The Eurasian Wars!

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by civ2units
One suggestion I have:
I´ve noticed, that you are using an independend and a neutral civ. Is this really neccessary? Because I would include the French instead of one of the civs and starting the game in June '40.

It would be cool to do this, but it would present a nightmare to implement at this stage...!
The independants/barbs already have cities to conquer. And if the barbs were made into the
neutraks, then hex-editing would be needed to keep the AI from going after them. Also, I
notice having tons of barb cities tends to make the AI act a bit funny, and their focus
tends to waver away from where the designer wishes it to be (Axis vs Allies)...

But not to worry! Ostfront has the French civ included, and you will be please to know that
I am working on a new (and vastly improved) upgrade of this epic, based on Eurasian Wars!

Stay tuned!

[civ2units]

Yes, it´s too much work to change the scenario now.
Maybe the French are also too small to represent a fully complete civ in your scenario.

I will start a new game with the Allies.

[curtsibling]

Good luck! And give em' hell!

[AGRICOLA]

This is my final playtest report. I’m on turn 30, June 1943, and will keep playing but I doubt that any significant new problems will crop up.

The scen has played very well with lots of scope for freelancing.


GOOD CHANGES FROM PREVIOUS VERSION

RR’s are buildable.
Some of the new unit stats significantly improve the balance of the scen.
The new, lighter colored, city and terrain improvement graphics are excellent.
Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad and other major cities are on river terrain where possible.
Can now pillage fortresses.
Pine replaced with wildlife as a resource on tundra terrain.
Italians can no longer build Panthers.
V-2 and Workers eliminated from the units table.


MINOR COMMENTS

1. There are two T-34’s in the units list. Unless I’m mistaken, the second one is a T-34/85 with an enlarged turret to accommodate its 85 mm gun.

2. In Events, “Rommel is furious as the Italian cohorts rout, and the German HQ in El Agheila falls to the Allies...” should be changed to “. . . as the Italian cohorts are routed . . .”

3. You may want to change the green parts of the industry icon to magenta while retaining the black factory and the smoke. The green needlessly obscures many of the roads and RR’s in squares with industry.

4. I was wondering if the spawning of Lancasters in Britain and the landing of Commandos on the continent should end once London or Belfast has been captured by any enemy. The nearest Allied bases would have been Gibraltar or Canada, both beyond bomber range and neither with the manpower or means to transport or land Commandos. This is not serious problem because it is easy enough to counter the spawning.

5. Is there a way initially to have diplomatic contact with Soviets and peace between Germany and Russia so that can ask the other side to withdraw units. The only reason that I ended up fighting the Russians in 1941 was that there was no other way to stop their infiltration. IIRC, historically, Stalin was very careful not to rile Hitler while Russia was rearming.

6. I have no idea how the masks for civ colors work but could one possibly use them to put the proper civ color in health bars? I know that the colored civ ID square on a health bar can be made to appear white on the game map by changing the magenta square to white in UNITS.

7. Any chance that the German’s capturing a city to the east like Magnetogorsk rather than discovering a new tech could end the Russian response to the loss of Stalingrad? After capturing Stalingrad in March 1943 and an initial bout of “Shock and Awe” at the Russian response, I managed to counter it rather easily. Afterwards I was curious to see what EVENTS considers to be the expected player response. The proper response is indeed interesting, but very expensive! I’m sorry to say that having to quickly discover yet another tech would have cost me ~15,000 gold. German science was reduced to 20%, Einsteins converted to bean counters and science improvements sold off in October 1942 (turn 22).



MAJOR PROBLEM

The elimination of Airports as city improvements has reduced the effectiveness of air forces by more 50%. The new ability to build RR’s should more than compensate for the absence of Airports.

Unfortunately, this is not the case because engineers are not buildable and too few are spawned to build RR’s when and where they are needed, either for long distance transportation, productivity improvement or for building fortresses to support front line units. Starting Germany with 4 engineers and spawning one every 2.5 turns [ RANDOMTURN DENOMINATOR = 4 ] is not adequate for any large civ.

