Clarke

Okay, I may have something on this. I just flew three sorties with different Nuke bombers on the same turn to the same island, but different locations. Yamamoto had three large stacks of units on said island. Two of the bombers dropped and returned to the airfield. The third flew his course and returned but did not drop the payload. The targeted stack is near the sea just as the ground units were on that tiny island mentioned in my previous post. I had the field orders set to target ground units in both cases. What I am thinking is that the bomber thinks these units are not ground units due to their proximity to the water. Thus, he does not bomb them. I seem to be able to keep using nuclear bombers as long as I do a fly over and drop on the way. If I actually target something then the bomber self destructs. This is a game that started some time ago and there have been two or three updates installed. I know this may be part of what is happening, but the game seems to run fine otherwise so I thought I would pass this information along.

Can anyone help me with a step by step guide to making a unit subset? Initially I thought I would copy the standard set then duplicate and rename units for a specific nationality. There apparently is more to it than that and I really don't know where to start.

Regarding the percentage of population victory condition. I like the 80% setting, but find I am never sure where I'm at as far as achieving victory. Is it possible to have a running tally kept as part of the interface? Something displayed above the game map or accessible with a hot key to tell the player what percentage of the population he controls?

I have had some bizarre results when using nuclear bombers so far. What exactly is supposed to happen on a nuclear bombing run? Sometimes they drop their load and return to fly more missions. Sometimes they self destruct when dropping them. At least once a bomber dropped the bomb and disappeared but the message said he ran out of fuel rather than self destructed. He shouldn't have had any fuel problems. The last bomber I sent out dropped and disappeared with no message at all. I tried to bomb the units on one of those little islands with nothing but a city on a rock and enough room for a four man color guard. Except the AI had about twenty units stacked there outside the city. The bomber simply would not drop on them. I tried three times and he flew over and returned twice and ran out of gas the other time. Personally, I would like to see the minimum size of an island with a city increased in the map generator in an effort to rid us of those little rocks with no possible beachhead.

I think cheating is too harsh. Brit has explained the general design philosophy at least twice. The AI gets a pass on certain things to speed up the game and speed the development of the game. It is not designed to cheat to give us a tougher task with the exception of research a research bonus at veteran and elite. I too would like to know more about how the AI actually plays the game. Both for setting up a rule set I'm working on and simply to be able to play. I spent considerable time isolating an enemy by taking all their resources and leaving them with three cities on two islands. I basically besieged them rather than invading as my initial strategy because they were quite strong on those two islands. I was dismayed to find after about twenty turns that they had not grown weaker, but were even stronger and their city populations had not declined at all. I would like to know what rules we are using before I go messing with the food units use per turn as an example. Right now I don't have any idea how reducing food used by units will affect the AI.

Brit, can we sticky this information?

I've only used them for ships but they should all be the same. You'll note there are three buttons. One each for ships, planes, and ground units. Select a button by left clicking it and then right click on the map to set the rally point there. You will see the dotted movement line to show you where it is and that line appears whenever you select the city during the game to remind you of it The rally point can be changed the same way. I am not sure if you can rally troops to another city. At one point during the demo phase you could not. Hope this helps.

Brit; I have been meaning to post since I started a game with the new release. I am enjoying the game and noticed that the AI no longer gets automatic updates for all units when research is done. Thank you. As for my requested change; I wonder if the build and research queue can be configured to change the order once they have been set. Perhaps I am missing something in the interface, but currently I find it necessary to erase the Queue list and start over whenever I want to move an item up to the top or add a new item to the top. Is there a way to change things around once the list has been entered?

Thank you for taking time to post this Brit. Great info. Very encouraging.

It appears that the hit point changes are not in effect in my game. Do I need to start a new game for the upgrade to apply?

I don't know what to say about that. I have never seen it happen. I have to set my warships to attack sea units only to get them to move off rather than stay and bombard land units sometimes. I just ran a short experiment in my current game. I had four battleships moving toward a destination with the field orders set to attack sea units. I reset them to attack all enemies and altered their course to the nearest enemy city. Before they got there they spotted an enemy tank and they all stopped and blew it off the map. They then continued to the city and on the next turn began pounding away at the three units defending it destroying an infantry that turn. This has been typical of my games and I have updated as they have become available. I don't know if there is a bombard city option for artillery or battleships. It seems to target units and any damage to population or infrastructure is collateral. Perhaps trying to target the city has somehow caused a problem and you need to kind of reset the battleships. Try and move them out of range and then back in range while leaving the orders at attack all units or attack land units. I'm only guessing but it may help.

