Fortress Europe

[McMonkey]

Jerec/MacGalleo
I just tested that event and it worked perfectly first time. A million apologies for ever doubting you! I just needed to alter the Freighter sunk by U-boat event so that you only lose money when the Axis sink a freighter instead of Anybody.

This solves a lot of my problems. Now I can easily tweak the economic balance by simply changing the money in the event. It also solves the problem of hundreds of extra Freighters hanging about/making early D-Day easy.

I can make the Freighter a Lend Lease unit which frees up an extra unit space. The Transport ship will now become the only ship which can carry troops.

I will use the fortress slot as the barbarian port and call it something like Dockyard. It will have a very high defence value and can also be placed in neutral cities.

Thanks a million

[McMonkey]

Next on my list is to find a satisfactory way of representing strategic bombing. I was thinking of using the spare slot for an Axis factory unit which could trigger a "reward" event upon its destruction and also trigger another event creating a replacement factory at a random location (IE Essen/Cologne or other industrial area).

I need to work out what kind of "reward" to give the Allies. In WWII the aim of allied bombing was to wear down Axis industry and the morale of the citizens. Giving the Allies money does not represent this very well. I don't think taking money off the Axis would be a good enough reason for the player to risk expensive bombers, especially as the Axis has a fundamentalist government!

I know there must be a good solution. Just waiting for that light bulb moment. If anyone can beat me to it I would be more than happy to take their idea, tweak it a little and pass it off as my own genius

[GhostOfDisco]

Perhaps change high-shield "industrial" terrain to something less productive (even "industrial ruins" or something, if there is a slot of it?

[Jerec]

Originally posted by McMonkey
I need to work out what kind of "reward" to give the Allies. In WWII the aim of allied bombing was to wear down Axis industry and the morale of the citizens. Giving the Allies money does not represent this very well. I don't think taking money off the Axis would be a good enough reason for the player to risk expensive bombers, especially as the Axis has a fundamentalist government!

IIRC, the whole idea of the Allied bombing was to stop the flow of German military supplies, including fuel. What are the German reinforcement events like? Randomturn?

I'm thinking that you might be able to tie in multiple German reinforcement events with different flags, and then turn off the flags one by one as each corresponding "factory" is destroyed...but it all depends on how the Germans get reinforcements.

[McMonkey]

Damaging German industry is probably not the way to go as most of their units will probably be generated via events.

The flags idea is a good one but I am not keen on using it in this scenario. In a multiplayer game both methods would be useful as it would punish the human Axis player.

In this scenario I want to keep the units coming for the Axis AI to keep the game challenging for the Allied player. If you cut the Axis unit events out at the same time that the Allies are growing in strength it will make the latter part of the game too easy. Most of the Axis events have fallback co-ordinates so that the stronger the Allies get and the more territory they take the harder the Axis will try and fight back. Well at least thats the theory.

I guess I need to run a full playtest and see how things pan out. If the Axis are too strong in the later stages then turning off some of their events may work.

How would the flag idea work, bearing in mind there would be only one Axis factory unit available?

[Jerec]

Originally posted by McMonkey
Damaging German industry is probably not the way to go as most of their units will probably be generated via events.

I don't understand. Generating them via events allows the flow to be manipulated, which is good.

In this scenario I want to keep the units coming for the Axis AI to keep the game challenging for the Allied player. If you cut the Axis unit events out at the same time that the Allies are growing in strength it will make the latter part of the game too easy. Most of the Axis events have fallback co-ordinates so that the stronger the Allies get and the more territory they take the harder the Axis will try and fight back. Well at least thats the theory.

Good point.

How would the flag idea work, bearing in mind there would be only one Axis factory unit available?

Since you have only 1 free slot, it gets complicated. You can't do what Cyrion did in Lost Legions, ie make multiple factories, with a different result for each one. Therefore, the problem is that we need to differentiate the factories, but not by units. So we differentiate by civ. Look at this-

@IF
CHECKFLAG ;
Checkflag
Who=....
Mask=0b1
State=Off
@THEN
CREATEUNIT
Axis reinforcements
@ENDIF

@IF
CHECKFLAG ;
Checkflag
Who=....
Mask=0b10
@THEN
CREATEUNIT
Axis reinforcements
@ENDIF

@IF
UnitKilled
unit=Factory
attacker=Allies
defender=Barbarians
@THEN
FLAG
continuous
flag=0
Who=...
state=on
@ENDIF

@IF
UnitKilled
unit=Factory
attacker=Allies
defender=Axis
@THEN
FLAG
continuous
flag=1
Who=...
state=on
@ENDIF


You can make five different factories by this method, I figure. Finnish, barb, Spanish, Neutrals, and Axis. You can't use Turks because the Allies are at peace with them, and you can't use Russians because the Axis would destroy the Russian factory. Hopefully 5 is enough.