At the start of the scen, I changed EVENTS to spawn 3 engineers/2 turns. This rate has provided enough units to build RR’s and industry on about 60% of the highly productive squares in Europe; to build an almost straight (small kink at L’vov ) Trans-Siberian RR from Amsterdam to past Stalingrad; and to build the Southern Trans-Asia RR from Warsaw to the outskirts of Mosul . . . . . not a particularly great performance considering that German forces are near Magnitogorsk and already occupy Mandalay in Burma.

Spawning at the original rate, by turn 30 (June 1943) I would have approximately 4 + (30/2.5) = 16 engineers . . . . . that’s fewer than are now operating with front line units. With the new spawning rate, the present total is 45. However, if engineers were buildable, I could and would have built at least 50 engineers much earlier in the scen without suffering a significant reduction in fighting strength.

Because there are separate events and rules for each protagonist civ, it should be no problem to keep the present .scn file but to edit the protagonist civ’s engineer spawning in its events file. I would suggest that 3 engineers/2 turns is a reasonable number for any civ that has a chance for world conquest. From what I can tell, all the major civs have the potential to conquer the world . . . . even the Allies can start a war with the Russians.

Non-protagonist civs can continue to spawn engineers at the present rates. The AI doesn’t know what to do with them anyway. Events could stop protagonist spawning at 60-70 engineers, a number that should be adequate for most players.



MY GAME

It looks like total victory might be possible in late 1944.

Europe and Africa are conquered; the two Neutral cities that remain in the Middle East are surrounded by Waffen SS; the Allies have been reduced to one city on Borneo; the Russians have lost nearly half their cities in less than a year; and there is nothing in the Japanese or Chinese OOB that poses a serious threat to the Wehrmacht.

The German OOB in June 1943 includes the following units that have been built since the start of the scen:

153 . . . Jagdpanthers (assault guns)
54 . . . . Assault Guns (generic)
127 . . . Pz VI Tigers (
11 . . . . Waffen SS (elite infantry)
148 . . . Do-335 (multiple attack fighter and ground attack a/c)
4 . . . . . Battleships
3 . . . . . Carriers
36 . . . . Invasion Fleets (transports)

With a NET cash flow of 4350 gold/month, 30-40 units can be IRB monthly.
There are 492 unit slots available in June ’43.

I have always felt that conquering Russia from west to east is about as thrilling as squeezing a very long tube of toothpaste. To liven things up a bit, there is an eastbound invasion convoy north of Siberia. It is transporting 40+ assorted ground units and includes a Carrier with 24 Do-335’s on board. It is escorted by 3 Battleships, 1 Cruiser and 3 U-boats. In July it will make landfall north of Cherskiy, capture the city and use it as a base to take the other isolated Siberian cities.

The bulk of the convoy will then pass through Bering Strait and set course for Vladivostok to start squeezing the Russian toothpaste tube from the east and the Japanese one from the north. That sounds like fun!

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
This is my final playtest report. I’m on turn 30, June 1943, and will keep playing but I doubt that any significant new problems will crop up. The scen has played very well with lots of scope for freelancing.

I am glad you are enjoying it, sir!

I feel EW is getting close to being very playable and a good stats/design benchmark for any of my future modern war scens.

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
GOOD CHANGES FROM PREVIOUS VERSION

RR’s are buildable.
Some of the new unit stats significantly improve the balance of the scen.
The new, lighter colored, city and terrain improvement graphics are excellent.
Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad and other major cities are on river terrain where possible.
Can now pillage fortresses.
Pine replaced with wildlife as a resource on tundra terrain.
Italians can no longer build Panthers.
V-2 and Workers eliminated from the units table.

