RED FRONT ToT REDUX

[PietH]

I'm very interested

[McMonkey]

I'm looking forward to the playing the final version as, shock horror, I have never played Red Front

Unfortunately I am too busy to help with playtesting at the moment

Keep up the good work!

[AGRICOLA]

I've been playtesting and giving the odd suggestion to MacGalleo but I think that it is time for some advice from the general public.

As a bit of background, I don't particularly trust my playtest because I acquired 250 refugees by Dec '41 (I've played RF so much that I need to do something really different each time in order to keep it interesting). Subsequently, this horde of humanity increased the Soviet's productivity to the point where 30-40 units @70 - 100 shields can be built per turn. As a result, by mid 1943, the Soviets have a juggernaut spearheaded by a total of ~500 units . . . . . .KV-1's (150), Katyushas (130), Shturmoviks (160) and Su-152 Tank Hunters (50). In RF 1.4, this force could head west at top speed and easily be in Berlin and over much of Germany by Dec 1943. However, that is much slower than the Poly Democracy Game did it because MacGalleo has ensured that the Soviets do not launch major attacks in the summer and fall of 1942.

Also, I've been looking at an awesome collection of military maps of all wars at the US Military Academy at West Point. The WWII Eastern Front maps at

http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/web03/atlases/ww2%20europe/WWIIEuropeIndex.html

have been extremely enlightening. The main thing is that after Citadel in July 1943, the Germans did not quit fighting hard. It took the Soviets 18 months to recapture what the Germans had taken in two months in 1941. It is interesting that the Soviets undertook no general offensives but that their various fronts attacked in sequence and that typical advances were of the order of 300 km or less before they ground to halt, probably because of difficult logistics.

Finally, coming to the point of all this, I think that there are two choices in how to proceed with the Redux: either keep German resistance more or less at the level that Captain Nemo has it or adjust it so that possible Soviet advances are within historical limits until the end of the summer of 1944 when German resistance started to crumble. In TOT, there are various ways to achieve the latter, including a reactive defense, changing unit stats and a new, deadly form of German counterattack that there is no way for players to anticipate or counter.

Opinions and advice please.

[Harry Tuttle]

Reactive defense and randomized German counterattacks.

[AGRICOLA]

@MacGalleo

I finally had enough of hotmail's temperamental attachments and uploaded a 1.4 Meg file for you, using Poly's upload service. You can access it here

http://apolyton.net/upload/view/28258_LOOKATMEIII.ZIP

[Colwyn]

rf1.5 tot

Laborers are not buildable in any of the versions until Dec 1941 when the RULES2 file replaces RULES1. The key question is whether the blue trucks (Refugees) can be built at the start. If not, the scen is unplayable. In my game, I had 250 of the little beggars at the start of the Soviet Dec turn and used every one of them. [/QUOTE]

Thats why in rf 1.5 you cannot build them! until rules2
Events and ones already in existance are what you begin with.

[AGRICOLA]

Senior moment and finger trouble.

[CapTVK]

Quelle surprise! You're away from Apolyton for a few months and the ToT RF release is ready.

[AGRICOLA]

It's coming along.

Alpha testing is currently at the end of 1944.

[MacGalleo]

Hi everybody,

I hadn’t much time for civilization the two last months.
I got married the last 23rd of august .

But I didn't completely forget Redfront. I'm nearly from a alpha (or a beta I hope) for four or five playtesters before a public playtesting.

Agricola suggest fairline, who initiated the idea of a Redux, and Cyrion. I think it's a good idea if they agree. I will need two or three others playtesters. Curt, you have made the cities graphics? Anyone else?

For the moment, I have a problem with Chieti :
to avoid the too many units problem, there is only one US unit : the G.I. Unit (attack : 80, defense 40). It works well and limits the number of spawned units.
But the US G.I. don’t want to attack this city. I don’t know why and how to resolve this problem. Bombers units attack the city (I tried with some US JU 88, it's just for test ), but then land units don’t attack. And with an empty city, the G.I. don’t capture it.
Have you ever seen this problem?

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by MacGalleo
Agricola suggest fairline, who initiated the idea of a Redux, and Cyrion. I think it's a good idea if they agree.

With pleasure if you're in no hurry: I won't be available before December: heaps of works in the 3 coming weeks, and after that 3 vacation weeks in Namibia!

[MacGalleo]

@Cyrion
No problem. I'm happy you agree...
I'm playing a game from the start to test the last changes. And the late parts of the game need some more attention.
When the scenario will be ready for a first playtesting, You can take command of Soviet forces to resist and to counter attack the invading Nazi.

[MacGalleo]

After I payed many and many redfronts to test the changes, one day, nothing anymore. After several months without anything done for this scenarios, I decided to finish all the changes, some days ago. After all the help you (Agricola and other) gave to me, I couldn't give up this project (I didn't want too, it's one of the best civ2's scenarios).

@Agricola : I tried to send you an email twice, but I got each time an "undelivered mail returned". I need your help again to make the sprites before making a beta release for a public playtesting. The list is in sprite.txt file. Let me know if you need the new units files to make the sprites.

[AGRICOLA]

@MacGalleo

Glad to hear that you have finished the scen . . . . it's been a long time since you began.

I just sent you an e-mail confirming that my address @hotmail hasn't changed since 2004.

Also, although I've been receiving a steady stream Viagra sales pitches and other junk as well as legit e-mails, I just deleted 1500 e-mails from 2004-2006to make sure that my in-box isn't full .

I'll take a shot at the sprites . . . . . if I can still remember how.

[MacGalleo]

@Agricola
I tried to answer your mail and I had a new "undelivered mail returned". So I will answer here.

After all the tests I made on redfront, one day I had enough of this scenario. I have waited a long time before I wanted to finish this. I'm sorry but I was completely unmotivated. It 's the bitterfrost 5 scenario which made I wanted to come back civ2 and finish redfront. (Many thanks to Curt, Bitterfrost 5 is a very good scenario, perhaps the best of the five bitterfrost)

I just need to make some copy and paste for the last events I added and I will make another game to test again. But I will not wait the end of my test to post the files for a public test. The first parts are ok for me. The last parts are ok too but need to be more tested. Perhaps there's a bug I didn't see.