OStfront Playtest Thread

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by civ2units
I played now until September 1944, the Allies started their not so successfully invasion on Italy. Palermo, Messina and Naples now under their control. But I have destroyed most of the Allied army. The complete Middle Eastern is under my control. German forces attempts to conquer the last Soviet city on this map.

NICE!

Victory is more or less assured once Mosocw, Leningrad and London are gone.
I tend to avoid Stalingrad, unless it starts churning out too many Sturmoviks!

Originally posted by civ2units
Two maybe bugs I´ve found:
Since I´ve researched Mobile Artillery II I can´t build the Assault Gun.

An oversight of mine! I intended the Assault Gun to be replaced with the powerful SU-122s and Nashorn types, but I
didn't consider the minor civs! Oops! I will make the Assault Gun a 'nil' obsolete unit, so it can be built always.

To fix your game, just put 'nil' instead of 'Plu' -

Originally posted by civ2units
Germany was victorious during the battle of Stalingrad. On every summer or winter file since 1943 Civ shows me the message. I don´t know if the programm also generate everytime the Wolga Waffen SS

This is due to Delevents - Because the victory is triggered by a tech, rather than being a city capture
like the other events that award units, it will flag up when the events are refreshed...There are two
ways around this...Drop the event after 1942 has ran past, or just live with the refreshed event...

What I could do is have the major battle for Stalingrad pop up during Summer/Winter 1942, and later
have the city being taken, and a large single attack in 1943/1944/1945 events, that will stop the
Volga Waffen SS event popping up all the time. Just one-time a city event that does not respawn.

Originally posted by civ2units
For me the unit stats are very good. It´s really a challenge to play with the minor civs.

Glad to hear that -

The multi files with options for Allies/Axis was something I should have done ages ago!

[curtsibling]

Question time!

Are all the people doing the playtest OK if I put all your
names together (EG: Reply All) when sending out zips?

I respect the need for privacy, but it would speed up the
sending process of getting updates to everyone at once!

Tell me what you all think!

[civ2units]

For me it´s no problem when you put my mail together with the others.

[rmsharpe]

Doesn't matter to me.

[curtsibling]

I'll wait till a few others react, so I can send the edited multi-files zip to everyone.

[PietH]

no problem for me.

Curt, could you check if the new event files you sent require an ost.sav or a d7.sav file? The winter 43 files for the axis seem to require a d7.sav file.

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by PietH
no problem for me.

Curt, could you check if the new event files you sent require an ost.sav or a d7.sav file? The winter 43 files for the axis seem to require a d7.sav file.

You are right - Well-spotted!

The batch-file was looking for D7 at Winter 1943 - Fixed now!

New batch attached!

[PietH]

I finished my game as the germans (I think..). I was close to a total defeat of the allies (russians were wiped out) but ran out of time before I could take the last city St. John's.
The allies were agressive with many landings in western europe. Also in Italy they got up to Florence before forcing me to step in and push them back. Or push them back: the italians didn't like me walking around in northern Italy and blocked all the roads. So I did a surprise landing at Taranto and attacked the allies in the back.

On deity the game is better then D7, more balanced challenging. I'm using a wider range of units, more open battle and more need for defensive weapons. I think the new setting for the AA is a big improvement. It's no longer an invulnerable unit that only mobile arty can destroy. But effective enough against one or two air attacks. And I still want the Sexton back and the Wolverine out.

Btw, when does the game end? The game apparantly has 67 turns, so from june '41 that would mean it would have to go to november '46? But there are no event files after summer '45...?

About game endings: still a shame they didn't bring back into CivII that feature at the end of CivI, where you got to see the whole game quickly evolve on the total map. The different colours for the civilisations coming and going.

Last remark: the background when loading the new ost.sav game after changing the files still says Dictator VII. Plus the name Ostfront is somewhat misleading when a great deal of the fighting is done in western europe, northern africa and even north america.

