Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

ORIGINAL: Joel Rauber
At the scale of the game, wouldn't all this be happening within a single hex?

Yes....but there's nothing in the way the game is built that shows it, except the artillery units getting left behind in an attack.

Certainly this happened at a "lower" level, but IMO the way Frank has achieved it gives the effect despite being ostensibly at eth wrong scale.

I'm not sure whether it is deliberate or not, but this design for effect works well IMO.

Good points; I am a proponent of the design for effect philosophy (witness the Wilhelmshaven discussion), so I can appreciate the argument.

Another approach would to simply have it all occur in the CRT. I.e. A high casualty failed attack into a hex could likely be representing taking the trenches and then the counter-attack that retakes them. I.e. the CRT has the effect designed in. This would be truer to scale. OTOH, it might not be as much fun as this "out of scale" method as you point out in the sense of "seeing" it in the game. And the over all effect is probably the same over the course of several turns.

So I'm more than willing to take a wait and see before forming opinions about this.

Okay, I'm going to upload a 1.2 b3.  I've made some changes to artillery again plus fixed the cavalry-stacked-with-assault-troops bug.

I haven't reduced basic artillery effectiveness, what I have done is reduce the "piling on" effect when you have multiple units firing at stacks of units.  So a single artillery unit should still be able to cause some casualties but you shouldn't see 25 casualties when firing 5 artillery units at a stack of 4 corps.

One other thing, if anyone has a save of a strategic movement that should have worked (in your opinion) but didn't, please send it to me.  I thought that was fixed but if anyone is still seeing a problem here I'd like to know about it.

ORIGINAL: FrankHunter

Okay, I'm going to upload a 1.2 b3.  I've made some changes to artillery again plus fixed the cavalry-stacked-with-assault-troops bug.

I haven't reduced basic artillery effectiveness, what I have done is reduce the "piling on" effect when you have multiple units firing at stacks of units.  So a single artillery unit should still be able to cause some casualties but you shouldn't see 25 casualties when firing 5 artillery units at a stack of 4 corps.

One other thing, if anyone has a save of a strategic movement that should have worked (in your opinion) but didn't, please send it to me.  I thought that was fixed but if anyone is still seeing a problem here I'd like to know about it.

I think the probs I'm having with strat movement start happening with Russian surrender. But as I said before, this is using a 1914 scenario file which I've tinkered with, so I don't want to burn any of yr time looking at it, unless people are having the same probs with the vanilla scenario.

Can anybody confirm either way: CP strat move probs after Russian surrender, with v1.2 - yes or no?

I've noticed the strat thing too a few times but dismissed it. ill be sure to see if i cant get a save of it if i see it again in 1.2b3.

My personal gut feeling is that it might have to do with cross nation strat move limits. It seems but its just a feeling, that i've seen this when i've being doing alot of cross country strat moves or german moves in side for example AH where it seem u use AH strat limit not german. Countering that feeling is that i've seen it for british troops in North africa too where i think that was the only british strat moves i did.

Any how ill be on the look out for it too,

Rasmus

ORIGINAL: Szilard

Can anybody confirm either way: CP strat move probs after Russian surrender, with v1.2 - yes or no?

I've seen it before russian surrenders too, so i dont think its tied into that.

Kind regards,

Rasmus

I still think that artillery is too powerful in this game.  When you see people going all out to max out their artillery and barrage production at the expense of everything else, then its too much.  There are too many documented cases of people literally blasting their way to victory--something that never happened historically, even when the armies were not deeply entrenched.  Arty in the game needs to reduce readiness some and cause some casualties, but whenever even a concentrated barrage kills 1/3 of the troops in a hex, that is grossly ahistorical and only encourages players to build artillery (and the aircraft to spot for it) to the exclusion of everything else.
 
 

I just read this, "Bloody April": http://www.amazon.com/BLOODY-APRIL-Slau ... 103&sr=8-1

It's a really interesting & well researched narrative of the air war during "Bloody April" 1917. Focuses on the large value and importance of the artillery spotters, as the reason for caring about air power during WWI. Lots of first person accounts giving fascinating, small-scale detail.

Reading it made me think that Frank certainly did the right thing by making air spotting such a multiplier for artillery, in this game.

[quote]ORIGINAL: esteban

I still think that artillery is too powerful in this game.  When you see people going all out to max out their artillery and barrage production at the expense of everything else, then its too much.  There are too many documented cases of people literally blasting their way to victory--something that never happened historically, even when the armies were not deeply entrenched.  Arty in the game needs to reduce readiness some and cause some casualties, but whenever even a concentrated barrage kills 1/3 of the troops in a hex, that is grossly ahistorical and only encourages players to build artillery (and the aircraft to spot for it) to the exclusion of everything else.


Totally agree. The high numbers of casualties in my games vs. the AI is taking the fun out of the game.

ORIGINAL: FrankHunter

Okay, I'm going to upload a 1.2 b3.  I've made some changes to artillery again plus fixed the cavalry-stacked-with-assault-troops bug.

I haven't reduced basic artillery effectiveness, what I have done is reduce the "piling on" effect when you have multiple units firing at stacks of units.  So a single artillery unit should still be able to cause some casualties but you shouldn't see 25 casualties when firing 5 artillery units at a stack of 4 corps.

