Everyone's Fav. Scenario

[Captain Nemo]

I'll check those text boxes out. 1.4 should be out in a week at most so the playtesting is all done.
HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO ELIMINATE THE SOVIET UNION IN 4 TURNS?
What level of play? Did you use the correct events? (German events) What strategy did you use? The Soviet help should make it impossible to easily capture Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad... How did you manage that? (I'm interested as I am planning an upgrade and I don't want it to be too easy)

[Xin Yu]

I play on Deity.
First turn the following cities were captured (listed by order of occupation): Moscow, Leningrad, Sevastopol, Rostov, Saratov, Stalingrad, Murmansk, Klinin, Kharkov. Two other cities were wiped out: Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan. Gorkiy was reduced to size one without being wiped out since it's an objective city. I lost 20+ units (About a dozen SS stormtroopers and half-dozen stuka) in attacking, and 3 more in the counter-attack after the first turn.
I used my two engineers to build a railroad southeast of Minsk, then used vet SS stormtroopers to soften the defense of Moscow. After the 3 AA batteries and 3 Red Guard turned yellow, I used non-vet SS troopers to attack and most of them won and promoted to vets. I used planes to cover the squares so only 3 partisans appeared when I took the city. Then I used the SS stormtroopers of Riga followed by the tanks via Moscow to storm Leningrad (1 AA, 1 battleship). Again I took care of the partisan problem with my planes and vehecles. Then I used my planes to air-raid Sevastopol, Rostov (had an AA gun which costed me 1 bomber and 4 stukas) then Stalingrad. The planes could cover the squares while moving on so no partisans appeared. I ran out of planes while air-raiding Stalingrad so I used about 5 tanks. After taking Stalingrad I used my planes for Klinin, Murmansk (reduce to size 1 when occupied to ensure no partisans would appear), and Saratov (easy target). My tanks from Minsk wiped out Astrakhan and Arkhangelsk as well. The combined efforts of tanks and planes reduced Gorkiy to size one. I suffered heavy casualty when attacking Kharkov but I still managed to get the city with a handful of tanks left. I used them for defense against counter-attack: I had 3 bomber/tank combos setup on the road from Stalingrad to Baku, between Moscow and Gorkiy, and the railroad between Gorkiy and Serdlovsk. Other tanks were used to protect my bombers close to Baku. I sacraficed a stuka (ran out of gas) to get two mobile infantries to the hills next to Sverdlovsk to pillage the RR thus ensure no reinforcements could arrive Gorkey (the two mobile infantries were killed from counter-attack the next turn so they were also sacrafice victims).
Second turn Gorkiy got anti-tank and returned to size 2 so I took it. I took Sverdlovsk easily since almost all 'recarnated' AI units in this city were out of the city to North or Northwest (the bombers stuck in the air next to my bomber/tank combo and I used one fighter to kill 10). None of the other cities on the railroad had anti-tank so I ran over the defenses with my tanks and went all the way to Vladivostok. Although the city had anti-tank, its ships were all out so the defense was not heavy. I took that also (I had some Field Artillaries). Baku's defense units were also out of place so I took that city with minimum casualty as well. I moved a dozen of vet AAs to Sverdlovsk to take care of the counter attack.
Then I built M109 fighter or stuka in certain occupied cities (built improvement then switch to unit since the cities were in riot) so the third turn they wiped out the remote small cities for me.
Two southern cities were too far away so I could not get there in turn 3. I'm now trying to capture Krasnovodsk in turn 2 using air raid and paradrop, so in turn 3 I can use air raid again to finish the Soviet Union and refresh my record.

[Xin Yu]

I used German setup of course.
The preparation for invading England is also carried out well and I think on turn 4 or turn 5 I'll get the islands.
In Africa I occupied Alexandra (Turn 1) and Cairo (Turn 3) while using stuka to raid Jelusalem to kill some tanks before they can attack me. Pretty much a stand-off.
Now I can trade with my ally Japan and get more income and science. I'm not sure if I should attack the neutrals since Soviet cannot get money from them anymore.

Correction: Just checked my saved file, in the first turn I lost 17 SS stormtroopers, 12 PzKw IVs, 1 fighter, 2 bombers, and 7 stukas for attacking the red army (I lost 4 more units to British). Soviet lost 148 units.
[This message has been edited by Xin Yu (edited February 03, 2000).]

[Allard HS]

If you want to know about those boxes:
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum29/HTML/000603.html
there's what I found out. If you want more details just ask me.
You can have great fun with these. One example is to add a listbox with a huge text in the scenario introduction text, which can scroll down. You can include half a book in there.
Another fun thing to add to the scenario intro text is adding the @options so that the player can choose which civ to play right in the very first screen. Also you can devide them into 2 (or 3) columns to save space.

