Peace in our times

[Jerec]

Originally posted by McMonkey
Thanks for the ideas CS. The governments happen to be the next thing I intend to work out as they are vital for getting the balance right. AFAIK the HP/FP determine how long a battle goes on for. I may tweak these too to see how that works. Longer battles could be fun!

If you have more HP, there is more attrition involved, instead of stats. A unit with excellent attack can lose to a poor defender because the defender had more HP, wearing its enemy down.

I have decided to go ahead with the 1936 start date and Spanish Civil War aspect. It is something new and should create a very interesting diversion in the early turns while the nations arm up for the big show.

Excellent idea.

[McMonkey]

Road movement Multiplier
You may well be right. I will look either doubling the multiplier to 6 or keeping it at 3 and doubling movement rates to see what works best. Doubling the road multiplier will have an effect on Infantry (Alpine flag) so I will need to test out what works best.

Some of the ideas I develop here will probably work their way into Fortress Europe if they work well.

Motorized Infantry
These are just general stats for basic unit types. I will also include Armoured/Mechanized Infantry and Panzer-Grenadiers. I have thought about making American and British Infantry more mobile to represent their organic transport. The Russian infantry often rode on the back of their tanks so I may try and represent this somehow. I suppose all armoured units had organic infantry so this may not be necessary.

I would like to define each nations Infantry somehow. For example the Russian Infantry should be cheaper to recruit, the Germans superior in defence and attack, the British and Americans more mobile and Amphibious.

Corps Artillery
In this scenario the Corps Artillery will be more powerful and a mobile as infantry across roads meaning they can deploy and attack in a single turn unlike the pretty useless ones in Appeasement.

[McMonkey]

I have been working on this scenario but have had little time to post the info about diplomatic house rules that I had hoped to discuss. Will post them soon.

For now I have attached a screenshot of the latest city placement. The colours of some of the Civs have been altered slightly to make them more visible. I am quite happy with the placement of Spanish cities and I am using a scaled down version of Pablostukas SCW unit placement as a basis for the deployment of Republican and Nationalist forces.

[Exile]

The big numbers are difficult to predict. Experience with high numbers seems to be that, if one goes high enough, you wind up with chaos, or chaotic outcomes, too often. Take a look at the old Charlemagne scenario by Mr. Temba.

If Spain's inclusion is a problem, why not try a novel map orientation that eliminates it? There's a very useful map orientation in Stokesbury's Short History of WWII.

[McMonkey]

Spain is not a problem, it is actually the part of the multiplayer game I am most looking forward to. In single player it would be extremely difficult to represent the Spanish Civil War but in a multiplayer game with some well thought out house rules it should be a lot of fun. All of the nations can become involved in one way or another. Germany and Italy can blood some of their troops in combat and practice their tactics. France, Britain and the US can either stay out of it as they did historically or provide the Republicans with weapons while the Nationalists(Dictatorships) and Republicans (Soviets) fight it out.

I will take a look at Mr Temba's scenario. I have experienced high unit stats in some of Eivinds scenarios and in Case's Appeasement and Aggression and they seem to work very well. By multiplying the usual Att/Def stats by 4 I can actually use fractional increases. IE Attack 25 divided by 4 equates to 6.25, 25 = 6.5, 26 = 6.75 and so on. The Hitpoints and Firepower stats are a different matter but I will experiment to see if I can come up with any interesting ideas.

[Elensar]

Hm. Not to discourage making intervention open (it was an option), but it should be easier for the fascist states to intervene than the democracies, one way or another. Even if just by house rule.

Maybe I'm too inclined to "history as it was". But having ti be readily available is not entirely a good thing.

Could be. Just posting my thoughts.

[McMonkey]

Getting the house rules right will take some work. I too am in favour of historical accuracy but think it is important to allow the player to be able to alter history. For example, France or Britain could easily have sent troops to support the Republicans, as Germany sent the Condor Legion, if the political climate had been right.

