1vs1 or 2vs2 with new rules

[LazyBoy]

Not a problem, bug finding and fine tunning is what this games about

[Strategiusz]

I am loosing this game. Two things:
1. I made bad strategical decisions.
2. The number of units is too big for me. I can't manage with this.

So... we have discovered many bugs. If it would depends of me I give up this game.

[kombrig]

What's the opinion of other players? Do you want to continue or should we stop?

If we continue then Madlok please play one more turn and after you have made your moves, simply give all your cities, resources and HQs to me. Then push the surrender button.

It's going rather well for me (or at least it seems so). The Chinese southern and central front is retreating suffering huge losses. However I have no idea what kind of reserves are prepared in the rear.

[Strategiusz]

I'm not going to quit if the other players want to play. I just feel my game will be just slow death now.

[ironduke1955]

"If we continue then Madlok please play one more turn and after you have made your moves, simply give all your cities, resources and HQs to me. Then push the surrender button."

I am fairly sure that this is not how 2v2 games are played if Madlok surrenders then he surrenders to Lazy and myself resources and cities will go to us(or the first nation to get to them) (: for the simple reason that we will have to play 1 player with equal resources who can conduct a co-ordinated war. That is hardly fair on me and Lazy.

[kombrig]

I just thought that this would create more equal setting to continue the game. If Madlok simply surrenders then I have absolutely no chance because most of his resources and cities will fall to Kyoto for sure and my rear is opened. But anyway, if Madlok wants to quit, I have no problem if he simply surrenders without giving troops, cities etc to me.

[LazyBoy]

I am happy to continue or stop, up to you guys.

Huge losses is what we Chinese are good at

[LazyBoy]

My strategy is to attack Sultinate,s oil, but this is not going to work, because movement and attacking oil use has been halved.
That allows Sultinate with 5 working oil resources and under 6000 oil, to be able to fly more planes than me and still run all his armour and half tracks.

In a normal game I would be struggling to fly my ST bombers

I did not understand this change and spent a lot on upgrading Oil and Raw which now appears to be unnecessary.

[kombrig]

Since it is a test game I can reveal some secrets. Most of my air force is in defense because of the lack of oil (I can't use them in attack). And about 1/3 of my armour I can't use because of the same reason. I can really use my armoured spearhead plus a few units here an there. But I have actually more armour and motorized units which I can't move. Tehy are waiting for better times. [;)] Also I have to keep oil to counter your strategic bomber attacks. Last turns I have been producing synthetic oil (about half of my city production goes there) and have been upgrading my oil. Plus I had to spend resources on oil locations AA defence.

I am also not sure if I can actually fly more planes than you. Indeed my defending fighters probably do not consume so much oil than the attacking planes because they usually have to fly shorter distance to engage the attacker. Also don't forget that defending fighters consume about twice the less oil in combat than in attack (this was already in the stock ATG).

Basically every successful strategic bomber attack against my oil hinders my movement and attack power on the field.

So in conclusion upgrading resources is actually very necessary. I concentrated at first only on raw because it seemed that there is quite a lot of oil. But I should have concentrated equally on both because the motorised force grew too big and started to suck my oil rapidly.

[Strategiusz]

The first time I saw this map I thought "OMG, this game will be so maneuvered and attack favorable, so I will made lots of guerrillas" XD. Now we have full front line covered by hundreds of rifles and bazookas. And I was attacking with tanks in forest like crazy (or stupid) XD.

[ironduke1955]

I looked at the map and thought the opposite of Madlok two reasons production capacity has doubled but Raw and Oil have not so you can build a huge armored force but you don't have the fuel to move it. Second was the terrain large forests and mountain terrain that suited defence along the borderthat and the building of fortifications. The German Army that invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 was only 24% mechanised so I like this mod because it requires that you have a army that reflects the period. Also due to the way the various countries are positioned on the map Strategic Bombing is a usefull weapon in this game especially if your opponent has gone for a large motorised force and can not afford to have his oil supply reduced. Be a interesting addition to the a mod to have variable capacities for oil resources after all not all oil fields are as rich as the Middle East Baku or Rumania.

[kombrig]

I think that the changes concerning production, raw and oil costs have been positive. You can now wage a large scale war. My only questionmark is the cost of political points. I would say that the research has been maybe too quick. Maybe to increase the cost of PPs about 20%?

[Strategiusz]

For me it is too much changes at once in this mod.