One other thing, if anyone has a save of a strategic movement that should have worked (in your opinion) but didn't, please send it to me.  I thought that was fixed but if anyone is still seeing a problem here I'd like to know about it.

The artillery tweak should be a good thing...I was gettin' the 25 casualty hit with numerous stacks per impulse.

ORIGINAL: FrankHunter

Okay, I'm going to upload a 1.2 b3. I've made some changes to artillery again plus fixed the cavalry-stacked-with-assault-troops bug.

I haven't reduced basic artillery effectiveness, what I have done is reduce the "piling on" effect when you have multiple units firing at stacks of units. So a single artillery unit should still be able to cause some casualties but you shouldn't see 25 casualties when firing 5 artillery units at a stack of 4 corps.

One other thing, if anyone has a save of a strategic movement that should have worked (in your opinion) but didn't, please send it to me. I thought that was fixed but if anyone is still seeing a problem here I'd like to know about it.

I hope that helps. I had a stack of French suffering 45 hits from a German barrage of 9 artillery factors (3 units).

Artillery in b3 might have gone a bit too far the other way - 3 pt attacks regularly (normally even) do 0 even when spotted vs 0 entrenchments.  I hit a lvl 1 entrenchement with 15 pts (5 x 3), spotted,...and did 8 damage.....

I spose you need a cutoff point for artillery - think of it in terms of the price of the barrages versus the price of the arms refits needed to cover the casualties caused by those barrages.

With trenches 2 or less it should favour artillery, with trenches 3 maybe about the same, at trenches 4 maybe the arms refits should be more cost effective.

Or something like that.

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

Artillery in b3 might have gone a bit too far the other way - 3 pt attacks regularly (normally even) do 0 even when spotted vs 0 entrenchments.  I hit a lvl 1 entrenchement with 15 pts (5 x 3), spotted,...and did 8 damage.....

Honestly I would say that this is about right, maybe just a tad weak. To inflict 8 points on the enemy (thats 1 to 1.5 industry points worth of arms refits depending on the country being bombarded if the targets are infantry--more if the targets include artillery) you spent 3 barrage points which amounts to 1 industry point. So you got a favorable attrition result.

The fact is that nowhere during WW1 or pretty much anywhere in modern history has massed artillery destroyed an army sized force in the space of 2 months, which pre-1.2 you can easily do in this game by lining up 3 or so arty units and firing them at a spotted hex containing 3-4 enemy corps every impulse over the course of a 3 impulse turn.

No I spent 5 barrage points - it was all 5 x 3pt german artillery units - the entire German heavy aartilley park ! At the time I was getting 2 barrage pts per production point, so that's 2.5 production.  The Target was Brest Litovsk, which had had its fortifications destroyed by Austrian siege artillery, but had been entrenched back to level 1.

It was a 2-impulse turn (March-April?), so conceivably I might have destroyed 1 corps worth of troops (16 pts) in 2 months of bombardment at this rate.

I shuold ahve notede the readiness loss too, but I forgot to sorry.

And remember this was with spotting.......

Pre-1.2 shortcomings have been recognised already so there's no point repeating them IMO - we're trying to get 1.2 right.

This in beta 3? SMK-at-Work?
Off the bat something in between the results of beta 2 and 3 sounds right.
Any how thx for working on it.


Kind regards,

Rasmus

Yes using the beta-3.
 
IMO it doesn't neet to be much more lethal - possibly I got a bad set of dice rolls with that example - a sample of 1 combat is not proof of anything!!
 
However the there were many examples of low casualties for 3-point bombardments by the French against the German border troops in entrenchment levels 0 and 1 that tend to support it.  6-point bombardments (presumably 2 x 3 point units) were also almost completely ineffective when the Germans got to entrench 2, only inflicting 0-1 points damage)

I'm playing beta 2 with Walloc atm and it seems pretty good to me.

Artillery casualties have been noticeably lower than 1.1, at the levels where I don't feel like I'm melting away - and theres only level 1 trenches involved.

Walloc tells me my arty is doing 45 hits though.  [:D]

Sounds very different from my beta 2 experience. I cant say i have the magic formular to what is exactly right. Just seemed to me that beta 2 was over the top, IMO ofc.


Kind regards,

Rasmus

ORIGINAL: Walloc

Sounds very different from my beta 2 experience. I cant say i have the magic formular to what is exactly right. Just seemed to me that beta 2 was over the top, IMO ofc.


Kind regards,

Rasmus

Agree...its become so frustrating for me to lose beacoup casualties that I have shelved game until the artillery is fixed. That being said, I also don't have any additional suggestions for a fix but there must be a balance somewhere between Beta 1 and 2.

ORIGINAL: EUBanana

I'm playing beta 2 with Walloc atm and it seems pretty good to me.

Artillery casualties have been noticeably lower than 1.1, at the levels where I don't feel like I'm melting away - and theres only level 1 trenches involved.

Walloc tells me my arty is doing 45 hits though. [:D]

I am also suffering high hits in my game with you. Perhaps it is because you tend to concentrate your artillery more than I do. But 45 hits is excessive and distorts the overall effect of the game.

Right now this seems to be the major problem with GoA. A game, by the way, which is the among the best strategic level computer wargames I have seen in a long time. I preordered this game 5 years ago and it was well worth the wait.