Mithel

That's not a problem, but that doesn't allow the AI to take over for him. It would only allow me to have another human take over.

Is there any way to continue a multiplayer game as a single player? If your opponent loses interest and drops out, it would be nice to be able to continue playing a game that is interesting.

I'd like to restate my question (which perhaps was lost in the other thread): I'd like to clarify the impact of "intelligence" on the opponent's research: So if I'm understanding this correctly if I research to level 4 intelligence and my opponent has level 0 intelligence then they could NEVER succeed in researching any tech beyond level 1? (because the chance to go from 1 to 2 is 4%) Correct? (unless they invested multiple chits into the same research) Does this also apply to my enemy researching intelligence? In other words if I somehow managed to blitz to level 5 intelligence and my opponent had level 0 intelligence then they would never be able to research anything (including intelligence themselves)? It concerns me that the technology "Intelligence" may be too important / potent. If every point of intelligence improves your R&D chance by 1% and reduces your opponents chance by 1%, then a spread of just 3 points could mean that one nation is researching with an 8% chance vs the other nation researching at a 2% chance (just imagine how bad this could be if intelligence got up to five - a nation like Italy (with very few points to invest in the first place) would be wasting any investment in research because they'd have almost no chance of success - in particular toward the end of the game) Am I understanding this correctly? Does anyone have any thoughts / opinions?

Thank you Bill! That seems like an odd increase to me, at least now that I know what those numbers are, it is easy enough to mod.

In the R&D section, "Resource Bombardment" has "Defender Unit hit %" as 10. Does this mean that when bombers bomb a city the defending unit is hit 10% of the time? (aka 90% of the time the defending unit is invulnerable?) What is "increments" % in the "Resource Bombardment"? Does this mean that each tech level advancement of bombers increases the chance to hit the defending unit by 10%? Or does this mean that bombing inflicts 10% more MPP points of damage to the city?

In the advanced screen of modding R&D, I see the submarine dive % as 20% and "increments" of 10%. Does this mean that if someone researches to level 5 then their subs have a 70% chance of diving when attacked? The "research progression per chit" is 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Does this mean that if I'm at tech level 1 and I want to research to level 2, if I invest two chits is my chance to advance 4 + 3 = 7%? (assuming no influence of "intelligence") Or does it mean that the first chit I invest gives me a 5% chance to advance no matter what tech level I'm at initially? (thus going from level 3 to level 4 still has a 5% per turn) Or does the research progression mean that to go from level 3 to level 4 is 2% per turn no matter how many chits I invest? In diplomacy (if I understand the documentation correctly) each chit investment is cumulative thus increasing the probability of success per turn. Whereas in R&D it is not clear that investing multiple chits at a time actually increases the probability of success per turn.

I can confirm that in e-mail games the intelligence spotting is working (specifically for USA). I'd like to clarify the impact of "intelligence" on the opponent's research: So if I'm understanding this correctly if I research to level 4 intelligence and my opponent has level 0 intelligence then they could NEVER succeed in researching any tech beyond level 1? (because the chance to go from 1 to 2 is 4%) Correct? Does this also apply to my enemy researching intelligence? In other words if I somehow managed to blitz to level 5 intelligence and my opponent had level 0 intelligence then they would never be able to research anything (including intelligence themselves)?

Oh wow, this is good to know. I wish I'd known this when I bought SC2.

I think if you want a hard copy of the manual you need to print it yourself. But hopefully the developers can answer this more accurately. I believe a lot of companies have stopped printing manuals due to the high cost and the fact that they tend to go out of date very quickly as patches are released.

Concepts like "far side" are trivial for the human mind, but require coding complexity for a computer program to handle. Another example would be a battle on an island, now try to apply your "retreat" concept. Do the retreating units magically get evacuated from the island? Or say the Brits are pushed out of their last city in North Africa, is the next closest city London? Cool... let me know what you think of HoI.

Interesting idea. I see some possible issues. What if the city is already occupied? This could be too much work to program as we have no idea if the city would be very close to the front line or far back. And there is the potential that the "nearest" city might actually result in an illogical relocation to the other side of a front (such as in North Africa). I find the design of the game as it is now basically emphasizes always garrisoning cities. Give the latest version of "Hearts of Iron" a try. I'd be curious what your impression is.

Actually the game does have a built in design that deters massive invasions early in the game: the cost of doing amphibious. The economy certainly could use improvement so the Allies start out with weak production but then become quite overwhelming as the years pass. It's still not bad though and Germany is in serious trouble if they don't knock out Russia. How far should the game developers go in implementing realism? As far as possible! For me the only thing that should make them even hesitate is if the realism comes at a horrible cost in playability. There should always be a lot of effort put into keeping the user interface easy to use and if possible additional detailed features might be optional so those that don't want them don't have to have them. There are a lot of features that could be implemented that don't make the game more difficult: * Air units checking and not destroying the last point of a unit (or better yet only doing one point of damage for each attack) * Higher initial cost for conducting amphibious operations and a clear notification to the player that they need to research this technology before doing such operations becomes feasible. Or a simple counter that limits the number of units that can go into amphibious mode at any one time. * Fine tuning the economy

SC2 doesn't have "combined arms" at all since there is no stacking and all movement and combat is sequential. Certainly this is a weakness in the game design. What SC2 really has is more of a "rock, paper, scissors" approach. I'm not bothered by unit's going to "alternate reality" as much as by abstractions like Polish resources contributing to British production and British production points being used for Polish production. Or perhaps worse yet, German technology and production able to make high quality Bulgarian units, near the end of the game, yet Italy still struggling badly to build the same garbage units they had at the start of the war.

