World War Two Europa vII

[McMonkey]

To Agricola and any other potential play testers

I don't know if you have begun testing yet (if you are still interested), but if you have not started yet there is an improved version with all the above mentioned bugs fixed.

I will post them up on Scenario League if anyone wants to help me, let me know and I will upload them.

I have started a second play test myself and am very pleased with how things are going so far. There is always a thousand things to improve but it is getting there!

[AGRICOLA]

Sorry Drew, I finished what testing I did about a week ago but forgot to send you the e-mail. It should now be in your in-basket.

You may want to hold off on suggesting that others may want to playtest the scen until you deal with problems such as:

- the first turn money bug which immediately nets the Allies 10,000+ gold and allows them to discover 5 new techs by turn 9
- U-boats that quickly vacate the Atlantic convoy routes
- a significant imbalance in favor of Axis city defenders

Actually, I think that WWII Europa is an excellent scen, especially for a first effort.
I'm not at all sure that Fortress Europe will be a significant improvement.

[McMonkey]

Thanks Agri

I got your mail and have sent a reply. I have no idea what the first turn money bug is, could you explain?

I agree that it is worth waiting until I have the game almost finished before getting testers for a Beta test (I still get Alpha and Beta mixed up!). To be honest I did not expect anyone to respond to my request so I sent you a copy with more bugs than I would have wanted. My fault for being too impatient.

Thanks for the compliment about Europa. However I totally disagree that Fortress Europe won't be a massive improvement. So much has changed that they are VERY different games. Hopefully this time even you might struggle to launch an Invasion of Europe in 1942!

[AGRICOLA]

First turn money bug means that, if during its first turn any civ captures a foreign city, it get ALL the gold that the owning civ possesses. You have weakened the garrison in Bardia so much that the Allied forces around it and in Tobruk have little difficulty in taking it.

The bug can be removed by hexediting. There are also workarounds that developers have used.

[McMonkey]

Not a problem. As the Axis get most units through events and their Fundamentalist government can quickly produce large amounts of money I will simply reduce their treasury to 50 (or whatever) gold. Bardia's garrison could be strengthened a little bit too.

I had noticed this before but not worked out that it only happens during the first turn! Thanks for the enlightenment

[techumseh]

I've played 7 or 8 turns, and I think it's a fun scenario.

I like the use of obsolete unit builds to control what can be built, where. American units must be built in the US, no heavy bomber construction in Iraq, and so on. You might want to make a house rule requiring that the British controlled cities in Syria and Lebanon can't switch production from French infantry to something better.

I also like the challenge of the North African campaign. It's well done, I think. Do you really need the city "British Empire" in Arabia? The reinforcements could just appear at Suez.

The Battle of the Atlantic seems a bit easy, given it's stated importance. It took me only 4 or 5 turns to clear the Atlantic trade routes, now I'm working on keeping the western approaches clear. Transports are travelling without escort from the US and Canada.

Did you know your sub unit can attack aircraft? I lost a fighter unit on it's way to reinforce Scapa. Also, that the "Maritime Bomber" is a helicopter?

The Trade technology is now "Liberty Ships". Without Trade, you can't find out which cities demand what, or use the "Supply and Demand" screen of the Trade Advisor. William Keenan's tips on the Cradle of Civilzation site are very useful for identifying the hidden effects of various technologies. http://coc.apolyton.net/guides/index.shtml

Why not ally the minor nations with the great powers and prohibit negotiations? Having the Portugese navy attack the British and American Torch convoys is a bit preposterous!

With a bit more playtesting, this will be a first rate scenario. Let me know if you want to make a Test of Time version.

[McMonkey]

Thanks Techumseh

The version I am now play testing from has a number of improvements and I will try and get it posted on the scenario league tomorrow. The tech tree Jpeg needs updating as well as a situation briefing explaining my concept. Without the briefing some aspects of the game may seem a bit odd!

It is interesting that some things I take for granted or have not thought of are noted by playtesters. I am more than willing to listen to any arguments for changes and implement them.

I will answer some of your points in more detail tomorrow. Got to get some sleep now.

[techumseh]

While you are in dreamland, I am hard at work playing a few more turns of your scenario. Some more comments:

Engineers can't build bridges, because the Bri technology is "Coastal Command", and not available until later.