[curtsibling]

Cheers for the feedback, PietH!

Indeed - There are still a few little changes to be made:
things like Title.gif and the game-turns will be fixed soon!

I also would like to see the old civ-colour map-evolution-
endgame thing! It was good to watch the rise and fall
of empires and their spheres of influence come and go...



So, big question - !
Apart from little details...
Would you say Ostfront is ready to go?

[PietH]

It's on the same level as the Dictator series scenarios, so I don't see why not.

[curtsibling]

Cool!

I will begin to put together the ReadMe and final touches!

[GhostOfDisco]

Played the playtest a little while back, haven't posted on my report because I'm lazy.

Anyway, I might be repeating what other people have said, but this scenario is not you'r grandfather's Dictator. (OK, so the Dictator series, to say nothing of Civ II itself, has only been around for some years, so your grandpa couldn't play the series before you could, but you get the point. :P ) Playing as the Allies with the Allied rules and events, I noticed the AI is much more aggressive than the old one seemed. The Axis attacked my positions with tanks, planes, infantry, you name it. In one of my early playtests of the scenario, I did a common tactic that I tend to do with a scenario of this map: take Le Havre, then besiege Paris. I thought that with one artillery piece and a few infantry units to defend the artillery, I thought my position was safe until I could bring more artillery pieces to the fight. Wrong! The siege became a war of attrition as the AI destroyed my infantry (both foot and mechanized) and I kept sending units from Britain to France to shore up my lines outside Paris. In a later playtest, I did manage to successfully implement the Le Havre- Siege of Paris strategy, but first I made sure the initial invasion force had a lot more artillery.

I also noticed that the Vichy French in the Middle East actually have some formidable forces (in Dictator they were a pushover) and that the North African force in Egypt is a lot less powerful, therefore making the push to Tripoli and Tunis more of a challenge. The Allied fleet in the Mediterranean is less powerful, and (as seems the course in this series) bombarding coastal cities with ships is a bad idea (it seems every city has naval defenses; I presume this is to encourage confining naval bombardment to the countryside.)

I haven't played that much (to late 41, early 42 at the most) so far, but I like what I see!

[curtsibling]

Great! I am delighted you liked it, GhostOfDisco!

I also noticed the AI was a total swine when it came to their infuriating attacks - I ended up being side-tracked into many
mini-wars just to gain vengeance over singular bunches of enemy units that had caused me a humiliating defeat...!

Indeed, I was sick of seeing the BBs and other naval pests blowing the hell out of any unit in a city, now such antics
will be done at a great cost, unless the city is reduced to non-defensive units. It was also to force the player to use
his naval units to fight ships, as in WW2, a battleship vs a shore artillery was a risky mission...Even a Tiger Tank
was able to sink a ship at one point - Ouch!!!

I really enjoy the battles, which flow along nicely if the player builds up a good mass of rapid infantry, AA guns, siege
units and tanks...The system encourages combined arms. I think this is the new benchmark of unit stats for any of my
mechanical era scenarios...After many ages of trying, I think I finally hit on the most addictable formula for war!

[PietH]

I did a round of passive play as the french. Did plenty of switching between the human players to see how the casualties developed. Funny to see was that the in the West the war was fought on the seas. The french were succesful in maintaining most of their ground in north africa, and the battle in Italy was very fierce.
And for some reason there was no normandy D-Day landing in summer '44. In my game as the germans there was, even though I had captured all of england.

In the east the war was pretty static, with the germans not progressing much, not getting past Riga and Kiev and losing Odessa pretty early in the game.
But after may '45 the future weapons of the germans started to make a difference, allowing them to slowly gain ground against the soviets.

My next game will be as the soviets.

Btw, weren't you set to sent out an edited multi-files zip?

[curtsibling]

The D-Day attack can hinge on the Allied victory (or non-victory) in Africa...

About the multifiles...Post 52, my good man!

Or email me and I will send the most up to date version!