[ironduke1955]

Minor bug I spent a large amount of PP on upgrading my Tank destroyers to II I can't upgrade the I's to II's

[Strategiusz]

My south offensive sucked my all oil and I had to disband some halftracks because I couldn't move my units XD

[kombrig]

Be a interesting addition to the a mod to have variable capacities for oil resources after all not all oil fields are as rich as the Middle East Baku or Rumania.

Figured out how to do it. Can add it into the next version of the mod.

My idea currently is that at the beginning of the game every regime gets about 75-80% Minor Oil and 20-25% Major Oil sites.

The Minor ones can be upgraded to only level 2.

The major ones start with the same capacity as level 2 minor site and can be upgraded into level 3 major oil site.

I aim to adjust the production capacities so that the overall production capacity of all the production sites when fully upgraded will be the same as currently.


Also I would like to make the guerilla war action cards based. You have an action card which allows you to create a guerilla unit (about 200 strong) and you can place it up to five-six hexes away from a city with your own people (you don't have to controll the city). The action card costs a certain amount of PPs. But haven't yet found a solution how do to it.

[kombrig]

OK, Lazy (Peoples Republic) has surrendered. Mad (Kent) is too on the verge of catastrophe. Me and Iron are doing well, but since Lazy decided to quit, Iron does not have much chance. I suggest we arrange peace.

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I think the reason why Lazy was defeated was that he made some bad decisions in the very beginning. He invested at first a lot in militia and guerillas and light tanks. These troops were no match to my combined arms divisions (Rifle II, MGs, Mortars) supported by a number of AT gun and artillery and assault gun units. Lazy took heavy losses while my losses were relatively small and my experinece and morale grew. Because my losses were small I was able to reinforce my frontline troops constantly without loosing too much readiness.

Lazy made his situation even worse when he started to reinforce frontline with freshly formed units (20 readiness). Needless to say they were a easy prey for me and my experience and morale only grew. I had armour units with 90+ experinece and rifles ususally had 40-50 experience.

I think it would have been better for him to arrange strong reserves in the rear and to use them for a counter offensive when the time was right. Yes, the cost would have been the loss of some of his territory, but at least he would have had strong reserves ready for use.

However I made a mistake when not investing properly into oil upgrading. When Lazy started his strategic bombing campaign against my oil I was in trouble. I only came out of it beacuse of synthetic oil. Last five or six turns half of my city production went into synthetic oil (one turn even 4/5 of my city production). This allowed me to continue offensive operations. However if my losses would have been larger I would not have been able to divert so much production into synthetic oil and I would have been in real trouble.

One thing I feared very much was that Lazy will try to achieve supremacy in the air. He had huge amount of oil and several aircraft factories. I feared that if he will concentrate his air power against my main thrust area, then I would loose the battle in the air there and my spearhead would be bombed into pieces.

[kombrig]

I would like to hear your comments about the mod. I understand that the bugs (messed up combat stats and upgrading for some SFTs, also cavalry movement stats bug) were a nuisance but apart from that what was good and what was not?

Some of my own thoughts:

1) In overall in my opinion ther was much more Axis/Soviet front feel than in the stock version. The troop density was much higher. One was able to afford building a balanced combined arms army and one was able to operate it.

2) The cavalry has now its historical role: it can be used either to increase recon, to cover rear areas against guerillas or to support tanks during advance. But it's useless to build large cavalry armies because they are expenisve and the combat stats are the same as infantry.

3) The mod represents the Blitzkrieg more than the stock version. Suprise can be achieved more easily now. If you achieve a breaktrough the enemy can not simply to fly all of his production against you and pretty much stop your advance into a stalemate. It is actually useful now to create reserves which can be strategically transfered.

4) Political points cost is maybe too low. The research was a bit too fast. Currently the cost of PPs is 200, in the original version it was 500 (if I remebember correctly). Maybe 300 or even 350 would be optimal?

5) Supply cost was maybe also too low. It is currently 1 and one city was able to supply the whole of my army. I am considering to rise it twice and the cost would be 2 then.

6) The recon points for halftracks and especially jeeps and armored cars are probably too low. Especially the jeeps and armored cars should more represent dedicated recon units.

7) The guerillas. Should we accept that guerillas can freely operate on enemy home territory?

8) The amount of staff which the officers can command at the beginning should be doubled (it should be around 100 staff).