Regarding number one, battleships attacking ground units and cities. What are your ship's field orders set at? When I have them set at attack all enemies; my battleships and cruisers attack any land unit in range. Not sure if the game is set up just to attack cities. I have niticed collateral damge when attacking units inside cities.

Thanks N3rull. I had missed that, but good to know.

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but I just noticed it. It appears that transports will alter course and attack warships when they sight them if you have artillery on the transport that is set to attack all enemies. This is of course warships you are at war with. Unknown if the same happens when passing shore units or if other transported units ie tanks cause the same behavior. It would seem to be a much better arrangement to have the transport operate independently and have the ground units become inert while being transported. Also unknown if this occurs with air transports. May I suggest another level of autosave at least for the beta while we are figuring some of this out. An autosave that holds for three or five turns as well as the current one. I would have liked to go back and experiment with this but the autosave is as the turn ended and the transport is gone after attacking a destroyer. Brit, I saved this autosave file in another folder if you need to look at the unfortunate decision of my transport captain.

Thanks Brit. I sent the autosave file as requested. I should have mentioned that the turn your looking for is in the 90 to 95 range as best I can remember. Very close to that anyway.

Thanks Brit; I appreciate the reply. I understand what your saying, but do hope you are able to incorporate the extra level of decision making. Last night I had a battleship sail into an undefended food resourse and disappear from the map. The area is the five point food resource immediately SE of Chittagong. It is a bit of a Bermuda Triangle as both the AI and myself have lost ships there after successful combats as I explained above. This time however there was no combat animation. The battleship just sailed in and vanished with no change in possession of the resource. I considered the possibility of a submarine, but I assume there would be an explosion or something to indicate that. Also, I don't believe the enemy in this case has built any subs. I took the resource without further incident a few turns later with an empty transport. The ship showed up as sunk in the turn recap, but I think there is an infrequent bug at work during captures. Of course it could be my copy of the demo has corrupted or something. I am somewhat dismayed nobody else is experiencing the issue. Thanks for all your hard work. I like some of the UI changes in particular. The game keeps getting better and has that one more turn quality to it.

Rather than open a new thread I thought I would post here. No hijack intended. I thought this thread was a good fit. What I have observed is an apparent ability of the AI to upgrade units either sea or land without moving to cities. Has anyone else noticed this? Could the Developer or anyone else confirm it? They seem to all upgrade on one turn without moving to an upgrade area. That got me wondering if the computer opponents pay for their upgrades. They seem to need resources to build units, but I would like to know if they need resources and time/turns to upgrade. I guess that would be one only Brit could answer. Also, I have seen several combat resolutions finish in an odd kind of draw. These no last man standing fights between two units involve trying to take a resource or city. Here is what seems to happen based on the animation. The attacker kills the defender but the defender seems to be counter attacking and is shown moving forward out of the city or resource area. Then the attacker moves onto the city or resource and simply disappears. The defenders flag still flies over the city or resource. I have seen this at least once when the AI was the attacker and four times when I was the attacker. Usually at sea with a resource, but this morning I attacked a city with an infantry two unit. The AI had only a fighter or biplane defending. Plane counterattacks and gets shot down, infantry moves into city and is gone. Tri- color still flying over city no units left in area. Odd what? Anybody else seen this?

"observation: cruisers need a ship yard, but the bigger boys don't?" I noticed this too. Also, I can't seem to upgrade my transports from one to two. I have shipyards and the menu to the left indicates they need upgrades. I have the cash required but when I move them into the city and hit the upgrade icon nothing happens. Enjoying playing the demo by the way. Looking forward to the full version.