And thanks for many of the pointers! I realised the wisdom of much of the advice I was getting from people here.
Things like workers and V2s did not serve as much more than eye-candy flavour units. Creating generic militia
units for the neutrals and new units for the the Soviets. The new cities made things easier to see too!

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
1. There are two T-34’s in the units list. Unless I’m mistaken, the second one is a T-34/85 with an enlarged turret to accommodate its 85 mm gun.

That is true! One is the early war T-34, the other is the later 85. The events always spawn whatever one is on the AI's build-list.

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
2. In Events, “Rommel is furious as the Italian cohorts rout, and the German HQ in El Agheila falls to the Allies...” should be changed to “. . . as the Italian cohorts are routed . . .”

Grammar-failure will be repaired!

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
3. You may want to change the green parts of the industry icon to magenta while retaining the black factory and the smoke. The green needlessly obscures many of the roads and RR’s in squares with industry.

I agree - I had noticed this too - I'll add this to the next update!

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
4. I was wondering if the spawning of Lancasters in Britain and the landing of Commandos on the continent should end once London or Belfast has been captured by any enemy. The nearest Allied bases would have been Gibraltar or Canada, both beyond bomber range and neither with the manpower or means to transport or land Commandos. This is not serious problem because it is easy enough to counter the spawning.

Yep - I basically kept this event to make life annoying for a triumphant Axis.

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
5. Is there a way initially to have diplomatic contact with Soviets and peace between Germany and Russia so that can ask the other side to withdraw units. The only reason that I ended up fighting the Russians in 1941 was that there was no other way to stop their infiltration. IIRC, historically, Stalin was very careful not to rile Hitler while Russia was rearming.

This is where CIV'2 wonky engine comes into the mix. The main problem with opening diplo events at this point is that while it is easy to have the German player talking to the Russians, and theoretically have events switch off diplomacy as soon as the Germans attack Stalin, I could not get the event to work! The AI kept trying to talk! I would like to have a failsafe event that stops any talk from Russia as soon as the player attacks. This could be used for the Japanese as well in regards to the Allies. Would you be up for helping me out with this? I am sure I am missing something...Perhaps events/flags are an option?

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
6. I have no idea how the masks for civ colors work but could one possibly use them to put the proper civ color in health bars? I know that the colored civ ID square on a health bar can be made to appear white on the game map by changing the magenta square to white in UNITS.

Done! I added in a colour strip on top of the health-bar. I like the less cluttered look, so I might add in the edited bar with the next zip, with the option for the player to cut/n/paste the graphic in if they prefer. I like to give options!

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
7. Any chance that the German’s capturing a city to the east like Magnetogorsk rather than discovering a new tech could end the Russian response to the loss of Stalingrad? After capturing Stalingrad in March 1943 and an initial bout of “Shock and Awe” at the Russian response, I managed to counter it rather easily. Afterwards I was curious to see what EVENTS considers to be the expected player response. The proper response is indeed interesting, but very expensive! I’m sorry to say that having to quickly discover yet another tech would have cost me ~15,000 gold. German science was reduced to 20%, Einsteins converted to bean counters and science improvements sold off in October 1942 (turn 22).

I am open to suggestions on this! And it is pretty easy to implement...What city would be best to end the siege?
The only trouble would be that a player might take the trigger city early...Unless there are multiple trigger cities?

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
MAJOR PROBLEM

The elimination of Airports as city improvements has reduced the effectiveness of air forces by more 50%. The new ability to build RR’s should more than compensate for the absence of Airports.

Unfortunately, this is not the case because engineers are not buildable and too few are spawned to build RR’s when and where they are needed, either for long distance transportation, productivity improvement or for building fortresses to support front line units. Starting Germany with 4 engineers and spawning one every 2.5 turns [ RANDOMTURN DENOMINATOR = 4 ] is not adequate for any large civ.

