Timskorn

Ok, I just uploaded it to www.cmmods.com I started a thread in the general forum about it as well. I won't be back until Sunday night so I won't be able to address any questions until I get back. Hopefully nothing breaks in it too terribly. It's tough only having yourself to test it! Enjoy! [ May 10, 2006, 10:31 AM: Message edited by: Timskorn ]

As we wait for the forthcoming patch, I've uploaded an improved AI for the Allied side in the 1939 Fall Weiß campaign. This is meant to be played from the Axis side only. The AI has been tweaked/improved strictly through scripting. No additional MPP's or events have been added to give them an advantage. This campaign was tested on hardest difficulty level with +1 experience. Veteran players should play with +2. Until the patch comes out, however, there are some AI/editor limitations. The AI improves their units very rarely and in limited cases. Russia, for example, may have tons of MPP's and units, but you'll see only a handful have improvements. Also, there's no way currently to transfer Allied ships around the Naval Loop to Egypt, so the AI cannot be reinforced there. Some of the fixes/additions: - D-Day now works - Russian production, research and defenses have been improved. - UK now has the ability to attack from Egypt - A few other things. This is the first version and would love to hear feedback, good or bad, and what could be improved so that I can make adjustments. For the better players out there the new AI probably won't be able to beat you, but for the casual players it should give you all a better challenge. Grab it! www.cmmods.com Enjoy! (I'll be gone until Sunday evening, so won't be able to respond to anything until I get back!)

Yeah, that's really odd, it must be because of that.

Hmm, good question, as I've seen a US HQ next to St. John's before. Never knew why it was there.

I agree, but the key is the Russian's ability to at least cost the Axis a lot of MPP's to reinforce their lines. Even with IT 4, when the Russians hit my highly-upgraded troops (esp. tanks) in a big offensive, I'd end up spending nearly 500 MPP getting them all back up to strength. Without the IT I'd have at least a few units on the front that couldn't get reinforced that turn. All in all though, for a pre-patch AI this should at least give a better challenge to veteran players (still probably won't ever lose to it) and a good challenge for casual (and a lot for a new player!).

No problem, glad it worked for ya! There seems to be an AI issue with how they upgrade their units, and buying units with upgrades. Maybe this is unique for Russia, but I rarely ever see them drop down built units WITH upgrades, nor do I see them upgrade existing units much. This is even when Russia has 1500 MPP's in the bank. I heard HC is working on this with the patch to some degree, but until then the Russian AI will have to use all those extra MPP's to build more units to swarm the player instead.

Awesome, just got it myself. Now I have some reading material in the mornings...

You either surf or fight! HC will either do something with it or he won't, either way this has become a much bigger deal than it needs to be. I mean 6 pages?

CP: That may be true, but at a place called Strategy Informer? Not only does he not enjoy these kind of strategy games but he failed to inform as well. I can see a place like Gamespot, IGN or PC Gamer giving it a bad review but even they have reviewed these kinds of games favorably. There was some hardcore hex-based 2D wargame that came out recently, set around D-day I believe, that seemed to get great reviews. A place like SI makes it sound like they specialize in strategy game reviews, which they do not.

What I did was set up two scripts, one amphib and another transport. HQ's are never part of an amphib script, so the only way to get one over is with a transport. I script 1-2 units to capture Casablanca via amphib assault, and as soon as that's owned and there's at least 2 available units in the US, I transport them to Casablanca. As long as the US has an HQ available and is not part of another plan, it'll go on any transport plan you assign. So for your Spain invasion, land enough troops to take a city/port and then have a script to send 1-2 troops over to it via transport. I keep the Size low to ensure the HQ is sent over. If you do a transport script with a size of 4 but there are only 3 units available, the plan won't activate and your HQ will sit. So, a low # should ensure it heads to the destination port.

Looking good! Doing a whole new scenario like this takes a lot of work. It's taken me a while just to work/tweak with the scripts that are in the 1939 campaign! Looking forward to checking this out when it's finished.

How are landing casualties calculated? Do troops have to land next to an enemy unit for a chance to take damage upon landing? I'm trying to get the manual up here at work but it's slow goin'. Increasing the chance of landing casualties may help, and this would prevent the need for having units in every tile along the shore. Or, the ability for airplanes to 'intercept' whenever a transport is in its range. This would require air superiority in the area to prevent enemy planes from interdicting.

Considering how little amphib transports are used in the game adding a new tech line is overkill. Granted, the two times it can be used may have a huge impact (Sealion and D-Day), but I don't see any reason to do major changes on this. Increasing the cost or lowering their range are easy, small fixes that can have a huge impact already.

In the meantime, would having another HQ nearby add enough supply to allow the 1st HQ to pass through? Not well versed in the supply system, and even this would require us to auto-place another HQ in Egypt until the next patch when we can manually send units there.

I think dropping their range down some would resolve a lot of issues. Germany wouldn't be able to sail out from Denmark, for example, and land in the UK in one turn. They'd have to build up in France, which would allow air and sea to hit units before they could be put into transports. The bottom line is, amphib assaults need to retain their ability to happen in a single turn if within range of their destination. Their range just seems to be a little long at this point.

I usually wait for my paratroopers to take Denmark, use 1 air and two ships, easy to take in 1 turn. Plus, I make sure to time it so I get the morale bonus for the surrender and get the extra 'oomph' when hitting Belgium/France. Get it too early and you lose the morale bonus for the Blitzkrieg.

