Red October v.2.0 playtest

[our_man]

Techumseh, did you get my playtest report? I sent it a while back via e-mail.

[techumseh]

Yes, I did. I'm sorry to have been so negligent in my communication around here, but I've been heavily committed to other responsibilities. Now I will have more time. Here is our_man's report, part 1.

Hi Brian,

Here's my playtest report. Some general comments first. I did a lot better in this version than I did in previous version as I utilized the strategy AGRICOLA suggested on the forums. Pull out of Nationalist areas and leave a few buffer White cities between you and the Central Powers. You'll find a rough description of what happened in each turn below. Because I played more sensibly and defended a smaller area than I had in previous versions I was able to hold more, especially against the Central Powers. The only time I ever got a very bad feeling was with the Czech Revolt. I was very, very lucky - a well-positioned artillery piece outside of Kazan managed to wipe out most of their forces W of the Urals. I then used Trotsky to spearhead the advance to liberate Sibera from the Whites. This was definitely the most dramatic part of the game - I had barely stopped the German advance outside of Moscow, the Nationalists had carved up a large part of my empires periphery, foreign soldiers landing to support uprisings everywhere, the Whites resurgent - I was beginning to feel overwhelmed. If it were not for the Trotsky superunit I might have been. Still, I thought everything was pretty much touch and go until around turn 12/13. After this watershed, my empire never really felt threatened again and it was simply a race against time to grab as much territory as possible. Future White counterattacks were annoyances rather than direct threats. Once I got over to Eastern Russia I feel that it's worth commenting on how much of a fight the Japanese gave - they had more units than I expected! Also, I like the way you reduced the cost of buildings. This is not a scenario about building improvements, and selling the existing ones is no longer as profitable as it way. I did however plunder Germany's fine universities due to their capitalist influence once I had taken over there for a nice sum. In the end I finished the game with every objective but Seoul.

Some questions that came up during play
Ć Shock Tactics - what does researching this do? It seems like a useless advance for the Soviets.
Ć Commissars need to be corrected to they can bribe cities.
Ć There's Cheka Infantry under Land Reform but I can't build them - why are they there?

Some possible suggestions
Ć Make Trotsky weaker
Ć Beef up some of the later White attacks
Ć I did a naughty thing by killing the Entente civ (don't worry - it was around turn 45!). A few more Western Front units are needed around Belgium methinks

Also, I saved at the end of every turn to record my progress. Would you like me to send these files onto you? The only one I have attached at the moment is my endgame save file.

I enjoyed the scenario a lot, it needs one or two playability tweaks to make it a little harder after the first 15 or so turns (which are very difficult!). There are also some general housekeeping things that need to be addressed as has already been mentioned above.

Thank you very much for letting me playtest; I hope my feedback is of some use to you. If you want any more specific details about anything, let me know.

James

[techumseh]

Here is our-man's play by play. Thanks James. I'll respond to your points shortly.

THE (ALMOST) MONTH BY MONTH BREAKDOWN

Turn 0:

33 cities under B ctrl. Adopted AGRICOLA' strategy of pulling out of Nat areas.

Turn 1:

43 cities under B ctrl. Counc of Com disc, R&D Internationalism

Turn 2
Internationalism disc, R&D War Comm, Cominterm started Moscow


Turn 4 (Mar 1918)
Central Powers Off, War Communism disc, R&D Workers Ctrl, several cities building artillery for shield accrual switched to Conscripts

Turn 5

Turn 6 (May 1918)
Workers Ctrl discovered, R&D Armoured Train
Loss of Rostov, Smolensk to Germans


Turn 7 (June 1918)
Czech Revolt, German ceasefire, British intervention, some cities in central Asia lost to Whites

Turn 8 (July 1918)
British troops land, Trotsky arrives, Cominterm built Moscow. Decision made to use Trostky to spearhead advance into Siberia and end White revolt there.

Turn 9 (Aug 1918)
White minor offensive in Caucasus

Turn 10 (Sep 1918)
Dunsterforce, Archangel & Vladivostok

Turn 11 (Oct 1918)
CHEKA discovered, R&D Cavalry Tactics

Turn 12 (Nov 1918)
Central Powers Armistice, all troops except stormtroops become deserters

Turn 13 (Dec 1918)
Bolshevik geurillas appear, Kolchack becomes leader in Siberia, Polish revolt - capture Warsaw, Posen, Danzig, Krakow, Brest-Litovsk, Lemberg.

Turn 14 (Jan 1919)
Cavalry Tactics discovered, R&D Land Reform. Break cease-fire with Germans, weak Red Guard units positioned near Stormtroops so they will be wasted on Germans go. French landings at Odessa (text)

Turn 15 (Feb 1919)
Spartikist uprising in German. 24 Spartacists created. Berlin captured, all Red Guard upgraded to conscripts! Berlin, Leipzig, Stuttgart & Prague captured. Text for this appears after Bolshevik turn; Freikorps formed.

Turn 16 (Mar 1919)
Vienna, Koln, Hamburg captured.

Turn 17 (Apr 1919)
Breslau captured. Make peace with Poles

Turn 18 (May 1919)
Kolchack forces attack W of Omsk.

Turn 19 (Jun 1919)
Denikin blurb.

Turn 20 (Jul 1919)
Aviation discovered, R&D National Policy (last available tech!)

