Ultimate solution to load AI ships

[Palaiologos]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
First of all, Kobayashi's method DOES work. Units on an island are NOT destroyed when the island terrain is changed to ocean, either through events or manually.

That is what i said, man. It does work.

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
Kobi, IMHO, you have opened a Pandora's Box of possibilities for designers.

[curtsibling]

When great CIV minds come together...Good things happen!

Fine work, chaps!

[curtsibling]

I am going to test this new discovery with the Japanese in Dictator...

Are you up for helping, AGRICOLA?

[AGRICOLA]

I have been regularly reading Palaiologos' reports on the Dictator thread. From his reports and from an analysis I did before I started play Dictator, you have done an extremely accurate job of modding the historical situation for the Japanese civ, IMHO too accurate to make it playable with any chance for winning.

Palaiologos' comments and conclusions about playing Japan paint a pretty bleak picture.

Japan has to play the scen with essentially the same units that it starts with. Imperial Marines are the only decent offensive ground unit that it can ever build. Meanwhile, its enemies are developing better units.

It is surrounded by enemies that are extremely difficult to attack because of distance. Conversely, Germany is to some extent protected by the distances that U.S. and British units from the Empire have to travel in order to attack it.

Also, Japan is in a very poor position to try to sequentially eliminate enemies like Germany can.

Unlike the other civs, Japan's research tree does not lead to powerful new units.

With the possible exception of Sydney, there appear to be no 'trading cities' to which the Japanese can deliver freights and obtain a decent return. There simply are no cities that can generate the large delivery bonuses that are available from London or Baku and which permit Germany to develop its economy and generate cash for building.


In view of the results that Palaiologos has had despite excellent play, I doubt if anyone could do significantly better without a major improvement in Japanese capabilities. Have you considered 'technical exchanges' between Germany and Japan, whereby the Japanese would get the techs for useful units like Panther and Tiger tanks and the Me-262? BTW, I don't consider units like the V-2 or Type XXI sub to be useful. Of course, this would really mess up the careful attention you have paid to historical accuracy. Maybe Japan should be declared unplayable.

I think that I have to pass on playtesting Japan unless you can somehow manage to improve both its technological and economic outlook without abandoning historical facts. I don't think that anyone can do better that Palaiologos has done in playing it.



As for Germany, I gave up on further play after the Allied invasion of North Africa was defeated by a passive defence and the invasion of Italy was easily smashed by a German counterattack. Considering the strength of the German defences, the invasion of Normandy is bound to suffer the same fate. However, as I have all the monthly saves, it should not be difficult to resume when you bring out the revised events.



I've been working on trying to sort out the effects of CHANGETERRAIN and spawning. It is a surprisingly complex business and there is a world of difference between manually creating units or changing terrain and using events to spawn units or CHANGETERRAIN. Here are some examples of differences that I have found so far.

Using events, ships cannot be spawned on a land square except in a port city, just as ground units cannot be spawned on ocean squares. Although stacks of human or AI units are not destroyed by a CHANGETERRAIN, each CHANGETERRAIN destroys one unit in a stack. This is probably where the idea that CHANGETERRAIN can be used to kills all units on a square comes from. Events also allow certain unit types to spawn on top of enemy units, but I don't have the entire picture yet.

The observations I have reported in some earlier posts on this thread are correct, but some of the explanations definitely are not.

[Tigey]

Hmm. Whilst most of your other points are valid, I don't think the lack of a trading city for the Japs to send hordes of freights too should be seen as a flaw to be corrected. Please don't think I mean this in a negative way, but I think excessive use of that particular tactic (ie: to get a tech a turn, and to buy hordes of units outright in order to win), should be considered as almost an "exploit", to use a Civ4 term: particularly given that the Civ2 ai could never hope to use it, and think it's use should be discouraged.

To randomly throw an idea into the ring, perhaps a house rule of "build no more than 1/2 freights a turn" might be appropriate? This is just my humble opinion, as I think excessive use of freights in order to outbuy/research the AI is a cheesy tactic.

