RED FRONT 2

[Mathieu]

Hello Captain Nemo & Everyone else. I'm new to this board, but have been lurking around Apolypton & the board for a little while... i must say man, this is the best CivII scenario i have ever played, i love it and congratulate you a thousand times for such an addictive and realistic scenario, WWII is one of my hobbies and this just really gets me pumped

Anyway i usually don't play on emperor even but i decided to get the 'full affect' and i must say it's really fun. So here is my attempt at bringing you... 'news from the front'

It's March 1942 now, most of the westernly towns had fallen to the Germans before winter came. Most notably Kiev, Minsk, Smolensk, Tallin. Although the German attacks have let up quite a bit since the coming of Winter, Moscow, Leningrad & Rostov are under heavy attack. The Finns did quite well up north but our stuck at the defense line near Leningrad. Gomel holds strong even though it is now enclosed by German cities & units, mostly because of the partisans coming from the marshes. The Romanians did not fair too well and i seem to have some control over the south which is quite a relief (although i have no idea what will happen come summer). The Germans have captured as far west as Tula in central USSR and have almost split the country in half, travel between the north and south is hard. The coming of Winter was a big relief as the planes were really hitting hard on my cities and my units were dropping like flies... We will see how i fare during the rest of the winter and hopefully survive the coming summer months....

Anyway.. i would write more but i must play! again i congratulate you on a great great scenario. I especially like the events and the dialog, really brings the game alive. Thanks a lot again on all who worked on this work of art, you will hear from me in the future!

- Mathieu

[Captain Nemo]

James Otis:
Unfortunately, Alex's site has been full for a while (Max webpage size) and he cannot get more space without paying an arm and a leg so for Red Front to appear he would have to drop something else...

Mathieu:
Nice to hear reports from the Front... Yes, the Romanians weren't doing too well in the South in version 1.0. In the next release I don't think anyone can hold Sevastopol through the summer of 1942, mainly because the Germans have learned how to use the "Karl" siege mortars and they pound the city with 2 shots each per turn, ie. your 4 best defensive units are dead at the beginning of each turn!

[Mao]

Just curious:

Did anyone manage to destroy the Germans before the scenario ended on deity? I tried and only killed them all by late 1946. Jim, I assume you've probably done it, but tell me how!? Tips? And when did you kill them off.

BTW-Getting Scandanavia was a pain in the ass. I had to wait until winter and attack with Red Guardsmen or Siberian Troops, and if I'm really desperate, Cossacks because of their All as roads capability. Or I'd just get some armored infantry from the convoys.

[Captain Nemo]

I reset the victory parameters so a decisive victory is possible on Deity by November 1945.

To win you must free all Soviet cities and capture Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Berlin. Your Western Allies should have taken care of the Western German towns and historically the Germans capitulated while still occupying all of Scandinavia.

Ronne on the Danish island of Bornholm was one of the last pockets refusing to surrender, it was bombed by the Soviets after the official German surrender and ultimately the Soviets occupied the island for a while before begrudgedly returning it to Denmark when the other Allied nations protested.

By November 1945 I had reached the above objectives and set the decisive victory just another 5 points better than what I had achieved to make it challenging yet possible.

The last thing I am working on is the Allied bombing raids in 1944-45. These will destroy the infrastructure around German industrial cities via change terrain.

I am considering placing a Soviet controlled "Ruin" unit on each bombing spot. This unit would have high defense and be stationary, like a fortified battery. It would allow the Soviets to see what's going on in the German back country, would prevent the Germans from reusing the terrain square, and would serve as a protected "base" for advancing Soviet units later in the game... What do you think?

[Kull]

Errata: NW of Warsaw there's a city named "Cunaxa". Unfortunately, there is no such place in Poland. I suggest you rename it "Kutno" (which is in that area).

Cunaxa was the battle near Babylon which was the starting point for Xenophon's "March of the 10,000".

[Kull]

Doppelganger!
[This message has been edited by Kull (edited December 04, 1999).]

[Mao]

I can't wait!

And I think the "ruin" unit's a good idea.

