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Call To Power 2 Cradle 3+ mod in progress: https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/call-to-power-2/ctp2-creation/9437883-making-cradle-3-fully-compatible-with-the-apolyton-edition
Burma Map 4 - Japanese Defeat at Kohima and Imphal
Re: War goals. I think every nation had its own clear priorities. Britain wanted to protect India and try and claw back its empire. America wanted to support China so it could fight the Japanese. The Chinese wanted to obtain as much equipment from the US as possible to fight the Communists once the US had beaten the Japanese for them!
Originally posted by Boco
I've already seen a few camps about what was the overriding Allied objective for the campaign: tie up Japanese, restore Burma to the Empire, or supply China to make it a postwar arsenal of democracy.
From what I've read, all three were considered the single main Allied goal by different people at the time. 2) seems to have been the dominant British view (though they didn't really want the place) 3) the dominant American view and 1) the compromise which was reached to justify not just digging in on the Indian border in 1942-44.
The Burmese theatre was a very effective means of tieing down Japanese troops, with the Japanese keeping large numbers of units in the theatre throughout the war. I believe that these units were of better than average quality, with the result that second-rate units were sent to more important parts of the Pacific such as New Guinea and the Phillipines.
'Arguing with anonymous strangers on the internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be - or to be indistinguishable from - self-righteous sixteen year olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.'
- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
'Arguing with anonymous strangers on the internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be - or to be indistinguishable from - self-righteous sixteen year olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.'
- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
Okay players...what would entice you to devote engineers to build the Ledo road in this scenario?
The Americans thought it was the sine qua non of the CBI campaign, the only way to save China; the Brits thought it was folly, but at least it brought a lot of American equipment into the theater. I'd like to provide a lot of bait to encourage its completion, but make it only one way to victory.
As context, the Allies also built roads from India SE down the coast of Burma and E into the central plain during this period.
Since the Ledo road is long and spans awful terrain, by traditional Civ2 methods, it'll require a lot of engineers. Unless lured by the dark side, most players will use these engineers for something of more immediate military benefit, e.g. accelerate the introduction of armor into the central plain of Burma. Other players might use engineers to saturate cities with roads to get money bonuses.
What would make you want to build this road instead of these other possibilities?
Have a wonder under construction in Kunming, say Adam Smith. Call it the Ledo Road, and make it very expensive. Make sure the pre-req is no longer available to any civs, so it can't be started somewhere else. Make sure there are very few shields around Kunming, and the allied player can't afford to rush build it.
Give freight units by events every few turns in Ledo. Make sure they can't get there unless the road is built. Use them to finish the wonder.
Use the CityProduction trigger as the trigger for some event that strongly influences the outcome of the game, for example, preventing the appearance of powerful Japanese reinforcements that would then be tied down fighting in China.
Tecumseh's Village, Home of Fine Civilization Scenarios
Here are a few random thoughts and possibilities for a very tricky problem.
1. Geographically, the Ledo Road appears to be peripheral to the main campaign area, Burma. Much would depend on whether a spur to northern Burma is possible.
2. Any idea of the number of engineer-turns that would be needed to build it?
3. Could the coastal road or some other road from India to central Burma be built more easily? Would building such a road rather than the Ledo offer enough operational advantages to outweigh the value of the wonder in Kunming?
4. Might you link the building of the wonder to being able to build a powerful unit? Wonder -> tech -> unit? The Allies did use B-29's to bomb targets in Burma.
5. Could Indian terrain be mainly mainly hills and forests that generate no trade arrows so that delivering the spawned freights to Indian cities is not rewarding. I see no reason why hilly country cannot produce a fair amount of food. There are rice paddies in China on hillsides that would give goats trouble.
Excerpts from the Manual of the Civilization Fanatic :
Money can buy happiness, just raise the luxury rate to 50%.
Money is not the root of all evil, it is the root of great empires.
Originally posted by Boco
Okay players...what would entice you to devote engineers to build the Ledo road in this scenario?
Something-or-other that gives the British player lots of money. Perhaps you could set things up so that progress with building the road earns the player regular amounts of money which they can spend however they please? (you could place 'milestone' units in very hard to reach terrain which the player needs to built a road to to attack and trigger an event which gives them money for instance).
'Arguing with anonymous strangers on the internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be - or to be indistinguishable from - self-righteous sixteen year olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.'
- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
I rather suspect that Boco is building on his superb El Aurens scen. The 4 maps have some similarities to the ones he used in El Aurens.
In El Aurens, he makes very sure that players are broke most of the time. Most of the few shekels they manage to scrape together have to be spent on rush building specific units that are needed to have any chance of success. I expect that in 'A Slim Victory' he is most unlikely to break down and issue credit cards to players.
This sounds like another tightly scripted, events controlled scen that is very faithful to history. Players will have to look hard and long for some ahistorical shortcut to victory.
Originally posted by Boco
Any tips for getting a smart AI on big maps?
I don't really know what you mean by the question, but here goes anyway.
I'm in the final phase of tech's Fredrick the Great and the French are in bad shape, with only a handful of cities still in their hands and very few units. Yet, most of the remaining cities are building improvements rather than units. IMHO, that is a deplorable state of affairs.
I've done a bit of checking on the possible use of citypref.txt files to control what cities build. AFAIK, there are only two threads that deal with this:
In my experience, CityPref does not work. The only way to solve this is to depend on events to create the units you want, and limit (or eliminate) the ability of AI civs to build improvements.
BTW, AGR., I'm not sure what version of FtG you are playing.
Tecumseh's Village, Home of Fine Civilization Scenarios
If you only have one playable tribe, I suppose you could arrange the civilize2 so that all the prereqs for city improvements were only available to the human player, and for all AI tribes the pertinent improvements were already built at the beginning. They would then have no choice but to build units...
I forget is there a trigger in the ToT events language that lets the event discriminate between human and AI players? i.e.
@IF
TURN=1
@AND PLAYER=HUMAN or COMPUTER
@THEN
EnableTechnology
...
Sors salutis/ et virtutis/ michi nunc contraria,/ est affectus/ et defectus/ semper in angaria./
Hac in hora/ sine mora/ corde pulsem tangite;/ quod per sortem/ sternit fortem,/ mecum omnes plangite!
2) seems to have been the dominant British view (though they didn't really want the place) 3) the dominant American view and 1) the compromise which was reached to justify not just digging in on the Indian border in 1942-44. 
Just got back into town. When I have time, I'll send an email.
the Brits thought it was folly, 
but at least it brought a lot of American equipment into the theater. 
I'd like to provide a lot of bait to encourage its completion, but make it only one way to victory. 
most players will use these engineers for something of more immediate military benefit, e.g. accelerate the introduction of armor into the central plain of Burma. Other players might use engineers to saturate cities with roads to get money bonuses.
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