[Xin Yu]

Captain Nemo: in 2194days Chinese should have lost Peking, Harbin, Tientsin, Nanking, Wuhan, and Shanghai long before Pearl Harbor. I learned from Chinese history that in 1931 Japan occupied northeast of China (Harbin included), then in 1937 Peking, Tientsin (Tientsin's position on the map is not accurate), a total war abrupted between China and Japan at Peking. And Peking was not the capital, Nanking was (after lost Nanking the capital moved to Chunking).

[Coug]

My very own Africa scenario

[Captain Nemo]

Xin Yu:
You are correct and I was aware of it... My problem was always to prevent the Japanese from destroying the entire Chinese Civ very quickly after 1941 because the Chinese are so weak. My easy-fix solution was to set them back a bit... But when I redo 2194 Days of War I plan to remedy this along with several other shortcomings!

[Puaxant Tuvip]

OK, I got the red front scenario. I was thinking I needed MGE to play, glad I didn't. That's the scenario I wanted to play.

I am hurting though. I'm close to losing caucasis, but I'm doing good up north. So far it's been a fantastic scenario. One question? Do the hordes of Germans ever let up? I'm at the end of 1941 (it takes quite a while to play), at this rate I won't be able to hold moscow for another year. I may have to play at a lower level. I love the units, and sounds. And of course the events. I can't believe I lost minsk though.

[Captain Nemo]

Yes, the Germans slow down in the winter (After you load the winter events/units), come back strong in the summer of 1942 then slow down again in the winter of 1942-43. By the summer of 1943 they don't get much help from the events anymore and your position, research and production will determine if you can beat them back to Berlin...or just survive until 1945. The real "turn-around" is usually the fall of 1943 when lots of newly produced Soviet armor hits the front and face the last Panzers of operation Citadel near Kursk/Voronezh...Quite historical, but it requires that the human player has spent the time from 1941 building up the Soviet industry/infrastructure to produce all the extra units. If you take a pure wargame approach you will lose.
BTW losing Minsk, Kiev, Smolensk, Vitebsk, Kharkov, Tallinn, Odessa, Sevastopol, Rostov... is pretty much unavoidable. Start worrying if you lose Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Maikop, Grosnyy, Baku or Gorkyi, then you are really in trouble.

Good luck.
[This message has been edited by Captain Nemo (edited February 04, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Captain Nemo (edited February 04, 2000).]

[Xin Yu]

Captain Nemo: Found a strange thing in 2194days. Because the German has neither Mysticism nor Monotheism, the Mich's Chapel (Neurenberg Rally?) doesn't have any effect, and I have one gold from the church. So each city only gives me 3 or 7 golds (church 1, J. Bach 2, Theatre 4). It looks like a mistake since I can't build cathedrals.

If the church only gives one gold, I'll choose to sell it for 40--the game will end in 40 turns! So perhaps you should give German Mysticism to let players keep the church. Lowering the shield for church is another option.

Monotheism (MT) is 'Japan or USA' in your tech tree. Japan has no problem in its income: 2 from church, 2 from Oracle, 3 from Cathedral, and 4 from Theatre.
[This message has been edited by Xin Yu (edited February 04, 2000).]

[Captain Nemo]

You are finding all the mistakes I uncovered when I created Red Front... I had never noticed the problems with 2194 Days of War but in RF losing "Socialist Pragmatism" (Michelangelo's) was supposed to cause unrest in the Soviet Union but didn't because the Soviets didn't have MT... So I made a number of changes to allow the Soviets to have MT. Same thing with the temples: They will not function without "Cer".

[Xin Yu]

Cool. Can't wait to play RF 1.4. When you revise 2194days I suggest change Chiang Kai-shek's title from 'General' to 'Generalisimo' (can't remember the exact spelling but that was what he was called by his men).

[klesh]

Captain Nemo,

I find that RedFront is impossible! I've tried it on 3 different defficulty levels and I get wrecked every time. The concept of moving the refugees East is great, but I can never build the Ural region up fast enough. I've used the cheat menu at different points to see just how much the Germans had....and they had a ton of arms. There was no way(even with T-34/85's being produced i per turn) that I could make my way into Germany. I'm usually able to take back most of my territory, but I don't have enough turns to capture German lands.
I'm pretty decent at Civ, so I feel like a fool when I get beat down every time.
I have gone as far as to manually(cheating of course) build some cities way up, but the german onslaught kept coming and coming and coming. During winter the Germans slow down, but they hide in their cities so you've got to expose yourself whilst you wage a frontal attack. I want to beat RedFront legit. but it is a real challenge. My college education is now on the backburner as I've become engulfed in this scenario. I am glad it isn't too easy though, yes certainly not too easy!
Oh, I've got a small thing you may want to add to 1.4, when the Soviets capture Berlin and Hitler kills himself (p**sy) It would be cool if their leader name changed hands too. that is, after the fall of Berlin, the foriegn minister still reports that Hitler, rather than Grand Admiral Doenitz is in control of thr Reich. I don't know how to build scenarios, so I don't know if it could be done.....but it would add to the realism a bit.
So, don't keep us waiting... when will we get our hands on RedFront 1.4?