Comparing early war individual weapons to late war weapons does result in some impressive contrasts. But SC2 is a strategic game, a unit represents a corp or army not an individual weapon system. Even partisans found ways to knock out Tigers. And the real problem is not that a 1939 division would be wiped off the map by a 1945 division but rather that two 1939 divisions can scratch each other but two 1945 divisions annihilate each other. Nobody will argue that an early war Stuka is seriously inferior to a late war Fw-190 equipped for ground attack, but the actual destructive ability didn't change all that much (nowhere near like it does in SC2) .

I have the opposite point of view, as a defender I find it frustrating that an air unit can *destroy* that weak 1 or 2 strength point unit. Overall I prefer realism and "realism" is more accurately portrayed by most often just weakening units not outright eliminating them. But without retreat we have to have elimination (or some stubborn 1 strength point unit will continue to hold some important position). But these are minor quibbles with the SC2 design. A far more significant problem is how a unit goes from being impotent at the beginning, to god like after several tech advances. Air power can't do this sort of destruction at the beginning of the war (in fact it's lucky to even scratch an enemy unit), but at the end of the war using air power to vaporize units becomes the preferred form of ground combat.

An example of the situation I'm seeing would be three air units in England sequentially attack a German ground unit in France and completely destroy that ground unit. It "feels" wrong to have air power vaporizing "armies" without *any* ground combat. I have no problem however if they reduced it's readiness to zero so that one tiny invading ground unit could assault it and destroy it. In reality, infantry are particularly difficult to destroy from the air. You can pin them down and make them not want to come out of their foxholes, but they tend to be far too spread out for an air attack to eliminate them. But yes, SC2 is a lot more fun if you just think of air units as one more tool you have to conduct the fight with. Let reality blur and enjoy the game.

I'm a bit sloppy and usually write SC2 when I mean WaW. As long as we are on the subject of modifying combat results, I think a modification that would be well worth doing would be to change air unit attacking ground units. An air unit should never be able to completely destroy a ground unit. I would propose any air attack by bombers or tactical air units should do only one point of damage (maximum) and the rest of the attack would be decreasing morale and readiness. So I unit could be bombed into being impotent but not able to be destroyed by air units alone. A fighter unit attacking should only lower morale and readiness.

I'm more used to thinking in terms of days rather than weeks. I don't have my references at hand, but to the best of my recall, during the early years of the war an extremely fast advance was about 20 to 30 miles per day. I would be careful about using values for an intentional retreat for a situation where the retreat is forced by combat. SC2 is a very large scale, strategic game, I would be careful of introducing any "tactical" considerations to combat. I'm still not arguing that retreat combat results would not be an improvement, but just that making such changes may not be worth the developer's effort (too easy to introduce a side effect problem that is even worse).

But now you are creating more programming work (having to identify if a unit is surrounded or not). I would also alter your cut off for effective units so any unit of strength 3 or higher is sufficient to surround an enemy unit.

Then how would you simulate encircling and capturing units? (which results in the loss of the cadre and leaves nothing to rebuild)

I disagree that adding retreat to combat results would solve the problem of tech upgrades creating absurdly bloody combat results. I also disagree that on a one week scale a combat force as large as an army could / would respond to the approach and engagement of superior enemy forces and be able to organize a retreat of 50 miles or more (keep in mind that because of the sequential usage of units a defending unit might be hit multiple times in a single turn, if each of those times resulted in a retreat that unit might be driven back say 150 miles (three retreats) which is completely absurd. Now that I'm thinking about these issues, I think a better solution would be to dramatically increase the cost of reinforcing units (and building new units) while at the same time reducing losses in combat significantly. Unfortunately this does tend to mean a fairly substantial redesign of the game, it couldn't be done very well by just modding.

The problem with modding max tech to keep combat reasonable is that by maxing out techs at say only two levels a huge portion of the game (R&D) has been lost. And that also tends to mean that all nations will have roughly equivalent tech levels.

pzgndr, I agree the tech advance system is too crude and bloody for my preferences. I would like more steps and yet not have it become so bloody. Certainly weapon systems became more lethal as the war progressed, but tactics adjusted too (historically as firepower has increased the density of combatants has decreased). I'm not aware of any huge change in loss rates from the beginning of the war to the end of the war. In fact look at the early campaigns.... Poland, France, Barbarossa... huge enemy forces were defeated very rapidly. If anything (at least in Europe) the results at the end of the war were less "bloody". Air bombing might be an exception as the larger bombers delivered larger bomb loads and wreaked incredible destruction on the German cities (but that was also due to *more* bombers). I'll always be a little "disagreeable" because SC2 is designed as a game and what I desire is a simulation.

The manual indicates the scale is about 50 miles (I think that's on the low side), but it's going to depend a *lot* on whether you are playing just in Europe or if you are playing the Global campaign. So I'm stretching it too much when I say "hundreds" of miles and should have said "dozens" of miles. But still, retreating even 50 miles is a *huge* retreat.

I agree it's a problem. But in reality, if a division lost 10% strength in a week it would be a *serious* concern (probably motivating a retreat). Real combat is *rarely* as bloody as in games. But with the huge scale of SC2 is it reasonable to have entire armies (4 to 6 divisions) retreat hundreds of miles in a turn (week)?