Red October v.2.0 playtest

[civ2units]

Wow, I never thought, that things like trains only move on Railroad-Terrains are possible in TOT.
I would like to know how it works.
Maybe it is possible to make a how to do guide on the Civ-Wiki for the events and rules.

BtW, Tecumseh, I´m looking forward to your Red October Scenario, please post it as soon as possible

[Jerec]

Originally posted by civ2units
Wow, I never thought, that things like trains only move on Railroad-Terrains are possible in TOT.
I would like to know how it works.

IIRC, all terrain beside "rail bed" is impassable. All RRs are on the rail bed terrain. And with all units able to go on impassable terrain except trains...get the idea?

[civ2units]

I have to give all units the impassable terrain flag in the rules without the units I would like to use only on the RR´s?
Does it also works on Roads only? I would like to use this feature for my Conquest scenario...

Hopefully I´ve understand how it works...

[Jerec]

Originally posted by civ2units
Does it also works on Roads only? I would like to use this feature for my Conquest scenario...

Hopefully I´ve understand how it works...

I think you do. In Red October roads are single RR tracks, and the real railroads with no movement cost are double RR tracks. Hope that answers your question.

[AGRICOLA]

I'm at the end of the first turn and a few things have cropped up.

1. Do you intend that the CHEKA Inf be buildable by the Bolshies? The readme seems to suggest so when it says that "Added . . . . . . CHEKA Shock." CHEKA was one of the less savoury organizations spawned by the revolution.

2. I may be missing something but are irrigating and mining RR lines and building cities on RR's the only things that Workers can do? IIRC they were much more useful in the original RO.

3. I found some of the graphics impossible difficult to play with such as:
- single and double tracked RR's that look too similar
- an extremely cluttered and hard to read city screen, especially the huge resource icons
- a PEOPLE file that cannot be comprehended instantly in the City or Attitudes screens; the eye picks up color much faster than it differentiates shapes.

Attached are my versions of three key files, ICONS, PEOPLE, TERRAIN 1 that make play immeasurably easier. I imported about a quarter of your excellent FTG ICONS file to simplify things.
4. By any chance are "Guilty" and "Not Guilty" reversed when the CHEAT menu is opened?

As for the play, I'm following some very simple rules
1. Clobber the Whites wherever they are within reach
2. Posthaste depart areas swarming with Nationalists as they are not healthy places for revolutionaries
3. Make sure that the Bolshies can hold what they take
4. Leave a "cordon sanitaire" of White/Nationalist cities in the west to absorb the shock of any Central Power interference
5. Max out science to get the Train at the start of turn 4
6. Sell improvements to the max

[Cyrion]

Re: Re: Kronstadt

Originally posted by techumseh
Thanks, Cyrion. I found that when I went back to work on those events again after sending you the files. Did you get the new events with the Kronstadt "fix"?

The new events use a workaround. Following the Anarchist inspired revolt by the Kronstadt sailors, the Bolsheviks launched a desperate attack on the island fortress across temporary ice. So the event that creates the anarchist fort unit also changes the terrain from ocean to tundra - for one turn. The Reds have one chance to recapture the fortress with a ground attack.

If they fail to do so, the events now create the Entente fleet and a new Entente-controlled fort on ocean terrain, plus British ground forces. So if the Bolheviks control Kronstadt, the fleet will not appear.

Sorry techumseh, but the events files are identical in the 2 mail you sent!

Now that, thanks to your explanations, I have understood what you want, could you please send the updated event file?

I've been fiddling with the event file yesterday, trying to create this bolshevik Kronstadt after destroying the barbarian one, and couldn't do it! Actually, I tried a few different things with unit creation, with no success!

I'll start testing the scenario in earnest tonight!

[AGRICOLA]

@techumseh

I also have only the old set of events.

Can you make a quick decision on CHEKA Inf? I'm getting the TRAIN tech on turn 3 and need to know whether the immediately researchable Land Reform is the tech needed to build CHEKA Inf. From what I can see, this unit offers the best hope for turning back the attacks that you say are coming in the near future.


P.S. The resource icons for wheat on plains terrain and camels on desert terrain both look like oil gushers.

[fairline]

A few inital thoughts before playing too many turns:

- Railways: In v1 of RO I replaced double track rail with darker gfx from one of Curt's Dictator series to differentiate between single and double track, and retained the ligher grey ones you used in v1 for single track

- I wonder why the Red Guard poised to attack Yakutsk is not adjacent to the city, as all others are

- The German attack is far stronger than v1. The only thing that prevented certain capture of Moscow was a lucky diplomatic advance from the Kaiser offering peace. I naturally accepted, knowing that his troops would turn into deserters by the end of 1918 . This seems to leave the player's position in the early part of the scenario a little too precarious.

- The Brit invasion force around Murmansk were not too keen to attack immediately (typical Limeys - too busy brewing tea or something). They finally got their act together by Sep 18th but this had given me time to build up Murmansk's defences.

- Ditto the S. Caucasus Brit invasion. Perhaps they should be spawned next to their objective city?

- food and production city gfx are indistinct. I'm using some of Curt's

- Walled cities need to be more distinguishable from unwalled. I liked v1 use of smoke and flames for the un-walled cities.

I would like higher def stats for austin-putilovs. I know you won't let me have this

Samara has been raised after capture by the Whites, recapture by my Reds and subsequent defeat to more whites. This has left a nasty hole in the RR which in v1 could be rebuilt by the worker chappie. Seems he no longer has the ability to build RRs.

Continuing playtest with the second events file you sent. Is this right?