[Captain Nemo]

Kull:
You came across an AI built city! Probably extracted from the original Aztec(?)city names file... There is no such city in the beginning of the scenario. I thought I had "packed" the cities densily enough in the German held sectors to discourage the AI from building any new ones, but this can happen when the AI gets "Slave Labor" units. What are the location coordinates of that city? (I'll place a real one there to prevent the AI from doing this again)
Thanks for the info

[Mao]

yeah, I found Cunaxa too, but overran it.

[St Leo]

After playing the first turn using MOO units and terrain (LoL!) because I missed the part about running Summer41.bat in the readme file, Prince Stalin of USSR is having his arse kicked by both Finns and Germans. No defensive strategy yet and I kinda forgot about starting to buy improvements in the Caucasus for a while.:-)

------------------
St. Leo
http://ziggurat.sidgames.com/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

[Captain Nemo]

Version 1.1 will be sent to Allard either Monday or Tuesday. I don't know how long it will take him to post it on CSC, maybe not before next week-end?

If anyone wants it at the same time I send it to Allard please send me an E-mail so I can "parallel-send" it to you. It's a bit bigger than version 1.0 so you need at least 3MB of mailbox space to accept it (hotmail.com, for example, will not accept that much mail at once)

I am play-testing the Allied bombing of Germany, adding a JagdPanther V unit to the German arsenal for 1944 and a new title page. Everything else is complete.

[Allard HS]

CSC will be updated either tonight or tomorrow morning (got a couple of new scenarios). I couldn't update earlier (anybody wants to help????).
Nemo, if you send it before tomorrow morning, I can update it then. After monday morning, I'm gone till friday

[Captain Nemo]

Too bad, Allard, it will have to wait till next week-end because it won't be finished until Monday night or Tuesday.
You should have it in your E-mail by next Friday.

[Kull]

Nemo:

Cunaxa is at coordinate 25,82.

Putting a city there (or nearby) isn't a bad idea, but I also recommend adding a modified city.txt file. That way, when the Germans build a city, at least it will have a European name.

As for my game, it's progressing fairly well. My Winter '43 offensive was a big success. I reached the line Riga-Daugavpils in the North, grabbed Tula, Kaluga, & Byansk in the Center, and reached the line Zaporozhye-Perekop in the south. My only setback came when the large force attacking from Voronezh ran into a huge counteroffensive coming from Kursk. I was lucky to extract a few survivors and barely held on to Voronezh! I relied almost entirely upon T-34/85's and all-terrain infantry. Transports were key to extending the offensive in the north & south, and saved the day at Voronezh.

Now that summer has arrived, I plan to rebuild the road infrastructure, consolidate my new acquisitions, and try to continue the offensive. I've never had any offensive success in summers past, but if the Russians don't keep pounding away, we'll never get to Berlin by next spring!

My biggest problem on the offensive is going into negative-gold after conquering a German city. I really hope you were able to fix this, as it definitely wreaks all sorts of havoc. But i'm not complaining at the moment, since somehow, after 5 months of no $$, I have +29,000 Gold(!?). Can you say "speed-buy-everything"? LOL

[Captain Nemo]

Kull:
Thanks for the info about Cunaxa. As far as the cities.txt you may end up with all kinds of weird city placements. To avoid that I could either call all the cities "Settlement No.X" or make all the names "blank" so cities will be on the map with no apparent names or pick a bunch of obscure German village names so they sound right but aren't necessarily in the right spot?
On the cash overflow I realized it soon after releasing version 1.0... The new version features German "Concentration Camps" whose maintenance cost rises steadily through 1945. In 1943 it's 200 gold per turn. The German AI churns them out in every conquered city and thereby cuts back on his own cash production. In spring 1943 the Germans have 15,000 gold. If you want to fix it in your current game, you could enable the cheat mode and reset the German and Soviet money. Of course the score will show you cheated, but you know yourself that you did it to fix a bug.
A Soviet summer offensive is definitely possible in 1944, if you have built-up the Urals to produce lots of the tough units. Earlier in this thread (Or RED FRONT ROCKS)I outline my "massive strike" strategy which really wiped out large numbers of Germans with reasonable Soviet casualties and allowed a relatively fast and systematic conquest of the German held cities. In 1944 the Germans still get help but only in form of a few good units per turn. Expect to see mostly Panthers and Tigers, which are tough but in small numbers.