[Seeker]

The trick is to be on TOTAL defense until winter. Don't build any planes. Build lots of T-34s, but just have them sit in Moscow and Stalingrad. Then, when winter comes, hurl your huge infantry force to it's death to get all kinds of super partisans. You should be able to liberate smolensk and dnepropetrosvsk this way. Then wait for next winter...

[Captain Nemo]

I'll just give you a few hints to help out:
I've played 3-4 full games on Deity and I have always achieved decisive German defeats by the early spring or summer of 1945. That means the Germans are down to 20-30 objective points (Italy, Norway and Western Germany)

1. I don't mass-pillage the roads because I need them to get back to Germany when the roles reverse. I just remove a few segments around Moscow, Stalingrad and Leningrad to protect the cities.

2. I build barracks in all cities that will produce units. Only veteran units are useful.

3. I withdraw everything of value from the Western region. Especially AA batteries, tanks and motorized infantry, if I can.

4. I build a massive number of veteran AA guns in Leningrad, Stalingrad, Moscow, Rostow, Tula, Voronezh, Serafimovitz, Sevastopol. I move all available NKVD units to those same cities + veteran motorized infantry + T-34s... When the Germans attack I want them to suffer massive losses and only wound my units so they can get repaired by the barracks before the next turn but this requires at least 20-30 tough units per city. It's better to have 30 units in one city and none in the next than 15 in each!
To get enough AA units to defend Moscow, Rostov and Leningrad I need to speed build them so I sell everything I can in the Western cities from the beginning of the game. I end each turn by going through EVERY Western city still in my hands and seeing what I can sell...Refineries, Railroad terminals, steelmills, powerplants, banks, hydroplants, universities...sell, sell, sell!

5. I add Katyusha launchers to the cities to kill the wounded attackers after each strike.

6. I move all refugees + labor brigades to the East and put them to work converting plain squares to industry ASAP. I may found a few new cities also where there are very good ressources. But priority number one, before growing the cities is building industry. Typical improvement order: granary, kollektiv farm, steel mill,(ammo-plant), barracks, units

7. In general I let them build industry until a city has 4-5 industry squares, then merge a few to the city to get it to size 7 or 8. The rest move on to build industry around another city etc... I usually build up 15-20 cities in the Urals to produce 50+ shields, with at least 6-10 in the 80-100 shield range.

8. In the winter of 1941-42 I counter-attack only to inflict maximum damage, not to conquer cities, except to keep the supply road open to Leningrad. I usually attack stacks of tanks, planes left out in the open (Infantry can kill those) and infantry outside cities. I always try to attack, kill and withdraw to a city within the same turn so as not to lose the attacking unit.

9. I continue to stack veteran AA batteries/NKVD/T-34s in the cities forming the main line of defense
Leningrad-Kalinin-Moscow-Tula-Voronezh-Serafimovitz-Stalingrad-Rostov.

10. In the summer of 1942 I try to hold the line and inflict damage with counter-attacks against units that stop next to my cities. I build mostly AA batteries, T-34 and Katyushas. When KV-1s become available they are the best defense units coupled with the AA batteries.

11. If I can hold Rostov through the summer of 1942 I start counterattacking in the winter of 1942-43 against the Southern German army in front of Stalingrad.

12. By the Summer of 1943 I usually have large numbers of T-34/85s and Katyushas. The key to win is to strike with mass force... I try to lose very few units, which means sometimes withdrawing a unit after one strike even if it has a full turn left so as not to leave it open to counter-attack. City are best attacked with Katyushas first(To take out the toughest units) then with planes, T-34s and Red Guards. Better attack 3 cities in a turn and take them than attack 6 cities and only weaken them (And have German wounded units be repaired by their barracks).

13.I build the electrification wonder first so I get a "free" powerplant in every city. (And I sell the ones I have)
Also build Civilian donations and Labor Front to help the economy get into the black, but building trade routes to Baku, Gorkyi and Maikop has more effect than the wonders.

I hope all this helps... I know the strategy works!