on Ankara and planning how to raze Erzurum. There is great need for a city on Long Island to provide more airlift capacity to the U.S. for all the freights u/c in the Middle East.

Also, and I'm sure that you will love it, am working to set up convoy system so that a freight can go from NY to Rotterdam in one turn.

[Boco]

Originally posted by Werd100
Just going off subject slightly here. I am making a Vietnam scenario and plan to have a few snaeky units such as Ambush and Landmines (both of which could feature in a WWII scn!) and am trying to work out the best way to use them. I have a few ideas but was wondering if these type of units have been made before and what were the pros and cons.
I may use the landmines as a cheep and relitively harmless harrasment unit but I would like to find a way of making the Ambush deadly!

I've been using mines at sea in El Aurens much as you intend to use land mines. If you set their defenses at a level that is likely only to take off a fraction of the intended target's hp's, they serve two purposes: (1) they use up 1mf to attack, and (2) they may cause damage that both slows down and damages the target. I also use multiple copies per square. In EAv2, this creates a little tension. How many mines should you knock out before retiring to a haven safe from counterattack?

Air units will fight them as well. If you don't want that, perhaps you can couple land mines with AAA/SAM-sites (AEGIS flag) in the same square. If AAA/SAM-sites are invincible to air units, then the player will have to take out all the landmines before he can attack the remaining AAA/SAM-site(s) with a land unit.

In ToT, you can use both the "invisible until attack" and conventional submarine flag in concert, which has a number of benefits.

With Ambushes, perhaps you can use air missile units. The AI strongly prefers to use them against expensive units. In addition, I strongly suspect that any square that is within range of any AI city, regardless of whether that local city has a missile in it, is within range of all missiles in the AI's possession. The missile will certainly 'hop' over units to strike its target, even when completely surrounded.

While you're at it, you could make a nuisance paratrooper unit for the AI. Any time the AI encounters an empty city, it will prefer to capture it with a paratrooper. Perhaps this can represent a Vietcong cadre.

[tanelorn]

The map looks great, too.

[McMonkey]

Mines

Agri
I have used sea mines before in a Balkans campaign I tried to build. The mines were used for blocking the Dardanelles and protecting costal cities. One thing I considered was combining a sea and land mine into one static unit. I will deffinately need sea mines in my Vietnam scenario. As it happens I never considered them for the WWII game. I'm not sure how useful they would be.

The reason I hid the Bunker shields was purely to make them look nice. Also as the game is designed to be played as the allies I thought it would be good to conceal their strength a bit!

Trading with the enemy eh? Tsk Tsk Do you know of George Galloway the Respect MP? He got in trouble once for that kind of behaviour!

Boco
I suppose making landmines modestly affective will work best, they can be defeated but at the cost of some hitpoints and movement. I do not want whole units being wiped out by stepping on a mine!
Is it possible to give a land/sea mine unit the x2 vs Air ability? It seems unrealistic to me for planes to be able to clear mines! And as it happens I need to discourage planes from clearing sea mines in my Vietnam scenario, its quite vital actually!

I really like the idea of a roving (missile) Ambush! I will have to test this one out. It could be quite short range and on the AI turn 'ambush' US units that stray too close to VC bases. A text event would be quite cool to go along with this unit!

The idea of a VC unit with paradrop ability makes a lot of sense. It would add to the communists illusive nature! As I plan two versions of the Vietnam game, giving the VC wierd abilities should not cause a problem in the US version.

If it is possible, could any further points about mines be posted on the Vietnam development thread. Your input is very much appreciated but I am going to get very confused if I keep mixing them up! The link to that thread is:http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=161742
Also, I hope you dont mind me copying your last few replies into that thread for my own reference!?

Tanelorn
Thanks mate. I guess you were talking about the European map!? This is why I am getting confused! If you have any comments about the game please feel free to let me know. Agri has already given me some excellent feedback which I will use to polish up version 2! The more feedback I get the better!

Thanks Guys

[Cyrion]

Re: Mines

Originally posted by Werd100
Is it possible to give a land/sea mine unit the x2 vs Air ability?

Yes

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by Werd100
Trading with the enemy eh? Tsk Tsk Do you know of George Galloway the Respect MP? He got in trouble once for that kind of behaviour!

Did you get religion or something all of a sudden?

1. I clearly said in my analysis of the situation that:

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
- Rotterdam will be the "Trading City". One can't beat the enemy city plus ocean voyage bonuses. A freight (hides) from New York brings ~190 gold and 1 trade arrow if delivered to London and 450+ gold plus 4 trade arrows from Rotterdam. That's a pretty fair return on a 50 shield unit. Delivering 3 or 4 per turn gets the Allies a tech each turn.

2. You were forewarned:

Originally posted by Cyrion
Warning to Werd: don't consider what Agricola will do to your scen as the performance of the common civ player! He is known for being, sometimes, rather efficient...

Originally posted by fairline
In the same manner that a Cray supercomputer is 'efficient'

3. War makes for interesting menages a trois. British Mosquitoes made clandestine flights to Sweden to load up on ball bearings. The Swedes sold the same bearings to the Germans as well as supplied them with iron ore.

4. Never heard of George the MP. However, from the Wikipedia, I'd say that he's even more of a fruitfly than our Canadian socialists.