Negative "ChangeMoney" events don't work. (They never do - it's a bug)

The large number of text events take up a great deal of your limited events space. Do we really need to know when Rostov falls, etc? Better to create more U-boats, I think.

You can use built in text messages when certain techs, terrain improvements and units become available. They are: Philosophy, engineer unit, paratroop unit, and the fortress, airbase, railroad and farmland improvements. The messages can be edited in the Game Txt. file.


Why not use a Bat. file to switch the units files? They're pretty easy to create. I just use the one from Nemo's Red Front and edit from there.

(Edit) Why is there Global Warming?

Is it because you've scattered pollution around the map, disguised as towns? Arghh!

If you don't want to remove them, you can add more Railway Yards (Solar Plants), or maybe AGGIE can hex edit out global warming for you.

[AGRICOLA]

Tech, if you you want to keep playing and still have a save from before global warming took place, feel free to e-mail it to me for a cure. I've still got some anti-warming pills from the time when Eivind's Norwegian Campaign was suffering from the same malaise.

Doc AGGIE

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by techumseh
Negative "ChangeMoney" events don't work. (They never do - it's a bug)

Jeez, if that is true, in Fortress Europe I've been wasting my time at the start of the scen by ordering crews to scuttle any Allied Freighters on the high seas in order to avoid the following event:

@IF
UNITKILLED
unit=Freighter
attacker=ANYBODY
defender=Allies
@THEN
TEXT
Vital cargo sinks below the icy waves of the Atlantic
costing the allies 150 gold.
ENDTEXT
CHANGEMONEY
receiver=Allies
amount=-150
@ENDIF

To test whether the negative CHANGEMONEY works, I started the scen, moved and changed nothing during the Allied turn and ended the turn. At this point the Allies had 1955 gold and a deficit of 103 gold per turn so one would expect them to have 1852 gold in the treasury at the start of their next turn.

As expected, some keen-eyed U-boat skipper spotted one of the Freighters and deep-sixed it. Nothing changed at the time of the sinking but, at the start of the next Allied turn, the treasury had only 1702 gold.

1852 - 1702 = 150, the exact value of the freight sunk by the dastardly U-boat.

[McMonkey]

@AGRICOLA

Thanks for testing the - cash event AGGIE

I was pretty sure it worked but had not tested it as I had no grounds to doubt it!

The reason I loaded some of the Freighters with Tanks was to make disbanding them less of an obvious tactic. I may load on a few more units to really make disbanding them a dilemma!

[McMonkey]

@Techumseh
Thanks for your comments. This is just what I am looking for in an Alpha test. Some things that seem OK to me may seem like lunacy to another player

As I said before, I am more than willing to change things to get the game right. When I have 'perfected' the MGE version I may well consider an expanded ToT version with all the extra units, events and features that would allow!

I have an amended version ready now with some of the suggested changes implemented. Amongst the changes is a revised initial Allied city production order that ensures that at least one type of every unit is available for production. As the technologies are developed the player will be able to have more flexibility in deciding which units to produce and how many to churn out of any one type.

I can't see a problem with having a high production British Empire city to represent India, Australia etc...
I am willing to listen to arguments for and against this idea though.

I will look at changing the order of the tech tree so that Trade and Bridge Building are available from start. I will also look at altering where units appear on the tree and the names of the techs.

There is an event preventing the Neutrals from talking to the Allies. I think this will prevent attacks by Portugal, Switzerland and Sweden. If I am wrong about that then please let me know!

I will take a look at the Bat. file in Red Front and work out how it works. I think my idea is simple but if there is a better way then I am up for it.

If it is easy to stop global warming by hex-editing then I would appreciate some help here (Agri ). I thought that eliminating pollution in the special units section would prevent global warming but that shows what I know! If the only way to prevent it is to cut the 'towns' then I will do that.

BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

It would appear that the MOVE UNIT event below is not working. I thought this would be an easy cure for the lingering U-Boats.

@IF
TURNINTERVAL
interval=1
@THEN
MOVEUNIT
unit=Submarine
owner=Axis
maprect
47,71,73,71,73,113,47,113
moveto
26,28
numbertomove=all
@ENDIF

Unless I can get this to work then I will need to find another solution. I agree with you about scraping some of the text events to beef up the Kriegsmarine.