[McMonkey]

Well said Tigey. I am sure any hostile merchantman turning up at an enemy port would have been impounded or sunk without delay and no financial rewards would be made by the hostile nation that sent the trade!

Also I think it would be fun to play as Japan even if they have no real prospects of winning. Would be fun to see how far they could take things before the Allies start their counterattack and how long they can hold on.

Saying all that, I have not played the scenario yet so I should probably shut up!

[AGRICOLA]

@Werd100
If you dislike the concept of trading with the best available city, perhaps you should design scens where freights are unbuildable, like Nemo's RED FRONT and SECOND FRONT or Kobayashi's excellent DAINICHI SEKAI TAISEN.

@Tigey
I will not to play a scen with less than 100% utilization of the tactics and strategies that I think up, have previously thought up or learned the hard way. If I throttle back to 75%, what good am I as a playtester when the scen will later be played by players who play much better than I do?

[McMonkey]

@Agricola
Good point about playing the game to the limits. If you play it that way and it is still too hard then what chance do the rest of us have. We have talked about our differing playing styles before and there is no point going into all that again. At the end of the day everybody knows what they enjoy and it does not really effect anyone else so whats the harm.
I just find trade is a double edged sword. It is an essential part of the game but not one I personally like to focus on too much. It can make designing a scenario rather difficult as everyone will concentrate on it at different levels. What you say about unbuildable trade is a good solution or even events genorated trade units to help the designer find a good ballance. In my Nam scenario I will not be using trade as there is not much scope for it. I still need to play DAINICHI SEKAI TAISEN!

You are still the god of playtesting and I hope you never change

[Palaiologos]

Actually the problem of my gameplay test with japan is that i completely underestimated my enemies. I opted for an overambitious invasion of america when i could use the fleet lost there to fend off the australian and british fleets. The chinese on the other hand responded with a HUGE airforce build up sending hordes of bombers and P-40s. I was destroying about 10 bombers a turn but they kept on coming. Needles to say their P-40s had the better of my zeros in aerial combat. I think that in the next playtest i will put aside all thoughts of attacking Australia or the U.S and concetrate on eliminating the chinese. So with the chinese putting the airoplanes, ausies and yanks the fleets(the ausies built an amazingly large fleet) and after a while the Russians(The AI sneak attacked me) joining the fray, the japs are pretty hopeless.

Moreover the japanese economy starts with a 400something gp loss per turn and pretty soon the coastal fleets and factories are being sold off. There is no way you can keep an adequate research rate unless you want your economy to colapse.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
If I throttle back to 75%, what good am I as a playtester when the scen will later be played by players who play much better than I do?

Right.

[AGRICOLA]

@Werd100
Oh man, stuff it! That last sentence is nothing but a steaming pile of pure horse puckey mixed with barrowfull of fresh, shiny meadow muffins. Come back to reality. I'm not your former first grade teacher who loved little apple polishers and gave them better grades than the little brownnosers deserved.

[AGRICOLA]

@ Palaiologos

I understand only too well. Here is something that I had written in response to Werd100 and Tigey but changed my mind.

"I appreciate ( but do not agree with ), your point about the possible "cheesiness" of building freights in order to generate cash and speed up research. My take on this is that you do what you must in order to try to succeed.

Dictator VI is a good example of how the design of a scen limits players' options.

For example, at the start, Japan has 2000 gold and, with a 70% tax rate (maximum) a deficit of 130+ gold per turn. This puts the research rate is 1 tech/year. I see no way to get out of this deficit position except by building freights and delivering them to Singapore, being careful to neutralize that city but not capture it. Singapore provides ~3x the return that can be obtained from any city that the Japanese hold.

The deficit cannot continue indefinitely because Japan will eventually run out of money. As it stands, the research rate is only half of that of Japan's main enemies, Britain and the U.S.

Do you see any way other way out of this mess?


The problems that Germany faces are less difficult. Economically, it starts off in a break even situation at a 50% tax rate. With all possible specialists changed to Einsteins, it has a respectable research rate of 1 tech/4 turns.

