CW Trade - Convoy Nightmare

[Omnius]

I was in the Jul/Aug 1940 turn and I had an extreme nightmare with production, trade and convoys as the CW player. I enjoy the rest of the game the way MWiF automates so many time consuming bookkeeping tasks, but trade, production planning and convoying has become a major nightmare.

I started trade with China as the CW player to give China one oil resource, from Burma. Then I decided to bump up the trade to two non-oil resources and one oil and then things went totally nuts. Instead of continuing to use the Burma oil for trade the idiotic program picked oil coming from Britain, then as I tried to change that it switched to Canada and finally it picked a saved oil in Inverness. I was in the CW Naval Movement phase trying to figure out my unused convoy points in each area as I'm transitioning from the Bay of Biscay to the North Atlantic and then to the two sea areas adjacent to Greenland and Iceland.

After reading everything in the three manuals as regards convoys and when to designate trade I decided to wait until the Preliminary Planning Production phase to try to change the oil being traded from my saved oil point in Inverness to Burma. Even in this phase, which the manual says is the phase where I can set default trades and countries, for resources and oil I wasn't able to budge my oil trade from Inverness to Burma. This totally fou9led up my plans as I put two convoy points into the Bay of Bengal ready to transport the two unused resources from Malaya to China. Unfortunately convoying oil from Inverness and then the program forcing trade from India, thus necessitating convoying a resource from Malaya my convoy rou9ting plan was totally screwed up by the most ignorant convoy programming that really hasn't been improved since Marinacci's version.

I am really peeved that I couldn't tell the program what oil or non-oil resources to use. Every time I tried to change what the program would use then it would recalculate to some other I didn't want that was equally stupid. It screwed up my convoying of a resource from Australia to Britain although I was able to repair that, though not the way I wanted because I could never change that Inverness oil trade.

The one thing I thought Marinacci did wrong in his original program was to have oil go first for production before non-oil resources. Unfortunately Steven hasn't corrected this massive mistake. I always see oil being used for production before non-oil resources, I always see unused non-oil resources with all oil used. I always have to fight the stupid program to try to make the non-oil resources move to factories so that I can save the oil. Steve needs to fix this so non-oil resources move to factories before oil.

I've also got a real mess with some of my CW factories. I show no idle factories on the main summary screen, yet when I actually click on that idle factory number that shows zero I see two factories supposedly idle. One shows it has 1 of 254 factories idle, a slight improvement from showing 1 of 255 idle. Yet neither of these factories is idle and if I try to send an unused resource to one of them it really goes bonkers on sending a resource to it. There is most definitely something wrong here. Yet I do get full production.

The other really massive screw up is that I've transitioned my CW convoys from the Bay of Biscay, there are no convoy points or ships of any kind in the Bay of Biscay from any country. Yet when I look at the routes of resources flowing to Britain I find many still using the Bay of Biscay still. When I try to manually go in and as per the manuals change the convoy path from the Bay of Biscay from the North Atlantic to the Faeroes Gap it never, ever allows me to make that change. It always reverts back to the Bay of Biscay even though there are no convoy points or ships of any kind there and should be considered an illegal convoy route. I was wondering why as I put more convoy points in the North Atlantic and the Faeroes Gap why I was seeing more unused convoy points in those sea areas while I was taking three convoy points a turn out of the Bay of Biscay.

Something is really screwed up with convoy routing in version 1.05. I did see a 1.06 fix that hopefully will help alleviate some problems but I'll have to play through the Sep/Oct turn before I can see if this fixes some of my many problems.

I've had problems with sending oil to Italy from Germany to be able to save it for use reorganizing Italian naval units. I had to send 8 oil from Germany, including 3 saved points, just to get to hopefully save one oil for Italy. I was able to use German saved oil to reorganize Italian navy on the second turn of trade, but not on the first.

I really hate that oil I try to trade is always used for production, usually bouncing a non-oil resource being sent to a factory already. We need to be able to designate traded oil as being saved by the recipient. When I tried to change the trade purpose from the sending country I am told some lame excuse why it can't be done like I don't own the factory. When I try to change that traded oil from being used for production from the recipient country I'm told I don't own the resource and can't make a change. Even in the Preliminary Production Planning and Final Production Planning phases, when the manual says I should be able to access the default trade and default country functions I can't, something is broken for sure.

I'm having so much fun getting farther along in the Global War scenario than with the board games or Marinacci's first computer version, but I'm absolutely hating the production planning and convoy routing system and now the trade function. I've read everything in all three manuals about production planning and convoy routing and I'm not seeing the things work quite the way the manuals say it should.

While I want to close the Burma Road as the Japanese I'll leave it open in order to try clearing all trade for one turn between the CW and China before trying to reestablish it with the new 1.06 update. I'll also keep trying to trade between Germany to Italy to see if I can actually save some oil in Italy instead of having it sent to production. I'm really frustrated that trading oil is so difficult for trying to save it as the recipient country, or to use it for reorganization.

Instead of wasting so much time trying to make a worthless AI I suggest heavily that Steven invest some time in making the production and convoying of resources a lot smarter and less frustrating. I mean it's really stupid that it's seems impossible to send oil to a country in trade so that country can use it to save rather than being forced to use it in production. What could be a very helpful system is now most unhelpful and frustrating and it needs to be improved vastly. A real shame this wasn't done before release, but now it needs to be addressed before too many see how screwed up this is and complain, or quit playing. Why does having fun have to be so much work?

Omnius

[Shannon V. OKeets]

It's one of the main items I need to fix.[:@]

But be aware the China will have trouble using a lot of resources because the rail lines don't connect to all the factories. While most major powers have excellent railway systems, China's is fragmented. Without a rail connection, the resources pouring into China will have to be oil points that are saved.

It seems like that is what you were trying to do.

Routing resources and saving oil have a lot of subtle rules, with trade agreements having to be fulfilled regardless of anything else the player wants to do. Throw in the 4 NEI oil points with 2 going to Japan and 2 going to the Commonwealth, and the other oil resources that have to be divvied up (e.g., Venezuela) and the rules dictate a lot of what happens. It's been a royal pain to code. Changing relationships between belligerents (e.g., the Netherlands incompletely conquered) and neutrals also confuse what can/must be done.

[paulderynck]

I posted a methodology for preliminary production that worked for me in the WiF School thread. I am not claiming this is the cure for your concerns - especially because I was working with a non-oil game and the CW had no trade agreements - but maybe take a look-see and perhaps the process for setting Defaults is not something you've tried with the same "click order" yet.

If you have a save of your game at the start of Preliminary Production at the end of the turn, you can zip it and post it here and I'd be happy to see if I can find a way for Production and Trade to do what you want it to.

ORIGINAL: Omnius
I was able to use German saved oil to reorganize Italian navy on the second turn of trade, but not on the first.

This is as per the rules. Due to the Sequence of Play, oil received in trade arrives after Re-org, so it must be received in turn 1 and used for re-org in turn 2, etc. Of course if you are reliably receiving one oil a turn from your trading partner, this only matters on the very first turn.

[dhucul2011]

I am sure that production and convoys MUST be at the top of the list for enhancements? I DREAD the CW production planning. It's hopeless trying to get it right.

[Omnius]

Shannon,
I'm really happy to see my CW convoy routing post moved to tech support. I wasn't sure where to post it initially and didn't have time to post another one in tech support. This is my first opportunity back to check on this issue.

I am quite aware of the problems of China's disjointed rail and road lines that don't connect all resources to all factories, especially those up north. I actually purposely gave China one too many resources so that hopefully I would be able to set oil as the extra resource to save. No matter what I did the oil was always sent to production and the extra non-oil resource was wasted. Actually it didn't get sent because the program screwed up sending the oil from England, from one of my precious saved oil points that I could never change.

The production resource convoying function is critical to us players, it really needs serious improvement. This is the one reason I threw in the towel on Marinacci's version. So yes I do have some idea as to suggestions to improve this routine. I've been trying to read the manuals and do the functions as I'm reading and I'm having difficulty getting manual control.

My thing is that oil should be the last resource moved to production, first all non-oil resources must be sent to production then oil so that any excess will always be oil. Second the convoy pathing should be made smarter, or give us a button that switches to manual control and the only thing the program computes is the port and rail pathing, allow us to manually control the sea pathing. My biggest complaint about the convoy system was the program thinks too much and too stupid, if you can't make it think smarter then give us an option to make it not think, just obey our sea pathing as long as it's legal.

I can imagine this is a really tough feature to program but it is critical. I'm glad I'm just playing a test game to see how stuff works, especially production and convoys.

I do have a saved game file at the preliminary CW production phase where there's all kinds of crazy stuff happening. I found a major convoy bug where the program is forcing resource routing through the Bay of Biscay, yet there are no ships of any kind there. As I moved out three convoy points a turn and put 3 convoy points a turn into the North Atlantic and Faeroes Gap I now see the program utterly failed to change convoy routing from turn to turn. I pulled the last three convoy points out of the Bay of Biscay in the May/Jun 1940 turn yet they're still all running through the Bay of Biscay from my set up. They're all working too because I keep track of CW production like a hawk and I'm getting all those build points.

Well back into the breach to continue with the Sep/Oct 1940 turn. I'm going to kill my CW to China trade for a turn and then set it back up in Nov/Dec. I want to see if I can get the Burma oil to go to China and be able to save it. The manuals indicate I can but when I try it as the recipient nation I'm not getting to change from production to saving it. This time I'm not going into the production planning screen prior to the preliminary planning phase, see if that helps.

Omnius

[Omnius]

pauldernyk,
I'll take a look at your WiF school thread post regarding production. You had better believe I tried setting defaults and overrides and ran those functions through their paces and know full well how they work or how they don't as compared to what the rules say they should do. While I was making a mistake trying to set convoy routing before the preliminary production planning phase when I tried to fix things in the correct phase and use the default tabs and default country settings for trade they did not work.

While I have a saved game file of the CW preliminary production planning phase I do not have WinZip and will not download that garbage ever again. The last time I downloaded it recently it had me downloading a bunch of garbage marketing malware so I won't ever download anything from them again. If you know how I can get WinRAR.exe back then I could go that route.

I'd like someone to see the screw-ups I've found in the CW phase, idle factories listed in the summary screen link for idle factories even though the summary screen numbers shows zero, the idle factory in Southhampton that's 1 of 254.

Thanks for the tip about the one turn delay, I was starting to suspect that was the case, thanks for confirming.

Omnius

[Zorachus99]

Never use Winzip. The sold their soul to the devil long ago.

So, address your problem, I very strongly recommend winrar from rarlabs. Very fast, free and easy. http://rarlabs.com/download.htm

The shell extension is very useful, as you can right-click any file, and choose to add it to an archive. Change the type to .zip, name the file and you are done. The default .rar extension is a faster compression algorithm.

[Omnius]

Zorachuss99,
Thanks for the tip on WinZip but what's funny is I just tried to download WinRAR and they've sold their souls to the marketing criminals even worse. I couldn't download a free copy of WinRAR without having to buy something or sign up for some damned service I didn't want so had to pass.

However I was more careful this time downloading WinZip for free and did it from their site, not someone else's. I must have erred before in downloading from someone else's site, which had a higher ranking, and they had me downloading a bunch of trash. This time my WinZip download went smoothly and I have no unwanted marketing malware add-ons.

Omnius

[Omnius]

ORIGINAL: paulderynck

If you have a save of your game at the start of Preliminary Production at the end of the turn, you can zip it and post it here and I'd be happy to see if I can find a way for Production and Trade to do what you want it to.

pauldernyk,

Careful what you ask for, you may receive it. [:D] I bit the bullet and after rejecting WinRAR's free offer I did download WinZip from the correct site this time and got only what I asked for.

So here's my CWProdProbERL.zip file attached. I hope you'll make sure that Steven or Shannon gets a copy, they're the ones who really need to see it since I got things good and messed up and they can see it for real.

So look at the production summary under the factories column and click on the idle factories, which the summary says is zero. You should find two factories there saying they're idle, I think it's Southhampton that says it's got 1 of 254 idle.

Now check the routing of convoys to Britain, sorry I don't remember offhand which resource to factory route was the one I found running through the Bay of Biscay but I should have several. Maybe from India or Africa, should be some of the early ones I was routing through the Bay of Biscay that are still routing through the Bay of Biscay despite there being no CW convoy points there. It's the Jul/Aug turn 1940 and I pulled out the last 3 CW convoy points in the May/Jun 1940 turn from the Bay of Biscay so there really shouldn't be any. I did notice that as I was pulling out convoy points, three per turn, from the Bay of Biscay and putting three per turn into the North Atlantic and the Faeroes Gap to pick up the slack that the program wasn't actually rerouting from turn to turn. Here is a case of the program not thinking when it should.

Plus check what oil resource the program is now forcing me to use to ship to China, and check the crazy route the program decided to pick. The very route I was using for convoying a resource from Australia to Britain for that extra build point for the Food in Flames rule. Can you make it reset it's default route and if so how? After it settled on the Inverness saved oil point it would never change no matter how many times I tried in the preliminary production phase regardless of trying to set defaults or overrides.

I hope this file will help Steven to find the error that's not rerouting convoy routes as we change the number of convoy points in a sea area. Being able to transition convoy points from one sea area route to another is vital for the CW and the USA.

Omnius

[paulderynck]

Hi Omnius,

Today was my boardgame WiF day, so I just now downloaded it and will get back to you. The nice thing about posting the saves here is that Shannon or the beta-testers can get them whenever they need them. I try to "triage" the ones I download in order to try and save Shannon's precious time.

Thank you.

[paulderynck]

Caveat - Omnius I see you were on version 1.0.5 with your file. Everything below was done with 1.0.6.

I have worked with the file and must admit that it is very difficult to get optimal results with the current production interface. Given the location of all the CPs:
- more oil should be saved, and
- more resources sent to production, and
- production should only be maximum if oil stored in the UK gets sent to production.

On the up side there is a different bug that is giving you full production without burning the oil saved in the UK anyway. [:)] The Planner shows 16 oil and non-oil resources getting to UK factories (which is one more than is physically possible) and then shows all 17 factories as producing anyway! (Perhaps this is an advance peek at how the AI will screw us! [;)] )

The Trade Agreement with China is a very complicating factor and I was left wondering if without it, whether getting to an end result would have been far less time consuming. I could find no way for China to save the oil they were sent and produce the two resources instead. It appears that one resource in Canada becomes useless because the program is absolutely desperate to send it to China. OTOH, after trying without success to Default everything, I just concentrated on fulfilling the trade agreement and trying to get resources in Canada(3) and India(2) and Australia(1) to get to the UK. Then on clicking "Recompute" I found the program made a lot of intelligent decisions with all that was left, FREX saving the Persian oil in Kuwait and routing all the African resources correctly.

I attach the file with the production plan as I've left it. I have no more time to spend on this today, but would be interested to see if once you get to final production, will you still get all the same results? If so, while the bugs are annoying, and the process far less intuitive and more time consuming then it should be, they would seem to cancel out and you can forge ahead with your game.

[Omnius]

pauldernyk,
Thanks for taking a look at the saved game file. I hope that Steve and/or Shannon sees it, the programmer needs to see the mess so he can think of how to fix it though I do have a good idea as to how to fix convoying of resources.

I'm glad you were no more successful than I in being able to save that extra CW oil point being sent to China while China wastes the extra non-oil resource that was also in the trade deal.

I did get through the Sep/Oct turn and sorted things out for the CW. I was able to only by stopping my trade with China for a turn. I was able to get all oil saved, or at least the program makes me think it's doing that.

I did upgrade to 1.06 for my new Sep/Oct turn but did not see any improvement yet. I still have to see if I'm going to get more than one oil in places like Grand Rapids saving to see that the 1.06 fix listed for saving more than one oil point per city actually works.

However I did run into a real nightmare with Japan. I'll write that up separately.

I'll take a look at your file version later this week, busy with work.

Omnius

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Omnius

pauldernyk,
Thanks for taking a look at the saved game file. I hope that Steve and/or Shannon sees it, the programmer needs to see the mess so he can think of how to fix it though I do have a good idea as to how to fix convoying of resources.

I'm glad you were no more successful than I in being able to save that extra CW oil point being sent to China while China wastes the extra non-oil resource that was also in the trade deal.

I did get through the Sep/Oct turn and sorted things out for the CW. I was able to only by stopping my trade with China for a turn. I was able to get all oil saved, or at least the program makes me think it's doing that.

I did upgrade to 1.06 for my new Sep/Oct turn but did not see any improvement yet. I still have to see if I'm going to get more than one oil in places like Grand Rapids saving to see that the 1.06 fix listed for saving more than one oil point per city actually works.

However I did run into a real nightmare with Japan. I'll write that up separately.

I'll take a look at your file version later this week, busy with work.

Omnius

I worked on this yesterday and fixed most of it. I should be able to get the Australia --> Canada stuff working this morning.

Later this week 1.0.7.0 should be available, cleaning up most of the Commonwealth convoy problems.

[Dabrion]

Will the interface change? What the routing algorithm?

[Omnius]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
I worked on this yesterday and fixed most of it. I should be able to get the Australia --> Canada stuff working this morning.

Later this week 1.0.7.0 should be available, cleaning up most of the Commonwealth convoy problems.

Shannon,
Glad to hear that you're working on cleaning up the convoy problem. However it's Australia to Great Britain that needs to work properly, not to Canada. We don't get that extra Food for Flames BP for shipping from Australia to Canada, only to Great Britain.

I'm hoping that you can clean up trade and force the program to stop thinking too much, that's the biggest problem. Make the program obey our default settings or manual convoy sea area pathing.

Omnius

[dhucul2011]

Looking forward to ANYTHING that makes it easier at this point.

[Braig]

Hopefully this will also address the problem of sending Free France build points. The only thing I haven't tried doing for this problem is having Free France supply all the CP's in the route for transfer, but without BP's FF doesn't have enough cp's to reach their new home.
Hmmm.....is that a requirement for build point transfer, as it is a trade agreement, since the receiving power in trade agreements have to convoy the resources?

[paulderynck]

This "receiver provides" thing has always been interpretable. How can the Chinese ever get what is lent to them? Active majors can participate in each other's chains so I think it would only be an issue if you had two allies fighting over what gets through, in which case one of them could invoke the "receiver provides" business. But if they can't cooperate in such things (not meaning RAW7 Rule 18) then how are they going to win a war together?

The other time it can effect things is when one party is neutral.

[Centuur]

If the sender is neutral he can't provide convoys for build points or resources send. If he isn't neutral, than his convoys can be used to transport those resources if he allows to do so...

[Courtenay]

A neutral major power can not use its convoys to transfer resources or build points, except for US resources and build points to China. Those can go over a neutral US's convoys:

9. Resources to China – Allied major powers can’t give resources to China until you choose this entry option. In future turns, each major power can give up to 5 resources a turn (no limit once that major power is at war with Japan). The U.S. can use its convoy points to transport resources to China from the USA. Clarification: The U.S. can lend-lease the Philippine resource to China (if it can be transported there).

17. Lend-Lease to China – Each Allied major power can give up to 5 build points a turn to China (see 13.6.4). The U.S. can use its convoy points to transport build points to China from the USA. This entry option can only be chosen if you have already chosen entry option 9.