9) The penalty for changing unit's HQ should be at least 5 readiness points.

10) The cost of trains is probably too low. It makes strategic transfer too easy.


Some other thoughts concerning the stock version of the game:

1) I don't see the reason why air units should spend in combat twice the less oil in
defense when compared to attacking. If they are defending they have to make maneuvers too.

2) I would like to implement Iron's idea that the assault guns are more effective against infantry and tank destroyers more effective against armour.

I consider giving the assault guns the attack/defense power which equals medium tank values against infantry and light tanks values against armour. Assault guns favourite target is infantry.

Tank destroyers would get the attack/defense power which equals medium tank values against armour and light tank values against infantry. TDs favourite target is armour.

In other ways the assault guns and tank destroyers would be similar to medium tank except they are a bit cheaper to produce (also less raw is needed).

3) The paratroopers need also level II-IV which combat values should equal the corresponding rifle level. Plus the paras should have a bit higher morale and experience when produced (but they are more expensive to produce).

4) In order to boost up the army building phase I would beef up the garrisons at the beginning of the game: every one of them should have 50 infantry, 5 SMGs, 5 MGs, 4 mortars, 3 bazookas.

[ironduke1955]

First I would like to thank Lazy Mad and Kombrig for the game.

Assault guns to my mind are down to chassis light medium Heavy and super Heavy. With two classes of vehicle Assault Guns and Tank Destroyers the Germans had the Stug AP/HE Jagdpanther AP but other nations had other variations the Americans/Soviets/UK had a the a large list of what was called self propelled artilery/Assault guns.You have to be careful with assault guns why buy a more expensive Tank when a assault gun does a better job and is cheaper you have to know why the choice was made to continue to produce tanks. I guess one would be say if a tank has track taken out it can still traverse its main gun and a MG to defend itself there must be other factors that made armies continue to to produce tanks when Tank Destroyers were proving better in the Tank Destroyer role.

Officers should not be restricted in gaining xp by the size of forces or staff they are commanding rather that commanders should randomly have cards assigned so that you don't know if you have a Manstein or a Paulus so some commanders will thrive and some will suffer penalties because they are not up to the job.

Certanly Para's should have levels I/IV Makes sense

The guerilla concept is for home defence only I have heard of few cases where they are used anywhere else. Unless they take control of the country and become the army.

Yep supply cost to low or unit and army densities could reach absurd levels

Yes armored cars jeeps are recon vehicles low fuel lightly armed

To be honest the building of trains always bemused me you would use the infrastructure of the country part of that being the rail network I would rather take them out of the game completely and have your train capacity based on your industrial base if that is degraded then your rail capacity drops. You have so many rail transport points at the beginning of your turn and you use them as you see fit.

Production in cities should be upgradeable factories should be removed from the game and there should be more than four production slots. Perhaps as a city is upgraded a production slot is added. Production is always population based. Or more cities but some of the cities with low production capabilities.

Research if you look a comparable time frame the game has monthly turns so 5 years 60 turns as things stand we played 20 months/Turns I don't feel we exceeded the pace of research in the second world war I still have lots of area's that need research (Shame some of them don't work ):). There might be a argument for a requirement to have a large research item say like aviation/armoured vehicle/Infantry level 2 to be able to then go on to advance the various arms to level 2

I don't feel readiness needs to drop much ifs at all in transfer of command. I can find not much historical basis for this drop in combat readiness the units that is combat ready will fight at the same level of efficiency regardless of any change in senior command that is due to the equipment training and officers and men of the unit and the only bearing a change in command would have is in how that unit is used/missused

[ernieschwitz]

May i interject a few things?

Here goes anyway. Tank Destroyers were usually built on obsolete chasis´s. So it would be natural for a tank destroyer to be less armored than the equivalent tank. Also tank destroyers were good in the defensive role, but poor in the offensive role. They were used as mobile ambushes, basically. Tanks were found much better for offensives, than tank destroyers. But tank destroyers were cheaper as building the turret was more expensive than adding a superstructure and a gun.

As for your idea for rail transport. That can actually be done. I would do it with action cards. Deal a number of them based on a countries current production capacity, and let the player who owns them select any hex along the rail network.. that would work.. of course, that would mean the bigger the country the more cards, the longer distances could be traversed.... and someone might just abuse it by making units very huge, and then transporting those... But i guess with some work-around this could be feasible.