ZWK, a kinky scenario.

[techumseh]

^
^^ WAR ERUPTS IN EUROPE
^
^^ On September 1st 1939, Hitler unleashes his panzers on Poland on a false pretext
^^ of retaliation for a Polish suprise attack. Poznan falls easily to the German's
^^ Blitzkrieg tactics. However, unlike as history records, Adolf gets very excited
^^ with the inital success of the Wehrmacht and during his quite time with Eva, he
^^ suffers a stroke and dies.
^^
^^ Rudolf Hess, who was planning to defect to Britain changes his mind and becomes
^^ Fuhrer. He continues the war but without interfering with his generals and scientists.
^

You mean quiet time, Koby? A very innovative scenario, and kinky, too.

[curtsibling]

Zweiter Weltkrieg - One of the great classics...With a brilliant tech tree.

[GhostOfDisco]

I agree. While I did make my own graphics mod for it , it was fun, playing as the Allies and getting to Berlin at Week 90. (Which would make it what date exactly? I don't know.)

[kobayashi]

Wasn't this one of the early Eivind scenarios?

I liked it - except for the poor attempt at making photo-type city graphics.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by kobayashi
Wasn't this one of the early Eivind scenarios?

Unless I'm missing something there...

[kobayashi]

nope. you got it

[AGRICOLA]

@kobi

I have a question that only someone who was designing scens in the 1999 to 2002 period can answer. You are nominated because downloading and looking at your ZWK brought this to a head.

Scens from that period seem to fall into 2 categories, those that have realistic unit movements and those that have very slow movement, particularly for naval units.

Among the scens that I have played recently, Petroski's Up the Deadly Boot and Ansteig have what I consider realistic movement, considering both the length of a turn and the scale of the map.

On another thread, I have already kvetched about Casus Belli by Vegard Bjørketun and compared both its ground and naval movements unfavourably both to techumseh's Frederick the Great and to RL. In ZWK, IMHO, ground movement is fine but I fail to understand the very slow naval movement. For example, the Channel dash by the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau from Brest to around Emden was a 24 hour sprint whereas in ZWK it is a 9-turn marathon. The same applies to the time needed for sea voyages between other ports.

I'm wondering about what the thinking was behind the slow naval units. The current trend seems to be towards slowish [8-12 squares/turn] but adequate movements.

Completely aside from the above question, I'm going to try your kinky ZWK with surface ship movements adjusted so that naval vessels cross the Atlantic in 2 weeks, subs in 3 weeks and freighters in 4 weeks. BTW, are you sure that ZWK will play properly in SP if very few cities have City Walls at the beginning? I see a major risk that many cities will be razed if attacked near the start of the scen, especially if they have time to build another defender or two. I'm asking because there is a caveat in the README not to disband cities.

[kobayashi]

I suppose the thinking of the day, and it is still applicable today, was that ships needed to be at sea or they would never be vulnerable to subs and aircraft. Things that could happen under a properly scaled movement allowance: battleships zipping out, destroying a target and then returning back to port in the same turn. Transports going from Germany to France in a single turn. Which is why the original game is also designed in the same way.

High movement also interferes with the screening role of destroyers. If a sub with move 10, for arguement's sake, can zip past the screen and sink battleships and carriers supposedly 'protected' by destroyers and air parols, it would make the concept of battle groups unworkable. This is especailly applicable to my DST and Star Wars Insurrection scenarios. Another worse case is sacrificing a light carrier loaded with torpedo bombers by moving it directly into the midst of the enemy battlegroup and sinking as many ships as possible - with a second carrier zipping by to retrieve the aircraft the following turn.

This is an age old question of whether it is more important to simulate the ‘look’ or the ‘feel’. The same argument can be made of bombers. If two weeks is one turn, certainly aircraft could fly 5 sorties in a fortnight, why does it have to spend two weeks going out and two weeks flying back? So it can be intercepted by fighters while it is in mid air.

One important consideration is the scale of the map and the length of each turn. If it is a world or continental map, the slowing of ships is imporant for game play. If it is a single country map (like Norwegian Campaign) with each turn as a day or twelve hours, it would be very easy to use the 'real' speeds of ships. Perhaps this explains the 'two categories' phenomenon.

As for the ZWK city walls...at the beginning it should be quite easy to defeat poland and france without razing any cities as there are no spawning events except for torpedoes. In the second half one or two minor cities in Russia might get razed but that is a choice the German player has to make keeping in mind there are no settler units - simulating the 'scorched earth' tactics used by the retreating Soviets. This might create a logistical problem when moving fighters to the eastern front.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by kobayashi
nope. you got it

I didn't.

[curtsibling]

Slow movement battleships are a good idea. I will be experimenting with that in my next scenario.

As well as bombers using the classic fighter traits of vanilla CIV2...

[techumseh]

This is a design problem I'm trying to tackle right now as well. If the player controlled Germans are attempting to invade an AI-controlled Britian in 1940, how can the Royal Navy stop them?

Historically, the German problem was to eliminate the RN's ability to intervene in an invasion using airpower - leading directly to the Battle of Britain.

If ships move quickly, the Germans simply land on the south coast of England, drop off the troops, and move safely back into port. British ships arrive, the next turn the German transports sail around them, drop off more troops, and sail back into safe harbors.

The first solution I considered was to limit the Germans to building "invasion barges" with a mf of 1 as their only sea transports. Of course, this would screw up the invasion of places like Norway, where the distances are greater.

The other idea I'm considering is a house rule, which requires that any ship which lands ground units from a sea square must end its movement for the turn. Since my scenario is only playable by the Germans, a house rule might work.

[curtsibling]

Giving Germany some wonders that speed up naval movement (Lighthouse/Magellan) and then making these wonders
dependent on a certain tech, would allow the using of an events 'light-switch' to give German sea units less or more
movement at certain times...Perhaps that might help things?

[techumseh]

Not a bad idea. I'm using something similar to simulate strategic warfare (U-boats and strategic bombing). An events driven switch gives and takes obsolescence techs for economic wonders belonging to Germany and the Allies.

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by curtsibling
Giving Germany some wonders that speed up naval movement (Lighthouse/Magellan) and then making these wonders
dependent on a certain tech, would allow the using of an events 'light-switch' to give German sea units less or more
movement at certain times...Perhaps that might help things?

That's what I got under the hood for DST. The base Japanese ships have a move of one less than the Americans but they have a Long Lance wonder (+2 move) so they start with a +1 advantage.

When the first battleship is lost, this wonder expires and they have to plod on with a -1 disadvantage until they can researcha nd build the Blindfire Radar wonder(+1 move) putting them back on parity.

[techumseh]

Clever!