Turn 28 (Mar 1920)
Yudenvish Off, White support by Entente ends.

Turn 30 (May 1920)
Poles declare war on Russia

Turn 31 (Jun 1920)
Red Army discovered, R&D NEP

Turn 32 (Jul 1920)
Last Ukranian city captured. 400 roubles donated to treasury. Peasant uprisings.

Turn 33 (Aug 1920)
Some peasant uprisings.

Turn 34 (Sept 1920)
Discovered NEP. R&D Konarmiya

TUrn 39 (Feb 1921)
Poles destroyed. Discovered Shock Tactics. R&D Trade

Turn 40 (Mar 1921)
Kronstadt revolt - unit killed, terrain changes back to ocean but unit does not revert back to my control.

Turn 42 (May 1921)
Discovered Trade. Tech tree finished.

[EZRhino]

Bump!

[curtsibling]

When is this fine scenario due to attack the working classes?

[techumseh]

It needs a final run through by me. I haven't found the motivation to do it up to now, having played the thing umpteen gazillion times. I hope to release it before my summer project, Blood and Iron.

[curtsibling]

The Bismarck scenario sounds most promising, can't wait for that, and this little gem too!

[Dr Kellogg]

October v1 ist still one of my favourite scenarios. I can't wait to play v2!

Blood and Iron sounds indeed promising. Do you know how many years I've been waiting for that one?!
>> http://coc.apolyton.net/scenarios/index-preview.shtml

[techumseh]

Me too! A couple of weeks ago, when Fairline and I were determining what units we needed, I said I had a strong feeling of deja vu. Sure enough, we had virtually the same conversation 7 years earlier!

The first version was abandoned because the map turned out to be too large, and the timeframe too long. I've eliminated the Franco-Austrian War and the Risorgiamento and used a smaller map, so the second version is more focused on the wars leading to German unification. I think it will work much better.

[ogsamsa]

Hey, Tecumseh! I only stumbled across this thread today (more about that in a sec.) I am thrilled that an update to Red October is being released; I think it to easily be the best Civ scenario made, especially for TOT. I am also glad you still make TOT scenarios, because it's my opinion that, scenario-wise at least, it's the best version of Civ available.

I stumbled across this thread looking for an answer to a question that probably sounds stupid and has been answered a number of times before: In v.1, what is the effect of the choices between Stalin, Lenin, Dzherzhinsky, etc. at the beginning, and what is the effect of the choice between the 'Trotskyist' and 'Stalinist' factions towards the end of the scenario?

[techumseh]

Hi ogsamsa. I'm glad you like the scenario. RO v.2.0 has been ready for a while, I just haven't found time to upload it. Towards the end of next week, my work will let up a bit, so I'll try to get it up after that. Also a ToT conversion of my old fantasy scenario "Prince of Darkness", with a graphic update (thanks be to Fairline).

In v.1, what is the effect of the choices between Stalin, Lenin, Dzherzhinsky, etc. at the beginning, and what is the effect of the choice between the 'Trotskyist' and 'Stalinist' factions towards the end of the scenario?

The first is just an expansion and renaming of the male/female leader choice, the second is just picking a spaceship component renamed. Both are just for color and have no effect on the game.

[McMonkey]

Techumseh

I have just spent the past week playing Red October ToT and having a great time doing so! I just wanted to congratulate you on making such an exciting and absorbing scenario.

After several poor starts I devised a strategy to take as many cities as I could at the start of the game but only try and hold onto a central core around Moscow, Petrograd, Kiev, Tsaritsyn and the Urals. Once I had weathered the storm I would go onto the offensive. This worked out well and I only missed out on a decisive victory by one point. I just couldn't get to British held Vladivostock in time, I was agonizingly close. In the west I had wiped out the evil Polish and taken Bucharest, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Berlin. If my Armoured trains were of the western gague I would probably have got that precious extra point.



The game played very well with no obvious bugs. I never got any Cheka Infantry, Red Infantry or Konarmiya Cavalry but I guessed they may be linked to some event that I failed to trigger. The Commisar unit seems a bit redundant as I never found anyone to bribe. It would have been great to get a FT17 or a Whippet for the Red Army. The Peasant Revolt at the end of the game gave me a few problems but the Germans and Czech Legion seemed to be the biggest threat. I enjoyed the way that just as one crisis was averted another one was ready to take its place.

The most important units seem to be the Conscript Infantry and Artillery with the Armoured Trains being most useful on the Trans Siberian RR. I didn't build many Cavalry or Armoured Cars, though the Cars I did have came in useful when called upon. I did build quite a few Fighters which gave good service in the west as rapid reaction attackers and for hunting enemy Artillery batteries.

Anyway, well done Tech. Top work

[GhostOfDisco]

So... when can we non-beta testers get to download this?

[McMonkey]

I think the version I played was downloaded from Tecumseh's Village and I just added on the newer graphics, though I may be wrong. I would say that despite a few very minor bugs this is as complete a ToT scenario as I have seen. No need to refer to it as a Beta in my humble opinion

EDIT:

I have just been checking to try and work out where I got the files from. The version I have has a text file called playtesters notes and all the changes listed in post#1 of this thread have been made. Maybe I did get them e-mailed from Tech. Perhaps he can confirm if the files available at his site are the most up to date ones?

[techumseh]

Drew, if I emailed you the updated files, would you post them on the wiki for me?