Honch

The changes also should make the "Army" the dominant infantry unit as I will also slightly reduce their cost. They will no longer be just "double" what Corps cost. I will make them about 180% of a Corps cost. "Corps/Divisions" will be only for filling in gaps, quick reinforcements, representation of true historical Corps, Divisions and Brigades etc.. The focus will now be on "Army Groups" which have one or two "Armies" and a "Tank Group" under their control. "Militia" will represent Garrison Troops, Territorial Conscripts, Home Guards, Battalions and Regimental sized units.

Early Start: The only problem with an early start is that at least on Axis and One Allied Major must start "at war". Sorry. Malta: Adding an extra tile to Malta makes it look silly but I will change the infantry to an air fleet.

Abukede: Thanks for the reports. Starting OOBs: I have revamped the starting OOBs for Finland, Norway, Poland, France, USSR and Germany to the true historical OOBs. Basically this included a couple of extra armies for France and Poland, new HQs for France (very limited effectiveness) extra corps for Germany, Norway, Finland and USSR. I don't plan on altering or adding anything else at this time. Unit names: I found that there was a huge discrepency between the unit names in the game and historical unit names. Also, many of the starting 1939 corps units (especially for Germany) have to be combined for balance. Therefore I have deleted ALL corps names in favour of simply naming them based on their locations. I have changed all army and tank group names to include the names of their tactical commanders. For example, Germany starts with Panzer Group Guderian and Panzer Group Hoeppner. They also start with 14th Army Kleist, 2nd Army List etc. (I may not be remembering those correctly but they ARE correct in the scenario) I have removed Guderian from the list of German HQs as a result. UK gets BEF Gort etc. AI: I have not made any changes to the AI and don't intend to try. I will leave that up to Normal Dude and Timskorn although I still haven't tried to put their AIs back into my mod. Version Nine will have them. HQs: I have never liked the term "HQ". In keeping with history I have renamed this unit "Army Group". Therefore, Germany starts with Army Group Bock, Army Group Runstedt and Army Group Leeb. I have removed Eisenhower from the list of US Army Groups as he was more of a political leader. The US Army Groups remain as Bradley, Hodges, Patch, Patton and Clark. (Also MacArthur if the game goes late into 1945) Spain: Spain was 100% reliant on US oil during the war, thats the major reason they never joined the Axis. I will reduce the trigger % slightly though. Romania and Hungary: I have not removed their automatic entry, they occur in 1941 and depend on a number of events to come earlier. Corps: I have renamed "Corps" to "Corps/Divisions" as in some cases I have added 1-4 strength Corps to the game to represent Division strength units. (Even Battalions such as the Waffen SS etc.) All new units with strength 1-2 can be considered Battalions, strength 3-4 are Divisions and everything 5 and over can be considered a Corps. In a perfect world we would have had a map that took up all tiles avaialable to us in the editor and I could have modded a true division scale game. (check out www.slitherine.com/Commander: Europe at War) Iceland: I have fixed the messed up Iceland activation script for Version Nine. Engineers: I WIll replace engineers with "Militia". These units will defend at a 1 for INF and TANK. Their INF attack will be 1 and their TANK attack will be 0. They will have very few action points. I have added ALL of the forts, fortfified lines and general obstacles (Cliffs of Dover) that existed in 1939 to the game. There should be no reason to build anymore, making Engineers useless. USA: I have added Chicago and Tampa. Crete: There are no cities on Crete worth full "City" status.

Version Nine is half way done. I wanted to ask everyone playing my mod their thoughts on the following: I was considering removing engineers from the game and changing them to low level territorial/garrison troops. I personally make very little use of engineers. I have added all of the forts and fortifications to the mod that existed in 1939 and I usually don't build any more. Low level troops could be used to represent garrisons/partisan killing/home guards/native troops etc. They would have very few action points and limited attack but could entrench and defend reasonably well against infantry. Thoughts?

I actually just watched a new WW2 documentary and they mentioned the Hitler Youth Panzer division in Normandy. They said that they were the most fanatical of the German units that fought there.