Well, he is actually modding here even if the work is intended to help eventually patch the scenario. What Thetwo actually asked is if it is possible to exclude the USSR from other Allied diplomacy options. voiding or deleting those two AI scripts would seem to accomplish that. At least when playing the AI. I am in sympathy with Blashy's position that the diplomacy option and the different possibilities it presents as a game unfolds are worthwhile and enjoyable. The two however is trying to keep the Russians from becoming an active participant in Asia until the summer of '45'. His position being that Stalin would not have been cajoled into an early attack on Japan because it wasn't in Soviet interests. Blocking the Ai diplomacy scripts helps him do that but doesn't have any effect with human Vs human play, so it may not be the answer. Perhaps he could edit the country data and let the Japanese spend less per chit for influencing hostile majors. That would be Russia only since the Japanese are already at war with the others. One or more additional chits allowed for the Japanese and an adjustment downward in the effect a successful diplomatic event has for Japan are options too. Along with the lower cost of a chit these could even things out. It would take some testing but it could work.

TheTwo, Try editing the diplomacy for the UK and USA in the AI scripts section of the editor. There is a script for each of these allies to try and influence the Russians. I would think you could set the trigger at zero or something to negate diplomacy from bringing the Soviets in early.

TheTwo Ah yes, I see. I did misinterpret your intent. At any rate I probably made too much of it as that point wasn't really the crux of your very interesting post. What is the game issue with Stalin exactly? I am at December of 1944 as the allies in my first game and the Soviets have not intervened other than to bankroll Mao. I read recently that Stalin made and kept a commitment at Yalta to Truman and Churchill to attack Japan within three months of the end of the war in Europe. Are the AI Russians jumping in before July 1945?

I can't agree that a pending economic crises loomed that would dictate the prosecution of the war by the U. S. be curtailed in any way whatsoever. The bond drives were still spectacularly successful and in fact the U. S, treasury received over 85 million dollars in January of 46 from the sale of 'E' series bonds dubbed victory bonds. That is about a billion dollars of todays money according to the consumer price index and the war was already over. The U. S. had cash in circulation for either bonds or taxes because employment was near 100% and due to rationing and shortages there weren't enough goods or services to spend it on. Want to buy a new car with all your dough? Sorry, no cars being manufactured for the duration. Want to buy tires for your beater? Sorry, rubber is all going to the war effort. Tractors, silk and nylon stockings, meat, gasoline, copper; even for pennies; all unavailable or tightly rationed along with many other things. The national speed limit was 35 MPH to conserve fuel. It was a different world, but you could buy bonds which America did. And if they stopped buying them the government could have stopped financing the war with debt and raised revenue with increased taxes as Truman did in Korea. The money was there.

Thanks Bill. That is a very well explained answer to my query and I can feel the frustration of not knowing evaporating already.

I should probably preface this with the statement that I am fairly new to the series and this is my first game of the Pacific campaign. Nice game. I am enjoying it immensely. I am playing against the Axis AI on the default difficulty. I am using fog of war but because I am trying to figure some things out I turn it off and look around once in awhile. Usually it's a saved game from earlier as to not spoil too much of the suspense. It is now spring of '44'. What I don't follow is all the Japanese corps units that are entering the game. The manual and the editor both indicate that the Japanese have army units for infantry and apparently army units only; except their navel landing forces of course.. Yet the build queue in the game keeps showing corps units. Sometimes five or six appear on a single turn such as Sept. 1943. In China, where I find I am hard pressed to say the least; the Japanese have currently massed 56 infantry units supported by air, arty, and armor. Of these 56, 23 are corps size units. Some are on the front lines discrediting my original theory that they must be garrison units. Some are fully upgraded and some are not just like the armies and special forces units. What is happening here? The editor has the build limits for the Japanese corps blank which for me as the allies means I can't build that unit at all. (Speaking of armies for Allies.) Yet the Japanese are building corps by the peck it appears. The editor also indicates zero cost for Japanese corps units. Does that mean they are building these units at no cost? What about transport? These units don't seem to start out on the home islands. They just appear it seems. I may be mistaken on this as I haven't been checking that closely. If anybody knows what is actually occurring and why I would appreciate it if they would share it, as I am rather perplexed by what seems to be an overt breach of the stated rules. Jeff

Okay, thanks Hubert.