Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: lion_of_judah

I would like to be able too make fixed borders like in Operational Art of war and the border graphics now used to show when you conqueror territory but the borders still stay the same.

You could make new river types that have no impact on combat/movement but show a border like sprite?

Or... as I wrote in an email to Lion of judah, make special sprites that you put in those hexes.

ORIGINAL: Vic

ORIGINAL: lion_of_judah

I would like to be able too make fixed borders like in Operational Art of war and the border graphics now used to show when you conqueror territory but the borders still stay the same.

You could make new river types that have no impact on combat/movement but show a border like sprite?

The only catch is if the border is along a river. Then, you'll have to make new one the border and the river, which is not that hard to do.

I'd like to suggest making the unit supply and reinforcements thresholds more incremental. What I mean is being able to set those limits at 10% intervals (10%, 20%, 30% etc.),instead of every 25% as it is now. While I'm on the topic I'd like to point out that the documentation for TOE's on this wiki page http://www.vrdesigns.net/atwiki/doku.ph ... _equipment contradicts itself. The document states that you can set a unit to 0% reinforcements which means it will not be automaticly reinforced, while the "possible extensions" part at the bottom says this setting will be potentialy added. This seems to be the case, as it hasn't been implemented yet.
What I want to say is I'd like to request this 0% setting to be added.

a wish for statics tables like dccp where strengths and casualties are shown, not some abstract tables which show point levels

I'd really like to have the chance to assign specific TOE formations by Peoples group for the AI to use in random games.
Basically assigning TOE formations for the AI to produce through the editor. Maybe specifying priority as well, to have the AI keep realistic amount of infantry, armored or special divisions.

Something I've noticed playing the base game and the Four Seasons mod is that the AI plays very well early on in the game, pulling off good maneuver warfare and hitting weakpoints, and they manage to do it mostly because the predefined formations spawned in with the game world are balanced enough with early player-made formations.
After the player has stabilized the front and ramped up production, it becomes a matter of time before they can win the game, as the AI just cannot produce formations that are able to withstand those of the player. Most of the times in fact, it just starts bunching up large numbers of infantry supported by a very meager amount of tanks or artillery, rarely both. These formations are terrible in the attack, and just as much in defense.

After steady playing for a month I think the game is in essence quite well balanced and varied. However a few things I could suggest-

1) It would nice to see some sort of diplomatic option when playing the AI. Even a very crude option of "bribing" them with raw/ oil or supply points in exchange for peace would be welcome. As it is, when playing the AI it's everyone for themselves.

2) Naval mine warfare. I would like to see some option for laying mines in sea areas.

3) More realistic tank destroyers. In the game they're the equivalent of battleships on land, they have huge anti- tank value but are hugely slow and costly to build. In reality WW2 tanks destroyers were actually easier and less time consuming to build than turreted tanks. They could carry a larger gun than most tanks, at the expense of less tactical flexibility in combat. The tank destroyers in ATG just seem a little bit too "gamey" for my taste, considering the mostly realistic nature of most of the other units.

I'd like to see AI that do not make such things:



Lonely aircraft carrier without airplanes attacking (?) wolfpack of submarines.

TOE suggestion.

Is it possible to implement "any people" in TOE designed schemes?

If my empire consists of many people groups, it becomes a difficult retention of the national character of army.
And the creation of many division organizational charts does not seem rational (I will get lost in it myself).

saving just the map as one can do in dccp

TOE suggestion.

I would like to force AI to use ONLY predefined units.

Second the suggestion to make the AI use fixed TOE's...the current strange compositions the AI uses are immersion breaking.

My wish would be to have a Naval AI good enough to at least give a newbie a challenge on a random map. Right now even the basic initial race for resources seems to be a problem for the AI on naval maps. I've systematically observed by testing random maps (starting with the Stone Age option) that if the AI is isolated on an island, it'll either stay locked there for 10+ turns stockpiling units, or occasionally send a single cargo ship with infantry on it to take another island, and then return the boat home and give up on further conquest despite tons of juicy islands with raw/oil/cities being available for the taking.

With a decent Naval AI that works well on random maps (I especially have single-people scenarios like the old AT Risk for Three map in mind, where every town gives you full production), this game would be the ultimate replacement for Empire Deluxe-type games. As it is, being restricted to land when playing the AI despite all those shiny naval toys being available really feels bad.

I agree that the Naval aspect of ATG needs some TLC. Even in pure multiplayer games it seems strange that you can surround a unit and then force it to surrender, by attacking with enough force from one side, and the other units surrounding it, are pushovers.

The AI thing for navies is a peculiar one. The AI works best with enough units to make a front. Obviously that is the exact opposite of what is going on at sea. Still it shouldn't be too hard, I think, to make invasions work. At least those are my 2 cents.

Having made a very close study of the game editor over the past several weeks, I know exactly what I'd love to see in future developments of the engine.

I'd like to see more options for using the editor to model pre-20th Century warfare - and this relates in particular to how fortifications are handled.

As I try to design scenarios, the problem I keep running up against is that there is no limit to the number of strength points that get the defensive benefits of a particular Location Type - e.g. a city or a fortress. Park 100,000 men in the hex and the whole army gets the defensive benefit.

This is quite unhistorical, and greatly complicates scenario design for pre-20th Century warfare. Fortress or city garrisons typically ranged from a few hundred men to a few thousand. Any forces above that would be outside the fortifications and not get the benefits.