Great suggestions guys. I am on a mini-vacation right now and will do the following for version nine: 1. Add the Hitler Youthen Panzer division in 1944. 2. Slightly beef up the UK presence in India and Africa. 3. Reduce the impact of the German surface raiders. 4. Add a German 1 strength bomber to Norway upon its conquest. This will trigger the axis interdiction of Russian convoy script. I don't plan on adding more units for Germany as they SHOULD be undermanned in Russia and need to rely on Romanian, Slovakian, Croatian and Italian troops. I may add some extra experience as per some of the comments. I am UNABLE to add an Italian convoy to Africa as you cannot put in a convoy from a country to itslef. I also cannot freeze any territories as is suggested. I DO have one extra slot right now that I will use for South Africa. I may then combine Morrocco and Algeria into French North Africa. I may use that slot for Abyssinia but it may be difficult as Italian troops cannot be put into an occupied country at game start. These are all just game engine restrictions. I do not have Normal Dude's or Timskorn's AI scripts as I don't have any idea if there uploaded packages are up to date with the new patches. If somebody could tell me I wouldadd them. My convoy raider scripts are triggered when axis surface units occupy Brest, Bilbao, St. Nazaire, Bordeaux, Trondheim or Bergen. Its also triggered when axis air units occupy Trondheim or Bergen.

I did not change anything other than the map, event scripts and a few units. I don'tknow what the reason for the sudden increase in processing time, maybe just the new patch? The Italian subs have been made slightly less effective against capital ships but only by one. It shouldn't have a huge effect on game play.

My Iceland Independence script is messed up. Its nothing that can't wait until the next version.

Version Eight is done. 1. I have moved the map down to include all of Scandinavia. 2. I have moved the map East to include the US up to the Mississippi. 3. I have reduced the map to exclude anything East of New Delhi. Don't abandon India, the Afghans and Persians won't like it! 4. Switzerland is back in. I have not had time to extend the map South to fill out Africa. Version Nine maybe. Other changes: I have changed the starting OOB for Yugoslavia to be more historical. They had a very large army, over 1,000,000 men strong. To account for the poor starting quality of infantry in many nations versus the more modernized countries I have adjusted starting INF attack and DEF values for corps and armies. USSR, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Persia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Palestine, India, Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Tunisia, Morrocco, FWA, Vichy France, Venezuela, Poland, Portugal and Turkey all start at corps INF values of 1 and army INF values of 2. Other all nations start at corps INF 2 and army INF 3. Germany, UK, France, USA and Italy all start at INF tech 1. USSR starts with one chit in IW. This will better reflect early-on domination of the German army over less modernized foes as well as the struggle to modernize USSR forces during the war. Should be on cmmods within the hour!

Basically I would like the convoy route to remain as scripted, not to change when and if an all sea route becomes available.

After messing around a bit I have come to the conclusion that the module in the game engine that draws the convoy routes on the map is actually "smart". It is drawing its own convoy route through the Dardenelles and Med, up through the English Channel and then to the German port. It does this as soon as a 100% sea route is available. (Once Istanbul is Axis) Obviously it doesn't like the over land route that I used. This needs to be corrected.

Hi Hubert: I added a Romanian port on the Black Sea and the following convoy script: { #NAME= Romanian Oil Shipments to Germany #POPUP= #FLAG= 1 #TYPE= 2 #COUNTRY_ID= 36 #TRANSFER_ID= 5 #COUNTRY_ID_TRIGGER= 50 #TRANSFER_ID_TRIGGER= 100 #PERCENTAGE= 50 #MAX_PERCENTAGE= 100 #SPRING_REDUCTION= 100 #SUMMER_REDUCTION= 100 #FALL_REDUCTION= 100 #WINTER_REDUCTION= 100 #SOURCE_PORT= 104,22 #DESTINATION_PORT= 81,13 #WAYPOINT= 84,12 } Everything works great. The oil passes overland from the Romanian port to the German port until Germany attacks Turkey. Suddenly the convoy route shifts to pass through the Mediterranean and up through the English Channel. What is happening here? Nowhere did I enter such waypoints. Very strange.