[McMonkey]

The idea may well work but it the whole concept goes against what I have been striving to do, IE make the Axis AI tough. Turning off reinforcements would have the opposite effect and make the game easier.

I guess that it is a good idea/concept historically but could wreck the gameplay, the AI needs all the help it can get. I think strategic bombing has real potential for multiplayer games where you could simply -1000 gold for every factory destroyed.

I think I may go back to the "reward" option. Although this is not strictly historically correct it would give the Allied player an incentive to send over his valuable bombers. I guess extra money is the obvious choice along with an appropriate text message.

Late in the game when the Allies have captured key cities, such as Cologne or Essen then the event creating replacement factories could be turned off via the use of flags to avoid the Allied possessing cash cows for their howitzers to pick off.

The extra money could unbalance the battle of the Atlantic though, so maybe a reward unit, such as mobile artillery, would be a better reward. I will need to give this some thought.

Thanks for the idea Jerec, it is a good one. In another scenario I think it would be ideal!

[GhostOfDisco]

Well, you could always have different events files, one for each single player as a civ (i.e. one file for an SP Axis campaign, one for SP Allies, one for SP Russians) and set different parameters and so forth...

[McMonkey]

@GoD
When I have finished the Allied version I may contemplate a multiplayer version, maybe. I think I have enough on my plate just king the Allied game work. I can't see the point of making a Russian version when Red Front ToT is in development and I am not interested in making a Nazi version.

Jerec
I will try and get the updated files together for you tonight if I get a spare moment.

[McMonkey]

I have been doing some playtesting and have generated another list of things to do:

1) For the time being I am going to go back to using a batch file for swapping files. When I am finished I may well use Civ Swap but I will find testing a lot easier without having to remember to run it and load autosaves.

2) I should have plenty of events space to include a text pop-up each month informing the player of the date (On the game screen it currently shows turn numbers).
I can tag other events onto these small text pop-ups so I wont be wasting file space.

3) I will start 1 BB escorted convoy half way across the Atlantic to avoid the deficit before the first New York convoy arrives.

4) I will add a move unit event to stop the Subs and U-Boats lingering around Ireland and work out why the one for the Bay of Biscay area is not working. I may also increase the number of U-Boats spawning in the Atlantic as it has been too easy so far.

5) There are some errors in the units stats for aircraft that need fixing. You can send aircraft from the USA to the airbase in Northern Ireland. This means that the house rule about only having Fleet Air Arm on Carriers makes sense.

6) I need to add an event creating a limited amount of transports in the USA to ship across troops.

7) I need to fix the diplomacy events. Currently the Allies can attack the Turks and I guess they can, and probably will attack the Allied which is not my intention.
Turkish intervention should only be activated via events.

8) I will half the amount of Lend Lease created and double the gold received upon arrival to 400 per shipment. Its no fun moving countless ships every turn.

9) I will remove all US aircraft at the start of the game. I may generate some via events on turn 4 which is the date of Pearl Harbour.

10) I did not play that seriously and managed to hold Tobruk until turn 5. I think I could hold out if I played properly. I was glad to see that it was possible for the Axis to capture the city. Getting the ballance between challenging and impossible will be down to thorough testing. Malta holds out too easily, I will need to make holding the island a bit tougher.

These changes may take a little while as I am quite busy this week but I have some spare time coming up soon in which I should be able to make a push

As soon as these changes are in place I will send you (Jerec) the updates files. It seems pointless sending you a half arsed version now!

[GhostOfDisco]

Well, I tend to play such scenarios as the Americans/Allies, so it's good.

[Jerec]

Originally posted by McMonkey
1) For the time being I am going to go back to using a batch file for swapping files. When I am finished I may well use Civ Swap but I will find testing a lot easier without having to remember to run it and load autosaves.

CivSwap is great, but batches are familiar. The old MGE vs ToT argument.

6) I need to add an event creating a limited amount of transports in the USA to ship across troops.

Halifax will still be building transports? It seems ridiculous to me that I can't build transports.

8) I will half the amount of Lend Lease created and double the gold received upon arrival to 400 per shipment. Its no fun moving countless ships every turn.