I will find a way to limit the number of troops that can be sent to fight directly or be gifted to the combatants. Eivind devised a good system for Proxy wars in First Strike where each side was allocated a quota based on shield cost which was calculated based on the size of the country the Proxy war was being fought in:

"A player may only bring with him x100 (planes count x200 (including helicopters), ships nothing) worth of units in terms of shields of what the actual city size is. If a proxy war is started in a size 5 city, the player is allowed to bring with him 500 shields worth of units.

Whole countries are represented, so if the country has more than one city, the city sizes are added together as one city size to determine how many shields may be brought along.

If you lose units in the fight you may send in additional reserve forces. You can send unlimited units into the territory, as long as you stay within the shield limit."

I will try and devise a similar method for the Spanish Civil War. There will also be diplomatic house rules that will govern the way the nations interact. Germany and Russia will have a fairly free hand while the Democracies will only be able to declare war if they have a valid pretext, such as Anschluss between Austria and Germany, violation of Czechoslovakia, Belgium or Poland's neutrality and so on.

This system may seem complex but most people into CivII will have a good background knowledge of the era and will hopefully enjoy the diplomatic role play element.

[Elensar]

Good stuff. I like the idea of being possible to alter history, but the default path should be similar to what happened historically.

I wish the AI was good enough to make this single player, I'm more unsure about going into a multiplayer game even though this sounds interesting. But that's a seperate discussion.

Should be fun to hear about.

[McMonkey]

Have been working on the tech tree today. I will use the one from Fortress Europe as a basis so this should be finished quite quickly. Once the tech tree is done the rest should follow quite easily.

What is it about multiplayer that puts you off Elensar?

I find them really challenging and you can engage in trade and diplomacy in a way that is virtually impossible in single player

[Elensar]

1) I'm used to singleplayer, and I'm one of those people (as part of my neurological condition) who doesn't adjust to new things gracefully.

2) Multiplayer requires getting other people together. Or to put it this way, there have to be other people around to play with. This is not a given.

2b) Nor is it a given that other players will be worth playing with.

Other than that, I'm fine with it. Other humans make much more interesting opponents than AIs.

Note on 2b: From what I can tell, the people who post here (Apolyton) regularly would be enjoyable to play with.

Problem is, you'd all probably kick my butt, but hey. Learning experience.

There's also the minor problem (in regards to Civ and some other such games, not so much on others) of not knowing where to go to look for multiplayer people.

As stated, I look forward to seeing this scenario, whether I play it or not. Good scenarios are fun to hear about.

[McMonkey]

In the past there were several very active multiplayer forums (Spanish Apolyton, CDG, Webring, Civ Fanatics, Apolyton). These seem to have gradually died out as the game has aged and new things have come along.

However the German Civ Webring is still very active and there is a small but dedicated core of players there. We are always looking for new players, they are like gold dust . All that is required is that they can play fairly promptly, don't disappear unannounced and are honest.

When I started there I knew little of the ways of multiplayer but had lots of fun getting my ass kicked. Now I can hold my own

The language thing is not a barrier. Most players are happy to post in English and for those who can't there are free translators available (which goes both ways) and German is not too hard to figure out really as long as it is not an essay! Its a friendly community much like Apolyton so anyone who is interested in joining in should feel free.

PLUG OVER

[McMonkey]

Could someone lend a hand?

Would some nice hex editing wizard fix the save so that the Colossus is available again please?

The save and other files can be downloaded at the bottom of this page:

1936 files

I also appear to have a slight problem with the units. I have used the twice removed trick which seems to work fine bar Armoured units. The only nation that can build tanks are the Italians. I don't think it is a problem with the Knight/Musketeer slot as far as I can see. If anyone can spot the problem I would be most grateful

BTW: These are not the final unit stats!

[McMonkey]

Sorted the unit problem. It was with the Knight/Musketeer slot after all plus you have to set the human player to see the units.

I still need the hex edit on the Colossus if someone would be so kind

[McMonkey]

Can anyone help with the hex edit (Agricola?). Until I get this fixed I cannot press on with in game changes to the scenario!

[MacGalleo]

Here's the hexedited sav file. Don't forget to give the bronze working tech to test the sav file...