[fairline]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
Can you make a quick decision on CHEKA Inf? I'm getting the TRAIN tech on turn 3 and need to know whether the immediately researchable Land Reform is the tech needed to build CHEKA Inf. From what I can see, this unit offers the best hope for turning back the attacks that you say are coming in the near future.


P.S. The resource icons for wheat on plains terrain and camels on desert terrain both look like oil gushers.

The oil gushers can be removed by placing Catfish's dummy resource spr file in the scenario folder.

I thought I read somewhere that the Cheka blokes are made available following research of Red Terror, or some other advance?

[techumseh]

Sorry to be late responding, I was out of town last night. Thanks for your comments. I've resent the correct zip with the revised events.

AGRICOLA: There's an error on the pre-req for the Cheka Inf unit. It should be Rob (Shock Tactics). Don't build a strategy around its' early availability, as it's been put well out of reach. Shock Tactics requires both the Red Terror tech (Roc) which is given by events when the wonder of the same name is built, and the Rev. Military Coun. tech (Ref) which is given on Sept 1919 by events.

I'm sorry about the errors, I've been hurrying to get this finished before RL takes over completely. Please bear with me.

[techumseh]

The worker unit is now buildable (by the Bolsheviks), and is limited to railbed terrain. It can only build single-track (roads). The reason is that I didn't want an enterprising Red player to build a horde of workers and upgrade all the railways to double-track. To allow unlimited movement would ruin the game.

The reason workers are limited to railbed terrain is that if they could move onto other types of terrain, they could build single-track (roads) there, but the armoured trains still couldn't enter. I suppose I could allow them to convert terrain into railbed, but that gets more complicated and really beyond the scope I had in mind. During the period of the civil war, the trend was decidedly towards things falling apart, not expansion of the infrastructure.

Gareth, you can use your worker to either re-found Samarra, or to build single-track rail.

Given the terrain limitations of the worker unit, perhaps it might be more appropriate to replace the graphic with a rail-mounted steam crane. It would be very cool.

I replaced the railway graphics with a darker version, which looks older, at least to me. There is no visual difference between single and double track, except for the first graphic which is a wooden building. I hope to make some actual double track graphics before the release.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
4. By any chance are "Guilty" and "Not Guilty" reversed when the CHEAT menu is opened?

In the playtest version, you are allowed to plead not guilty, so that you can use cheat mode to check stuff.

In the release version, you will only be allowed to plead guilty, Comrade. The people have spoken!

[fairline]

Originally posted by techumseh
The worker unit is now buildable (by the Bolsheviks), and is limited to railbed terrain. It can only build single-track (roads). The reason is that I didn't want an enterprising Red player to build a horde of workers and upgrade all the railways to double-track. To allow unlimited movement would ruin the game.

The reason workers are limited to railbed terrain is that if they could move onto other types of terrain, they could build single-track (roads) there, but the armoured trains still couldn't enter. I suppose I could allow them to convert terrain into railbed, but that gets more complicated and really beyond the scope I had in mind. During the period of the civil war, the trend was decidedly towards things falling apart, not expansion of the infrastructure.

Agreed. This was the tactic I used in v1: lots of workers and trains with consequent unlimited movement of the latter once the workers had double-tracked everywhere Very bad form!

So long as the workers can build single-track RR on existing RR-bed terrain (ie bridge gaps in the RR left by destroyed cities), that's fine.

Given the terrain limitations of the worker unit, perhaps it might be more appropriate to replace the graphic with a rail-mounted steam crane. It would be very cool.

Oh, I suppose so. I'll have a go this weekend

Did they have anything that sophisticated in post-revolutionary russia? Wouldn't one of those man-powered railway trucks be better?

I replaced the railway graphics with a darker version, which looks older, at least to me. There is no visual difference between single and double track, except for the first graphic which is a wooden building. I hope to make some actual double track graphics before the release.

Best of luck with making a reasonable-looking set of 4 rails! I had a go myself, but it gets very messy at junctions. The light grey single / dark grey double RR does the job reasonably well.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by fairline


Agreed. This was the tactic I used in v1: lots of workers and trains with consequent unlimited movement of the latter once the workers had double-tracked everywhere Very bad form!

So long as the workers can build single-track RR on existing RR-bed terrain (ie bridge gaps in the RR left by destroyed cities), that's fine.

The trade off is allowing workers to build double-track rail or making them buildable.

Oh, I suppose so. I'll have a go this weekend

Did they have anything that sophisticated in post-revolutionary russia? Wouldn't one of those man-powered railway trucks be better?

It's a good bet that fairly sophisticated equipment was needed to maintain the Trans-Siberian and other long distance lines far from built-up areas.

[AGRICOLA]

@tech

Thanks for the new events and for the news that

The worker unit is now buildable (by the Bolsheviks), and is limited to railbed terrain. It can only build single-track (roads). The reason is that I didn't want an enterprising Red player to build a horde of workers and upgrade all the railways to double-track. To allow unlimited movement would ruin the game.

It seems that an unnamed revolutionary playtester in a burst of misguided revolutionary fervor
- inadequately tested his Red workers, found them wanting, and promptly disbanded the lazy kulaks and sent them to work in factories
- pillaged a section of every road that leads west from Petrograd, Novgorod, Rzhev, Smolensk and Bryansk
- planned that all future revolutionary movement towards the west would be along the RR's south of Kiev.

However, frightened that being disbanded for being inadequately revolutionary might lead to the firing squad, the workers immediately displayed remarkable revolutionary ingenuity and performed miracles of revolutionary production so that in the frozen February of 1918, when the cold made the revolutionary vodka flow like molasses, new revolutionary Armoured Trains rolled forth from the Red October factory in Petrograd, the Lokomotiv works in Moscow, and from 5 other revolutionary workshops from Baku to Irkutsk.