I have a new idea. Let me know if you think it would work:
I will spawn the U-Boats in the Atlantic and use the spare events space to create a CHANGE TERRAIN event that will block the spawning co-ordinates.
This event will be triggered when the U-Boat bases (Nantes, Brest etc...) are captured by the allies.
I'm not sure which terrain to use of if this will prevent spawning.
Alternatively I could create an immobile neutral unit to block the spawning locations. To free the space I could use the Fortress unit and place numerous bunkers in cities that currently have Fortresses (currently Calais and the Neutral cities).
Let me know what you think!

The reason for giving Subs the 'Can attack air' flag was to prevent the Allied player stacking Bombers on top of convoys to make them invulnerable to attack.
I am thinking of scrapping this idea and making all aircraft range 1. This could have consequences too though and would make aircraft much more powerful as they won't face counterattacks. I would also need to play around with the aircraft movement to compensate. If anyone has a smart solution I am all ears.

Maritime Bombers as Helicopters was a mistake but I thought I would experiment with it as it does seem like an interesting concept. Obviously the major drawback is that any ship can shoot them down. For this reason I will probably revert them to a conventional aeroplane!

Right then, on with the work. I will post the latest Alpha files as soon as the changes are made!

[AGRICOLA]

Posted by McMonkey
Alternatively I could create an immobile neutral unit to block the spawning locations.

Unfortunately, at sea, a naval unit occupying a spawning site does not block the spawning of hostile naval units on that site. The hostile unit is simply stacked with the blocking unit. Guaranteed!

Don't know what would happen if you changed the terrain of a spawning location to land and spawned a neutral ground unit on it.

I can't see a problem with having a high production British Empire city to represent India, Australia etc...

I had no problem with it. All one needs are some freighters to move the units to Suez.

There is an event preventing the Neutrals from talking to the Allies. I think this will prevent attacks by Portugal, Switzerland and Sweden. If I am wrong about that then please let me know!

Have you tried to have the Allies allied to all the minor powers?

The reason I loaded some of the Freighters with Tanks was to make disbanding them less of an obvious tactic. I may load on a few more units to really make disbanding them a dilemma!

I did not disband them . . . . the crews scuttled them on direct orders from Winnie. AFAIK there is no way in MGE to prevent an unscrupulous player from disbanding any stack of units one by one [short of another @#!%&$ house rule].

HINT: In TOT, units can be made non-disbandable.


E-mail me the .scn file when you are ready to eliminate global warming.

[McMonkey]

Looks like I will need to do some experimenting if I want the Battle of the Atlantic to work. Would non-Naval units block spawning or do naval units spawn on top of any type?

I have not set the Allies to be Allied to the Neutral powers but I can do that. I thought that if they could not talk then being at peace would prevent the Neutrals from sneak attacking.

I wouldn't make another rule about disbanding Freighters. What I may do is change their position a bit and give each one enough units to make it tempting for the player to try and get them to a safe port.

I had a look at the Red Front Batch file but when I try to run it the file just opens and closes back down straight away. Is there a way of fixing this?

Thanks for the offer of hex editing

[techumseh]

On the moveunit event. Here's what I do, based on Nemo's tip on the Cradle site. From Frederick the Great:

;British - E grid, to Munster

@IF
TURN
turn=Every
@THEN
MOVEUNIT
unit=AnyUnit
owner=British
maprect
20,8,32,8,32,26,20,26
moveto
19,21
numbertomove=all
@ENDIF

@IF
UNITKILLED
Unit=AnyUnit
Attacker=Anybody
Defender=Anybody
@THEN
MOVEUNIT
unit=AnyUnit
owner=British
maprect
20,8,32,8,32,26,20,26
moveto
19,21
numbertomove=all
@ENDIF

I use a double set of events, one for the start of the turn, the other repeats the command anytime a unit is killed (any unit, any civ, any time). So it's constantly repeated, as Nemo suggested.

The maprect grid can be of any size (avoid overlapping grids), but the destination should be just outside the grid. You want the unit under the control of the event right up to it's destination.