We see this reflected in games like EU4 - and in general the concept of fortress capacity is routine in games that involve fortifications and sieges.

I realise that this game is based in particular on WW2, but one of the beauties of the engine is that it could potentially be used to model "any battle in any era" (this is how the game is described on the Matrix site).

What's more, it seems such a simple thing to implement. The idea of fortress capacity is similar to other concepts in the game, like airfield capacity, transport capacity, structural damage etc. There are so many other variables one can assign to a hex, why not something like fortress capacity?

It seems to me very logical to be able to limit the number of strength points that can receive defensive benefits from a particular structure.

Relevant to 20th Century warfare too!

Let me first say that I think your idea is ok. Probably not something too hard for Vic to implement either. There is however two things I have to point out.

This is quite unhistorical, and greatly complicates scenario design for pre-20th Century warfare. Fortress or city garrisons typically ranged from a few hundred men to a few thousand. Any forces above that would be outside the fortifications and not get the benefits.

When speaking of forts and fortifications, perhaps it is best to think of them as series of such. Single trench is not something that would be well represented in the game, and neither would a single fortification. When thinking of cities, think very big too. London for instance would be defensible by a very big army. House to house fighting would be difficult.

Also, you might want to factor in being overstacked. There is a defensive land stack, after all.

With these notes done, I think there could still be a good place for your fortress stack.

When speaking of forts and fortifications, perhaps it is best to think of them as series of such.

Thanks for your reply. The point is I want to use the engine to model historical campaigns, not imaginery ones. The campaigns I'm interested in had significant fortresses and fortified towns, but typically you couldn't fit tens of thousands of men in them and this did not happen.

This is a glaring problem with the "Age of Napoleon" scenario, for example (one scenario I have been studying to see how the engine could be used for non-WW2 campaigns). You have fortresses - Glogau, Ulm, Metz, Smolensk etc - but as the engine stands you can sit the entire Grand Armee, 200,000 men, in them. This is nothing like what actually happened!

In the game there will seldom be battles like Waterloo, Leipzig, Borodino etc, because the common sense thing to do is just sit your army on a fortress!

Indeed, the stacking limit is a factor to bear in mind. But the point about modelling pre-20th Century warfare is that in general you want to encourage big stacks (concentrated armies), not long front-lines with units spread all along them. This is done in the Punic War scenario, for example, by setting a high stacking limit (500 stacking points).

But then this stacking limit will also apply to every town and fortress, though you couldn't fit a big army inside any of them. In both the Napoleonic and ancient eras - and in most eras in fact - you had a few large field armies that fought battles, and lots of much smaller garrisons that defended towns and fortresses. You didn't defend a fortress with an army, because the army would quickly starve (even if it could fit in there in the first place).

I think this engine has great potential for modelling warfare in different ages, not just the modern era, by tweaking variables such as stacking limits etc. But this issue of fortress capacity is the biggest problem I have come across.

Like you say, it seems a simple thing to change. It also seems logical within the current game system. The fact that "structural damage" to a fortress does not diminish its capacity to act as a fortress is extremely... odd.

Here's what the manual says about structural points:

Structural Points
These can be damaged in combat and dictate the efficiency of production. Also they give
penalties to aircraft in airfield or ships in port if not at full level.

So you damage a port and it penalizes naval units there. You damage an airfield and it penalizes air units on the field. So why doesn't damaging a fortress penalize the defensive benefits to land units in the fortress? Very odd.

If my idea for fortress capacity were to be implemented, I can see exactly where and how it could be included.

Under Locations Type, there is a Property Sheet for "Statistics". At the bottom of the first column on the left there is an option that can be selected for "TopAirStack", which is the airfield capacity ("the ideal amount of stack points stationed on airfield"). The default option is "0", which in fact means unlimited capacity.

To my mind, this page is crying out for a similar button below this for fortress capacity (TopLandStack?) This could simply determine the number of stackpoints that gain the entrenchment benefit.

E.g. you have a stack of 100 points, on a structure (e.g. a fortification, a fortress, a city) with a fortress capacity of only 50. So the entrenchment benefit is divided by 50%. So simple! So flexible!

This could be further modified by structural damage, just like airfield capacity is. Such an elegant extension of existing game principles!

And it wouldn't change the base game in any way - the default option could be "unlimited capacity" as with airfields. What it would do is enhance the editor to give greater options and flexibility to scenario designers.

What's frustrating for me is that there are so many options for modding the conditions for building location types (what research? what regime? what cost? what resources?), yet such limited options for modding what these locations actually do!

Hi Jabod,

Sounds like a well thought through request with the potential of a possible new scenario being created as well

Thanks.

I am implementing it. Except for making the entrenchment minima and maxima depended on stack points. Cannot do that last thing since the nitty gritty of the rules gets to complicated if I do that. However you could just set the extra entrenchment of forts to something really light or nothing and only use the landscape combat modifiers for forts which will be subject to the maximum number of stack points the fort can support.

Private Beta 228b has been uploaded. It includes the changes.

Best wishes,
Vic

Many thanks Vic!!! This is excellent news.

Indeed, using the fortress cap to limit the benefits of the landscape defence modifier is probably the best way to implement this, rather than messing about with the entrenchment modifiers. This did occur to me after I had made my previous post.

A fortress limit is going to make a huge difference for my ability to design scenarios to simulate historical campaigns. A huge thanks!