At the start of the scen, I changed EVENTS to spawn 3 engineers/2 turns. This rate has provided enough units to build RR’s and industry on about 60% of the highly productive squares in Europe; to build an almost straight (small kink at L’vov ) Trans-Siberian RR from Amsterdam to past Stalingrad; and to build the Southern Trans-Asia RR from Warsaw to the outskirts of Mosul . . . . . not a particularly great performance considering that German forces are near Magnitogorsk and already occupy Mandalay in Burma.

Spawning at the original rate, by turn 30 (June 1943) I would have approximately 4 + (30/2.5) = 16 engineers . . . . . that’s fewer than are now operating with front line units. With the new spawning rate, the present total is 45. However, if engineers were buildable, I could and would have built at least 50 engineers much earlier in the scen without suffering a significant reduction in fighting strength.

Because there are separate events and rules for each protagonist civ, it should be no problem to keep the present .scn file but to edit the protagonist civ’s engineer spawning in its events file. I would suggest that 3 engineers/2 turns is a reasonable number for any civ that has a chance for world conquest. From what I can tell, all the major civs have the potential to conquer the world . . . . even the Allies can start a war with the Russians.

Non-protagonist civs can continue to spawn engineers at the present rates. The AI doesn’t know what to do with them anyway. Events could stop protagonist spawning at 60-70 engineers, a number that should be adequate for most players.

One method to free up unit slots and make things simple would be to only award engineers to the events player! If you are playing as Japan (for instance) then only Japan will get engineers. That way the AI is not making a mess of the terrain, and also concentrates on war and nowt else! Great idea, Agricola! This also saves events room, and streamlines the scen! I will take your recommendations on spawn rates and use these as a benchmark.

Top marks, my man!

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
MY GAME

It looks like total victory might be possible in late 1944.

Europe and Africa are conquered; the two Neutral cities that remain in the Middle East are surrounded by Waffen SS; the Allies have been reduced to one city on Borneo; the Russians have lost nearly half their cities in less than a year; and there is nothing in the Japanese or Chinese OOB that poses a serious threat to the Wehrmacht.

The German OOB in June 1943 includes the following units that have been built since the start of the scen:

153 . . . Jagdpanthers (assault guns)
54 . . . . Assault Guns (generic)
127 . . . Pz VI Tigers (
11 . . . . Waffen SS (elite infantry)
148 . . . Do-335 (multiple attack fighter and ground attack a/c)
4 . . . . . Battleships
3 . . . . . Carriers
36 . . . . Invasion Fleets (transports)

With a NET cash flow of 4350 gold/month, 30-40 units can be IRB monthly.
There are 492 unit slots available in June ’43.

I have always felt that conquering Russia from west to east is about as thrilling as squeezing a very long tube of toothpaste. To liven things up a bit, there is an eastbound invasion convoy north of Siberia. It is transporting 40+ assorted ground units and includes a Carrier with 24 Do-335’s on board. It is escorted by 3 Battleships, 1 Cruiser and 3 U-boats. In July it will make landfall north of Cherskiy, capture the city and use it as a base to take the other isolated Siberian cities.

The bulk of the convoy will then pass through Bering Strait and set course for Vladivostok to start squeezing the Russian toothpaste tube from the east and the Japanese one from the north. That sounds like fun!

Good move with the 2nd Far East front! I had a good laugh conquering the map, and my production plan was onw where I 'capped' the amount of units at a certain amount. I was sort of role-playing, giving my industry a big order of say 20-40 units, and then sending these to the combat fronts. I also kept the waffen SS troops almost exclusively on invasion fleets as the Axis version of a 'Marine Corps'...I look forward to starting an new game once I add the recommendations here into practice...If you can get back to me on the dimplomacy and stalingrad events, I would be chuffed, dude!

As ever, totally great advice, and many thanks for the playtests too!
I also want to extend my thanks to everyone here for all their awesome help!

A new version of EW will hopefully be out for giftmas - !
And also a totally new mini-scen out for the hols!