5. The end justifies the means. Thanks to Rotterdam, Ankara fell in May '42 and, in June '42, a total of 40+ mobile arty and heavy armor, plus the usual auxiliaries, will be paying a surprise visit to the Pas de Calais with every intention of making it a permanent stay.

[McMonkey]

Waaaaaaay off subject!

Amen brother! I have seen the light

1. Point taken! All this talk of mines makes me feel inclined to plop a few into the North Sea and Channel to discourage such shady business practices

2.

3. Good point. Like Switzerland and Turkey the Swedish played a ballancing act to remain neutral under extremely difficult circumstances. I have read that Swedens 'Armed Neutrality' policy made them too prickly a garget for the Axis to swallow up. I think this holds true in the game.

4. Fruitfly is the word alright. I know its off topic but its quite interesting. Our George is quite a charector, a great orator with questionable motivations. He got in trouble for seemingly praising Saddam Hussein and the UN sponsored food for oil scandal. He then took an anti war stance over Iraq and was evicted from the Labour party. Not a man to be beaten GG won a seat in parliament as an MP for the anti-war party respect. Somewhere around this time he was called before the US senate to face charges of wrongdoing over Oil Trading with Saddams regime. Somehow he managed to turn the hearing into an indictment on the war in Iraq. A red faced senate, realising it had been outwitted droped the charges (as far as I am aware).
Not one to stay in the shadows, George decided that instead of fulfilling his role as MP for Bethnal Green and Bow he would go on Celebrity Big Brother, a reality TV show where contestants are locked in a house and filmed 24/7. As you can imagine this did not go down well with his constituents, especially when he started prancing about in leotards and pretended to be a cat on his hands and knees while he lapped milk from a female contectants hands (see attached pic).

Who said politics was dull!


Oh, BTW, I am in no way suggesting that your trade route to Rotterdam is comprable to the above. I'm sure the rumours you are into lycra leotards are just malicious lies!

Back to planet Civ now!

5. It will be very interesting to see how D-Day 42 pans out. This was one of my main concerns when making the game and it will be good to see what the outcome is! Shame Turkey attacks so readily, it would be good to have them as an Ally. I think I made a crossing point from Anatolia to the Balkans!?

Keep it up mate

[AGRICOLA]

x 10

[curtsibling]

That man George Galloway is totally barmy...!

[McMonkey]

Barmy yet entertaining! Perhaps someone could make a George Galloway unit complete with red leotard

What was this thread about again?

[McMonkey]

Thread idea

Just testing the waters here. As a new visitor to Apolyton I have noticed there is no central place to download scenarios. What I had in mind was starting a thread where everyone could post links to their scenarios and I would update the first entry, in alphibetical order by author?, so that you could link to them easily without having to hunt through loads of old threads. Info required could be: Author name, scenario name, era and a link to the site where it lives. If people update the scenario they could add new link to the thread and I would update it (edit) the first entry.

I don't know if this has been done already, there is an easier way, there is a good reason why not or if anyone would find it useful? I know I would like to use something like that, especially when my new copy of ToT arrives!

What are your thoughts on this?

[McMonkey]

Turncoat

Just a last minute thought before I hit the hay.
My shiny new copy of ToT landed on the doormat today and I am not repulsed by it as I thought I may have been. Despite the s***y 3-d graphics (now banished!) and the slightly different screens its not that bad at all!

I'm sure you can see whats coming next..... Yes thats right, V2 will be for ToT when I eventually get round to it. The draw of being able to fit in all the units and events I had to sacrafice last time and the greater interest in ToT make it a logical thing to do. The map can be re-used along with the unit stats. The cities and armies should be swapped over quite quickly. As I plan a completely new tech-tree anyway thats not a problem ( yeah right!) and all the issues Eivind (sorry mate) and Agricola have raised can be resolved to boot!

Hurrah
Now, must go to

[McMonkey]

Expanded Units for ToT

As there is space for an additional 17 units in ToT (I think) I will be adding a few I had to leave out. These are my initial ideas:

Axis
-----
StuG Assault Gun (In addition to the one in use)
Jagdpanzer (Modile AT allowing static to stay)
Jagers (Mountain Infantry)
Mobile Artillery (Allowing the towed one to remain)
Panzerfaust (So I can keep the towed AT and Jpz)
Self-Propelled AA
Recon Unit
Heavy Armour (I.e. Tigers. I would make the original two light and medium)

Allies
-------
Jet Fighter
Self-Propelled AT (Leaving towed slot to become 17-pdr)
Self-Propelled AA
Recon Unit
US Airborne (In addition to British)

Soviets
---------
Assault Gun
Mobile Artillery
Self-Propelled AT

Other
-------
Sea Mines (Allies only? as they can be paradropped out to sea. I'm not sure what axis would do with them. I could just make them multi purpose mines I suppose. They will be for harrasment/delay only)
Barbed Wire (Static at start of game/events)

?Ideas
---------
Mortars
Airborne Artillery/AT
Sherman Flail (Engineers)
Allied Heavy Mobile Artillery
Kangaroo APC (About the only unit I don't have but converting should be easy)
Buffalo amphibian (If I could make its stats worthwhile!)
Italian Air/Armour

Many of these will be created by events as the AI may just ignore them!

Your thoughts and ideas will be noted!

[techumseh]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA

4. Never heard of George the MP. However, from the Wikipedia, I'd say that he's even more of a fruitfly than our Canadian socialists.

Excuse me?