True, but then every loss is doubly painful.

9) I will remove all US aircraft at the start of the game. I may generate some via events on turn 4 which is the date of Pearl Harbour.

Historical.

These changes may take a little while as I am quite busy this week but I have some spare time coming up soon in which I should be able to make a push

As soon as these changes are in place I will send you (Jerec) the updates files. It seems pointless sending you a half arsed version now!

I thought as much, that's why I asked when the patched version would be ready.

[McMonkey]

As you may have noticed by now I am always wildly over optimistic in my estimates!

I have made some good progress today. Got all the move unit events (lets see if they actually work!) and date pop up events working as well as replacing all Axis Submarines with U-Boats. There is still a lot of work and testing to do though. I figure this work has been in progress on and off for about two years now, I may as well be patient and get it right.

Re: Transports
I saw an excellent documentary the other day about the Allied D-Day invasion machine. It profiled some of the key features of the operation that went into making the machine work (The Dakota, the DWCK, the Mulberry Harbours, the Mustang Fighter etc...) and one point it stressed was the importance of specialised landing craft, especially the Landing Ship Tank (LST). It stressed that a successful invasion was only possible once enough of these brilliant craft were available and many of the final craft were rushed across the Atlantic just in time to take part.

This is why I want to limit the amount of available landing craft early in the game. I have seen to many scenarios where it is possible to launch a cross Chanel invasion in 1941/2. This was just not historically feasible. I don't want to restrict the player to a June 1944 invasion, but I want to avoid the possibility of a small scale 1941 invasion. Getting the balance right will come down to more thorough testing. I don't want a situation where the player has tons of units in Britain and no way of getting them to France. I want to try and make the buildup realistic whilst leaving some leeway for alternative strategies.

All of these factors (Invasions/Buildup/Battle of the Atlantic and Strategic bombing) will need to be tested and fine tuned. I just need to get all the ground work done so that I can begin the testing process in earnest. If for example I run a full test, get the results and then decide to increase the stats of air units the whole balance of the game could be altered and I will need to run the test all over again.

I hope that the event system I have built will allow me to alter the ebb and flow of the game by simply altering the values to increase or decrease either the Axis or Allies unit production rates as well as making sure that the Russians can storm into the Reich on cue.

Bla, bla, bla apologies if I am boring anyone. Maybe if I talk less and work more I might finish this one day

[Jerec]

Interesting, you've really thought this out. And good point, I'll try to not make any more ignorant suggestions about transports or anything else.

[McMonkey]

On the contrary, keep the suggestions coming. I often get myself into a mindset that the course I am taking is right only to change my mind when I get another point of view. Take the Lend Lease idea. I had convinced myself it would not work. Only your persistence convinced me to try it out and it worked perfectly Its easy to go off on a tangent.

Here is my first stab at strategic bombing. I have increased the bombers to move 15, range 4 so they can get deep into the heart of the Reich. Once the Allies have crossed the Rhine (IE Captured Cologne) the generation of new factories it turned off:

@IF
CityTaken
city=Cologne
attacker=Allies
defender=Axis
@THEN
FLAG
continuous
flag=10
Who=Axis
state=On
@ENDIF

@IF
UNITKILLED
unit=Factory
attacker=Allies
defender=Axis
@THEN
TEXT
More German Industry is put out of commission
ENDTEXT
CHANGEMONEY
receiver=Allies
amount=300
@ENDIF

@IF
UNITKILLED
unit=Factory
attacker=Allies
defender=Axis
@AND
Checkflag
Who=Axis
Mask=0b0000000000000000000000010000000000
Threshold=1
State=Off
@THEN
CREATEUNIT
unit=Factory
owner=Axis
veteran=yes
homecity=NONE
randomize
locations
130,66
130,62
124,70
117,63
118,56
124,58
132,72
130,84
122,90
113,89
109,89
105,85
106,74
105,69
107,67
110,78
111,63
endlocations
@ENDIF

I have tested the first part of the event and it works fine. I just need to check that the OFF part of the event works too. I suppose I might need to refine the OFF part of the event to prevent a clever player bypassing Cologne! I suppose I could set several cities east of the Rhine to turn on flag 10 and, the player cannot bypass all of these cities. I suppose if they are comfortable with trying such an exploit then it is up to them I will also need to check if the payout is enough to justify the possible loss of the bombers, but not too much that it makes the Battle of the Atlantic unnecessary!



Comments welcome