All the best! And stay tuned!

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by curtsibling
I am open to suggestions on this! And it is pretty easy to implement...What city would be best to end the siege?
The only trouble would be that a player might take the trigger city early...Unless there are multiple trigger cities?

You really can’t predict what players will do. Personally it seems to depend a lot on which side of the bed I staggered out of in the morning. In this instance, the only thing that can be done is to try to ensure that it will take them a few turns to turn off the response.

Consequently, I’d look for a city or cities that are some distance east of Stalingrad – preferably choke points that would actually prevent reinforcements from eastern Russia from reaching the city. Magnitogorsk is the obvious choice but there are sets of 2 cities both west and east of it that interdict the major roads to Stalingrad.

To make things a bit more difficult for players, one might try to ensure that there is an aircraft and an AA unit with each stack. Also, if the Russian stacks are immediately outside the city, the problems increase for players.

Originally posted by curtsibling
This is where CIV'2 wonky engine comes into the mix. The main problem with opening diplo events at this point is that while it is easy to have the German player talking to the Russians, and theoretically have events switch off diplomacy as soon as the Germans attack Stalin, I could not get the event to work! The AI kept trying to talk! I would like to have a failsafe event that stops any talk from Russia as soon as the player attacks. This could be used for the Japanese as well in regards to the Allies. Would you be up for helping me out with this? I am sure I am missing something...Perhaps events/flags are an option?

I tried playing around with treaties between Germany and Russia but got nowhere. Even with asymmetric diplomacy, where Gemany has a cease fire while Russia thinks and behaves as if it at peace with Germany, the diplomacy continues after war breaks out.

I also checked the events section in the TOT manual and thought for a moment that the Negotiator action might work . . . . . . until I read the highlighted sentences.

Negotiator: Modifies the negotiation regulations for a specified civilization,
either allowing or prohibiting talks between that empire and others. Who is
the civilization affected, which you specify according to its position in the list
of leaders in rules.txt (or, more likely, using a wildcard). Note that, unlike all
the others, this list begins with 1, not 0. The type parameter determines which
type of negotiation you want to change–talker controls those initiated by the
who civilization, and listener those talks started by someone else. State is
the prohibition setting; Set prevents the specified type of negotiations, and
Clear allows them. Note that this action affects all of the settings of the
specified type and all of the civilization's Negotiation statements; there is no
way to change individual indicators. (Please read the description of the
Negotiation trigger to get the rest of this story.)


You could do it with multiple events files, one for the period before Barbarossa and one for after war breaks out. I rather doubt that the extra work and complexity is warranted. After my problems with Russian infiltration, I figured out that I could have used German units to form a fence that the Russians could not get through due to ZOC.

Afraid, I'm not much help this time.

[PietH]

Stubborn as I am, I had another go as the germans going for Moscow, this time on the recommended level. And I failed again to breach the cities defenses. I've come to the conclusion that I need a far larger army with far better weapons to make it through.

So I had another go as the Germans, this time going for mainland Europe as my first objective. But to my surprise the Soviets attacked immediately, and rather ruthlessly. I'm fighting hard to keep Bucharest, as it is pounded by many tanks, artillery and bombers each turn. And as described above, there's no way to agree a cease fire....

[AGRICOLA]

I think I see the Machiavellian finger of a very devious designer in your misfortune. From your experience, I suspect that he has made sure that the scen is historically accurate in that Moscow cannot fall in 1941 no matter what players do.

In October 1942, when I was ready to attack Moscow, I had 28 Jagdpanthers in a fortress immediately west of the city, protected by tanks and a Ju-88 . At the end of the November turn, all Jagdpanthers had suffered some damage and 6 had used up all their movement (probably made 2 attacks) and were immobilized in the fortress. The rest were holed up in Moscow, making repairs and feasting on caviar and vodka. For some, Christmas came early that year.