However, in my estimation, it does not have the ground units to fight a successful and reasonably short war against the Russians. It certainly can try to pound its way through masses of Russian units but it would be devoting most of industrial capacity to replacing losses. What I was looking for was units that have a 90%+ survivability in any battle. These can be obtained only through research.

Germany's initial disposition of forces mimics the broad front advance that they actually used. Again, in my estimation, the number of Panzers is too small to carry out anything but a slow advance. Regrouping them for a single, rapid thrust at Moscow made much more sense, but advances past that city had to await the arrival of the Panther.

Meanwhile, North Africa was a strictly defensive struggle, Iraklion had to be abandoned and the battle with the British was also a defensive fight, designed to maximize British losses. Hovering in the background was the threat of the U.S. getting the A-bomb. The only way to counter that was an invasion of North America with overwhelming force.

I played the scen with 30+ Freights under construction every turn."

[McMonkey]

@Agricola

'horse puckey'?, 'meadow muffins'???

Point taken. I'll close the door on the way out!

[Tigey]

Agricola: I think you're being far too modest: I don't think there are ANY Civ2 players better than you!!!

As for your comments regarding Japan, well, that's an issue for the scenario designers to consider. Japan should obviously be EXTREMELY difficult to win with: aside from it's powerful initial fleet, which should (and does) lets you run havoc for a year or two, it is probably doomed in the long run, unless you are a tactical genius (and very, very lucky)... However, if it's as totally unplayable as you say, then perhaps it needs tweaking. I've just played out a bit now, and with a bit of good luck, I scored some pretty good hits against the Allies, but my long term position doesn't look great,as the yanks and Chinese just keep coming... In my view, this is how it should be: as Japan, I've bitten off more than I can chew, and will really struggle to get out of this corner. Not every side needs to be able to conquer the world: some just need to be able to have their blaze of glory. (although I do think that research should grant me some more powerful air + sea units).


However, Agricola is right in that as it stands, the starting deficit IS currently crippling. However, using freights in this manner should NOT be the way out of it: I think Curt should consider rebalancing this aspect of the scenario, and find a way (perhaps lowering maint costs, or giving the Japs some extra trade terrain). It's fine to need to use a cheesy tactic to win, but if you need it to simply stay afloat, then that's something else, and is far more serious...

I think also, we should all keep in mind the SPIRIT of these sorts of Civ2 scenarios: it may well be possible to win games by building only freights, and sending them to specially "preserved" enemy trade cities, to maximise your trade yields, and then using that money to pay for spies to bribe cities/buying howitzer hordes, for example: but that's not the way Civ2 is MEANT to be played, especially the scenarios, which people put a lot of thought (and love!) into... They're meant to be played for fun, to get into the groove of slogging through the Eastern front, even though the Red Army is throwing endless hordes of siberian divisions at you, and to fight against the huge American pacific fleet, with only a few superbattleships and carriers, etc...

Having freights in a scenario, isn't by itself, "cheesy": but the manner in which they're used them might be. Sparing an enemy city, which you use to send freights to in an attempt to get the maximum money/research bonus (ie: 50% for overseas, 50% for an enemy city, etc), IS a cheesy tactic, no matter how you justify it: as Werd has said: in real life, those trading units would be seized/destroyed: it might not be against the Civ2 rules, but it's against the spirit, and is simply using a quirk of the Civ2 engine... Perhaps some sort of house rule regarding freights is in order, where you can either only build 1 or 2 a turn, or can only send them to your allies cities (ie: the Japs can only send freights to the Nazis, the Brits can only send them to the Yanks/USSR, etc.) is in order?

Imagine the fun/satisfaction of your whole war effort depending on successfully navigating a Japanese convoy across the Indian ocean, and then the Cape of Good Hope, in a desperate attempt to get vital "war supplies" to Germany, evading the Royal Navy/US fleet all the way: thrilling! I can just hear the Red October theme playing now!