Global Domination for ATG

[Bombur]

-I´m converting the GD scenario for ATG. New features.
1-Up to 14 playable regimes (new regimes: Mexico, Austria-Hungary, Argentina, BENELUX, Italy)
2-AI minor countries (hopefully we will implement a system like that of Diplomacy´s tom weber, with ability to annex countries by diplomacy). No more free invasions!
3-Resources: oil and raw materials
4-ATG terrrain. For the future I will create seasons
5-Some custom units
6-Ferry points: areas of big rivers with harbours (in cities usually) where the costs for movement will be small (similar to a regular river)

-Some doubts
-It will hard to simulate oil and raw material trade. I´m considering to create an item called oil imports and other called ore imports. This items will add to your oil and raw material stores but will cost 10 times the "regular" oil and raw material items. I accept alternate ideas, however
-New units: Rail guns, Protected cruisers and more suggestions....
-Considering the scale of this game, I´m considering to make artillery to work like infantry guns (they will provide direct fire on attacks but no artillery fire). This will allow the AI to use artillery better
-Economic growth will be random, I don´t want too much economic micromanagement, it will be like you are the defense minister....I´m considering to increase each people group production by 0-0,03 points each year. Is that possible?

-Final note: the only thing I didn´t like in AT is that oil and ore add magically to your regime stores. They cannot be interdicted. In this case it would be better to run a Pacific war campaign using the old system of generic supply, as naval interdiction was so important in that scenario....

[ernieschwitz]

-Economic growth will be random, I don´t want too much economic micromanagement, it will be like you are the defense minister....I´m considering to increase each people group production by 0-0,03 points each year. Is that possible?

Yes, it´s possible. I already have an idea to how

[Ande]

You could implement a simple trade system
Every player has one card named "buy oil" and cost 5pps and gives a quantity (perhaps 1000 initially) of oil and one named "sell oil" and takes away just as much oil as buy gives, this amount . Every time the "buy oil" card is played the quantity is diminishes by 1% (as to simulate price increase) and every time the "sell oil" card is played the quantity is increased by 1% (as to stimulate price increase). Note that the traded quantity is global: it is the players that is trading with eachother. The idea is that if player A buys 1000 oil and B sells 1000, the price is constant as there are equilibrium in the market.

In order to make it fair, the effect of all trasactions should be evaluated at the end of each round. Because the game lacks floating point numbers, it might be a good idea to let the trade quantity be registered at times 1000. If not, it might get very tricky to make calculations under 100.

I have no doubt the price of oil will rocket the first turn of the game as all players use up all of their initial pps to stock up on cheap oil, at that point the few players with excessive oil will slowly sell oil for cheap pps, sooner or later the market should reach an equilibrium.

There are one possible abuse though. You can buy a lot of oil one turn and the price wont change until next at which point you sell everything and get a huge pp boost. One way to get around this is only let players buy or sell it it has been at least one turn since he did the other. That way we can trust the other player to quickly take advantage of any premium prices and player who tries to mnipulate the market sees no profit.

[ernieschwitz]

I like the idea, i really do...

But what i question is if there will be a free oil market during a global war (which is what the game would simulate)...

[Ande]

There is no time when the need for money and oil is as great as it is during war. It might be a little strange that enemies trade with each other, but I think it would provide an interesting mechanics: Should I sell some oil to get that upgrade, knowing that this will grant my enemy cheaper oil? It is of course possible to introduce complexitied ad infinitum, there could be embargoes and trading blocs, but it would be questionable how much additional enjoyability it would give even if it would give realism.

[Ande]

ORIGINAL: Bombur

-New units: Rail guns, Protected cruisers and more suggestions....

Is the scenario set in the late 19th century/early 20th century? Then I have some suggestions how to make aircraft usable and not completely unhistorical. First you let all units have terrible recon value, then you create a unit named observation balloon. This would be the only unit in game that effectively can do recon and it should be impervious to everything except fighters. This way
fighters would be an important part of an army without actually contributing directly to the fighting.
The mechanics is somewhat more interesting with artillery with range because air superiority would allow for suppression of enemy artillery by counter battery fire. But even without that I think any player would feel quite crippled without the ability to know what the enemy is doing.

Another suggestion is to give Infantry an boost in attacking power. Repeating rifles are, after all, awesome offensive weapons.
For example: the Schlieffen plan was not based on the idea of human wave attacks but on mobility and concentration of firepower. To compensate, there should be a significant increase of the entrenchment bonus for infantry in open terrain, reflecting the fact that infantry in prepared positions will easily cut down any opposing force and not so easily be displaced.

Another possible thing to do is to make more distinct machine guns. The idea is to have heavy machine guns that do defense quite well but not much else and then have light machine gun that still is a very decent defensive weapon but also do offense adequately.

[mgaffn1]

I like your oil & ore resource interdiction idea. Looking forward to seeing how that plays out.

[ghoward]

Does all this turn GD into another HUMANONLY game? I like it now because it is a large (mostly) historical scenario that the AI can (mostly) handle.

[ernieschwitz]

I think it is going to be AI capable. At least thats the way Bombur and I are currently planning it.

[Jeffrey H.]

+1 for AI capable GD in ATG !

[Bombur]

I´m not a big fan of AI in these strategic scenarios, however, given the number of playable regimes, there won´t be any alternative.

[Bombur]

I´m planning an alternative to simulate economic growth. I will remove the production levels for each people. Total production will depend on sizes of your cities, and they can be upgraded.