One needs a lot of good units to eliminate a large number of defenders on terrain with a 100% D bonus. Even non-vet Red Army can put up a surprisingly strong defence.

[curtsibling]

@AGRICOLA:
Your help is as invaluable as ever, sir - Many thanks!
Cheers for looking into the diplomacy - I think it might be best
to leave things as is, and rely on events for surprise attacks.
Lining up some Inf units to block out Uncle Joe is the best bet!

I will make some new events for the Stalingrad situation ASAP.
And also address your other recommendations too -

@PietH:
As my fellow Machiavellian (I'm honoured!) points out, some serious
firepower is needed to blast the hell out of Comrade Stalin's hideout!
Jagdpanthers and Nashorns are needed to make a dent in the plethora
of units, and more enemies will join the defence each turn. You must
pummel at least 6-8 units per turn in order to wear them down...!

It can be done! So do not give up hope...! Make a point of building
a barracks in Vilnius, move the wounded guns into Vilnius and spacebar
them to repair...Rinse and repeat! Move in fresh guns to Moscow each
turn, and you will be rolling into red square in a few turns for sure!

Back up your brave besiegers with bombers and Tanks! Hope this helps!

[PietH]

Oh, don't worry, old chap. I will get my revenge. Christmas will be a dark time for the soviets this year.

[curtsibling]

Stuff them with extra turkey and 88mm shells!

[PietH]

@AGRICOLA

How in the world do you manage to produce 60 assault guns, 10 invasion fleets plus extra units and be ready for an attack on mainland Brittain by december 1941? Do I miss something in the settings, do you rushbuy or micromanage each city to sqeeuze out every last production shield?

I'm december 1941 now and I managed to produce half the numbers you mention. My attack on London will have to wait a while.

[curtsibling]

I suspect the mass disbanding of surplus units may have a hand in AGRICOLA's industrial mastery!

If not, he truly is a devilish CIV2 ace!

[AGRICOLA]

OK Ciaran, I confess to being a bit devilish now and then.

Also, apologies for my use of vanilla CIV names for city improvements. I play too many scens and am too damn old and lazy to learn a new set of names for each scen.


@PietH
The overriding aim of first 11 turns (January to November, 1941) was to build enough Assault Guns to capture western Europe and enough Transports to invade Britain.

1. Set Taxes/Science = 80/20 to maximized income for first 5 turns. Maximized the number of specialists in all cities by reducing growth to ~0 and changed them to bean counters. This produced a net (taxes - costs) cash flow of ~800 gold per turn.
After that, set Taxes/Science = 20/80 and changed specialists to einsteins. This reduced the net cash flow to ~-90 gold so the need for new conquests became critical.


2. During the first 3 turns:

JAN Sold improvements . . . 21 Granaries, 7 Cathedrals, 6 Colosseums, 1 Supermarket, 2 Superhighways for 2480 gold.

FEB Sold improvements . . . 5 Colosseums, 1 Harbor, 1 Superhighways for 680 gold.

MAR Sold improvements . . . 4 Harbors for 240 gold.

It is surprising how many improvements are not needed if one looks carefully and plays the scen as no growth.


3. From June to November, captured 11 cities in the Balkans, Italy, France, Scandinavia and Iberia. The income from these conquests and from selling their unneeded improvements was significant but I did not keep track of the gold gained.


4. I micromanaged cities and IRB (Incrementally Rush Built) units.

I cannot recall whether I disbanded any units to speed the construction of better ones. Probably not, because even lousy ones were useful in the desultory defensive war with the Russians.


5. I’ve taken the liberty of attaching the first 12 turns from the OPSUM (Operational Summary) that I keep for most scens, especially when playtesting. It outlines in some detail what was happening.

I hope that most of the abbreviations are self-explanatory (OOB = Order of Battle).


EDIT: Forgot to mention specialists.

[PietH]

Wow, I didn't quite expect to open up the vault on your gaming strategies! But you ARE a genius. :bow: