Adjusting Artillery

[dwesolick]

Been tinkering around with the editor and wanted to tone down the artillery a bit, possibly by reducing shells from a max of 10 to, say, 5.
I can't seem to find where to do this in the editor. I see attack values, etc. in campaign menu, but can't find where to adjust shells. Can anyone help?

thanks!

[BillRunacre]

With the campaign open in the Editor you'll need to go to:

Campaign -> Edit Country Data -> Edit Combat Target Data

Then select the relevant artillery unit type, and one of the boxes in the top right is for its maximum shells.

You'll want to use the Apply Data function in the bottom right to apply this to all other countries too.

[dwesolick]

Got it done. Thank you Bill!

[Chernobyl]

I agree in general with toning down upgraded regular artillery corps. They are insane. I understand artillery was king in WWI but it's too powerful right now

[dwesolick]

Yep. I toned it down to max 5 shells and it seems to be much more realistic. I'm playing against the Central Powers AI and the German artillery still packs a decent punch, but not a knockout blow all by itself. Feels about right compared to the previous game I played (against Allied AI).

I also made the turns simultaneous to extend gameplay (while toning down MPPs so they aren't doubled) and that is working great so far. Game feels a lot more cerebral and less rushed than before.

[mdsmall]

Hi - can you describe a bit more how the simultaneous turns work? Is unit movement simultaneous for both sides? How does this change combats? This would be worth describing in a separate thread.

[dwesolick]

Haven't noticed any dramatic difference in game play so far. It's still I go/You go except that we now each get to go for each turn. It makes the game play out in a more sedate fashion rather than the hell for leather, "Oh my God, it's 1916 already!?" fashion. In a nutshell, all I've really done is add a lot more turns to the game.

The AI is giving me a very good game so far (I'm currently in Feb 1915) and since I scaled back MPP production to fit the greater number of turns, technical progress feels about right for both sides so far. All in all I'm very happy with the game so far and I think I'll do the same thing with the SC WWII Europe game when I get around to playing it.

[Willard]

ORIGINAL: dwesolick

Haven't noticed any dramatic difference in game play so far. It's still I go/You go except that we now each get to go for each turn. It makes the game play out in a more sedate fashion rather than the hell for leather, "Oh my God, it's 1916 already!?" fashion. In a nutshell, all I've really done is add a lot more turns to the game.

The AI is giving me a very good game so far (I'm currently in Feb 1915) and since I scaled back MPP production to fit the greater number of turns, technical progress feels about right for both sides so far. All in all I'm very happy with the game so far and I think I'll do the same thing with the SC WWII Europe game when I get around to playing it.

Is changing the turns & halving the MPPs require a mod or is this a setting? Sorry, new to this game so unsure on this aspect.

[dwesolick]

No mod required. I did it myself in the editor and it is pretty easy to do.

[stockwellpete]

Yes, I agree about artillery being a bit too powerful, particularly from 1916 onwards. I only play against the AI, in my latest game as the Central Powers at Veteran level and I am just getting blasted to death on the Western Front. The AI seems to be very good at getting 2 artillery pieces to fire at a unit and sometimes will completely destroy it without having to send infantry in. Of course, artillery should be very destructive, but would it be able to completely wipe out corps like this? Restricting the number of shells seems like one good way of adjusting things, whether there are any others I am not sure - a ceiling on the number of strength points any individual unit can lose in the same turn due to artillery fire perhaps? Maybe the loss of 5 points should be the maximum?

I do realise part of the problem is with my own weakness at the game at the moment. I do need to think about defending in depth on the Western Front and having a second line of trenches to mitigate the loss of the first line and prevent breakthroughs turning into a rout. So I probably need to buy a few more corps and be more selective about my research. Maybe I have not got the balance quite right yet. Really fascinating game though. Lockdown? What lockdown?[:)]

[stockwellpete]

Cutting down from 10 to 5 sounds like quite a lot. I am interested in trying a change, but maybe I will reduce it to 8 at first and see how that works.

[Taxman66]

I think the best fix is to reduce the # of Tech investment chits for Arty to 1. This will slow down the arrival of the killer artillery and allow for Inf Weapons tech (which does provide some defense to Art) to keep pace.

[stockwellpete]

Yes, that sounds like a good idea too. Is it simple to adjust in the Editor, do you know?

[Taxman66]

I would let the US keep the ability to invest multiple chits so as to catch up.

[Chernobyl]

I would be happy for there to be some official change. Either reduce ammo or reduce the chance of de-entrenching from 100% to like 50%. It's supposed to be tough to break thru trenches even in 1918. Right now we have artillery obliterating any level of entrenchment easily starting in mid 1915. I just took Verdun against a human opponent with almost no casualties in July 1915 and there was honestly nothing he could have done to stop it.

[Ktonos]

Maybe have the 50% chance to de-entrench apply only against fort cities? Always assumed that heavy barrages that deentrench and obliterate regular positions represent gas attacks, and with this assumption it seems logical. But fort cities yes, should be tougher

[ThisEndUp]

An alternative would be to set a minimum entrenchment level, such that artillery can never fully de-entrench a unit. This minimum would be dependent on tech and terrain of course. It always struck me as odd that you can completely de-entrench a unit in the mountains or in a city - it's not as if you can level the entire area.

[FOARP]

For my mod I've reduced artillery to 6 shells, and also introduced a 3-shell heavy artillery unit with one more hex of range (heavy artillery is right there in the base code).

[Chernobyl]

Other thoughts on artillery:

The main thing it does is de-entrench with 100% chance one level per ammo, once you upgrade at least once.

But more than that, it doesn't even need to be at high readiness. For example, an upgraded artillery which is understrength and not under command of a friendly HQ will still de-entrench 100% of the time. No spare MPP to reinforce your understrength artillery? No problem cause they don't even need to be at full strength!

I believe it is less likely to deal strength damage if it has low readiness, but this often doesn't matter. You can easily rail your artillery around the map and not need a HQ for it to completely de-entrench an enemy unit, leaving it as good as dead. This makes it extremely easy to concentrate artillery against one enemy nation like France of Russia, in order to trigger an early snowball effect (high losses for one nation lead to low national morale and friendly HQ experience gain which leads to even higher losses which are too difficult to replace with the budget of one nation alone).

It seems clear to me that artillery's performance ought to depend largely on its readiness, just like all other units in the game.

I think it's tough to get artillery right, and I don't want to nerf it too hard. German artillery smashed Russian units in Poland in 1915, but even greater concentrations of artillery failed to annihilate German units in 1916. It should be powerful but still have difficulty completely breaking through extensive trench lines. Artillery should actually be LESS devastating against heavily-entrenched enemy units. Ideally it should also lose steam the more it fires during a single turn, to simulate loss of accuracy due to barrels wearing out.

A humble proposal:

Arty De-entrenchment chance by upgrade level:
Level 0: 0%
Level 1: (0.5 - (0.05 * # of times fired this turn)) * readiness %
level 2: (0.65 - (0.05 * # of times fired this turn)) * readiness %

In other words, assuming 100% readiness, level 1 artillery would have a maximum of 50% chance to de-entrench every time it fires, lowering down to a minimum of 5% after firing 9 times. This would yield an expected 2.0 de-entrenchments if it fires 5 times, but only 2.8 if it fires all 10 shells at once.

This would also have interesting strategy effects regarding artillery placement and concentration and shell conservation which I won't go into here. But I will mention that it would also lead to more sporadic artillery fire (checking to see if you get the de-entrenchment you want, calling of an attack if you get unlucky). In a way that might be more "realistic" with units coming under moderate artillery bombardment often rather than artillery only showing its face during massive assaults.

I'm not sure it's the ideal solution. Concentrating multiple batteries together might still be too strong. But I wanted to put my idea out there.

[stockwellpete]

Just to mention another indicator that artillery is probably too powerful at the moment is the use of "tunnel warfare" and mining in WW1. Obviously this is not represented in the game right now (and it is hard to see how it could be), but it does illustrate there were definite limits to the impact of artillery bombardments in certain situations (including mountainous regions).