Latest game is looking really good so far. It's winter of 1943, I've taken Moscow and swept down onto Stalingrad where low supplies and heavy tank presence has bogged me down. Army division holding Stalingrad has 3 infantry and 3 anti-tank making it nearly impossible to take out. Russian reinforcements arrived and now they have 4 tanks (2 level 2), 4 Army and 8 Corp divisions around the Stalingrad/Rostov area and I'm forced to fall back to Kharkov and Voronezh. UK got lucky in the Med and destroyed a BB and severely damaged the rest of my fleet. It's taken a lot of MPP's to get them back up to full strength to help shelling the UK ground attack at Tobruk. Heavy fighting there caused me to lose an Army and a Corp, while I knocked out the UK fleet, 1 Corp and 1 Armor there. The US has landed in Casablanca with an HQ, 3 Armies and a Corp. so I've left a Corp at Tobruk and am pulling out to meet the US at Algiers. I got Spain to join a little late, just as the US landed their invasion force and they immediately took over Tangini(sp?). Not sure if getting spain now was worth it, as I don't have the MPP's to spare to reinforce their units. Garrison duty at best. I usually take Gibralter with them but it'll be too costly. Greece (in an experiment with the diplomacy plan) switched to the Allies in mid-1943, and I diverted two Italian Corp and a German Corp there. After a couple months of fighting it fell, but at that point the 3 diverted Corp units were really needed elsewhere. I still have to see how D-Day pans out, which I pushed back to early 1944 in order for the NA invasion to commence properly. At this point though, D-day is going to put a hurtin' on me as I don't have the units to spare. I don't have much hope for the Italians, and I'll be using them to hold the US off in Algiers for as long as possible. Barring any major catastrophe, I'll be uploading this mod Friday afternoon! [ May 04, 2006, 07:27 AM: Message edited by: Timskorn ]

The problem is stated in the above line, in that the reviewer himself doesn't enjoy these kinds of games. I have no idea why these review sites have people review genre's they don't like. Let's have someone who dislikes chocolate rate how good a Hershey bar is.

Hah, yeah I do the same thing, save the map, but I'm not sure if that's necessary if all we're doing is changing the .txt files. If we don't have to save afterwards that'll be good news.

This takes quite awhile to do, and was wondering if there would be a way for it to check only files that have been updated since it was last checked, rather than all the .txt files?

Awesome, good news!

From the plan.txt is sounds like Amphib_Plan won't work like this? Right now US DoW's Vichy France, but it takes a few turns to actually land there, where ideally I'd like the transports to land as soon as they are DoW'd.

Ah ok, thanks for clearing that up HC. It seemed to be working that way but I wasn't 100% sure.

Agh...it's so close! I have tomorrow off so most of the day I'll be able to hopefully get this thing ready for public consumption by the weekend. Just had a crash on the current game, but this is what has happened up until now (Winter, 1943...longest game I've had vs. AI so far). US ---- DoW'd Vichy France in mid-1942. They also sent all but one available forces to the UK, which crippled the North Africa Invasion. One US Army landed and hung out near Casablanca. Need to fix this trigger so US doesn't send forces to UK at the same time as NA invasion. 1 US Bomber in England doing strat runs. Late 1942 D-Day commences, 2 US Armies, 1 Corp and Patton land after UK takes Brest. Early 1943 US sends the rest of the North African invasion force: Eisenhower lands with another Army and 1 Corp. Spain joins the Axis and the US force takes Tangier after 3 weeks of fighting. - D-Day starts a bit too early with not enough force. Need to delay this some more to ensure a strong landing. - Need to make sure North Africa invasion has all available units. - Overall, US AI about 75% complete. UK ---- Back and forth battles occurred between Tobruk and Alexandria between UK and Italian forces. Italians eventually wear down the British and surround Alexandria. UK lands first to commence D-Day, taking Brest after a few weeks of fighting. - Need to tweak production values as they never bought a new HQ. - North Africa script seems good so far, as they can now go on the offensive. - Overall, UK AI 95% complete. Russia ---- Despite its unpredictability in properly garrisoning areas, it put its toughest fight yet. Level 3 tanks/infantry with IT level 4 ensured a good stream of tough soldiers. Just when I think I have them crushed, Russia drops 4-6 Corps, 2 Tanks and 2 Armies in Stalingrad and forces me to retreat to Rostov, destroying 1 Tank division and 2 Army divisions. My counter-attack cripples them however, and Stalingrad is ready to fall. - Production and research looks fine so far. Just when it looks I'm going to roll them over, they drop 6-8 units down they previously purchased. They tend to get infantry and heavy tank levels to at least 2 or 3, and IT to 4 each game. - Garrison scripts are all I need to work on now. Once I can get decent defensive lines formed, the Allies in this mod will give you some trouble. This past game I've been stretched thin a lot, running out of MPP's at times just reinforcing troops, so if I can get the Russians to put up a better fight the biggest task of this mod will be done. - Overall, Russia 75% done. Hopefully I'll get these issues ironed out by tomorrow. There are still some late-game scripts I'd like to add, but these are the most important.

Yeah the Russian ones espeically! They're basically set to 'loop' and turn on/off depending on the conditions, which can cause units to move back and forth constantly if two different cities are threatened/become unthreatened at the same time. For the question I've seen that too Edwin, and I think you might be right. What I've been assuming is that it's impossible to get 2 or more units within a 'range' at the same time so that it would overshoot the min/max. If you were checking for 2,2 units within 1 tile of Moscow, it's impossible to move three units next to Moscow at the same time as even the AI moves 1 unit at a time. But...I think I'm wrong, as the AI probably checks the script AFTER your turn, rather than during it, in which case there could be 6 units next to Moscow when it checks the script and the 2,2 condition would NOT be met. However, when I did RTS scripting, we'd always di min/maxes of 2 and 99, for example, or even 99999 to ensure you'd just need at least 2 to meet the condition and anything over is fine too. Hubert, could you clarify why it's like that in the scripts? If the min/max is 3, and at the end of my turn have 4 units within the script range, I assume now that the condition will not be met?