OK, this is my plan for version Eight, I need everyone's thoughts. I will move the map back to go as far East as 1/2 way through India, maybe New Delhi. This will go as far as Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. I will then shift the map South and fill in the rest of Norway, Swden and Finland so that we can delete that naval loop. Murmansk will be put in its rightful place. I will then shift the whole map East so that we can put more of the US and Camada in there as well as Brazil and Uruguay. China and Japan will become Brazil and Switzerland. Cool?

I have decided NOT to go further East but will leave it as is for now. As for going West or North I know that you can shift the map but I am scared it will screw things up, royally. What I would really like to do is have the original map, maybe expanded South to Somalia, North to include all of Norway and East to India, take up the entire map size avaialable to us. I would then chnage the OOB to a division scale game, instead of corps. That will probably be my next effort. I will, of course, continue to tweak the current mod as new patches add more options.

Following my "fleshing-out" of France, for Version 8 I have really put some effort into re-arranging Germany slightly but I have discovered that the map is quite distorted, not just because of the isometric tiling but that the layout of Germany is way off. Berlin should be much closer to the Polish border but I have left it where it is for now. I have moved the Ruhr in from the border one tile to better represent the Ruhr Valley and I have combined Essen-Dusseldorf and Cologne-Bonn into cities. Frankfurt and Stuttgart are minor cities. I have added Nurmeburg, Breslau and Stettin and moved Leipzig, Dresden and Munich slightly. I also moved Prague closer to Dresden. The port of Hamburg has been renamed to Hamburg-Bremen. I cannot add the Bodensee (sic?) as there are no "one tile" bodies of water avaialable in the tiles and it really doesn't deserve to have two tiles dedicated to it. I also realized that the Brenner Pass actually connects Austria and Italy, not Germany and Italy, correct? Thats fixed. As for the complaints from some Axis players that they don't get enough MPPs. I have one word "conquest"! You really need to grab as many resource tiles as possible (Yugoslavia, Greece etc.) and push for those Russian mines and oil. It also makes an attack on Norway more of a consideration. Version 8 will be out soon. The Austrian mines are deleted (I had added that from a resource map of Austria that showed coal deposits there) and created the Silesian Mines in Czechoslovakia.

Thanks HardRock, with a little more time and some extra features available to us from Hubert I think I can make this about as historically accurate and playable as possible.

The USSR is never 100% moved to the Allies by script. It is a slow creep depending on garrison levels in 1940 and then by slow increments in 1941. There should be no problems after pushing the USSR to Axis as the scripts would then not trigger.

I have done everything you suggested Major except that I removed the mountain tile south of Munci to represent the Brenner Pass.

There is no way to force a surrender on an active nation so Tokyo will always remain at war even if Siam is conquered. But maybe this is OK as the Japan-US conflict is abstracted "off-map" in this scenario. Japan should not surrender just because Bangkok falls. However, even come September 1945, Japan will announce its surrender but I cannot force it to be so, the only thing that will happen is that all Japanese resources will remain at zero for the remainder of the game via a supply script. Unfortunately it is true that the Axis AI is weak. I never touched it. We just have to hope for better improvements from Hubert, Normal Dude or Timskorn etc. I will convert the scenario to V1.04 and have the map changes completed soon.

I will fix those German cities, nice to have you back Major. My knowledge of German cities is very limited. I always thought that Dusseldorf was a big one. I think that Rommel and Manstein are both 10s. Eisenhower and Zhukov are also tens. Patton is a 9. I also played against the Allied AI and they DOw'd Italy in 1939 but didn't bother attacking into Libya or in force against Italy itself, very unexpected (thats good) but strange. Remember, I did not touch the AI at all.

OK, its on cmmods. The map changes will have to wait until Version 8 but I have removed the Bangkok to Indian Ocean naval loop that was causing problems and extended Malaya south. That will do for now. I also had a chance to fill out France with some of the major towns.

Hubert, how about SC3!

Hubert: I added Free Unit scripts for Dutch and Belgian naval units (in my mod). I found a bug. If the Allies invade, for example, Belgium, the Belgian navy correctly goes Axis. However, when Belgium surrenders to the Allies, the free unit script switches the unit back to the Allies. They should stay Axis or surrender altogether.

Hubert: I added Free Unit scripts for Dutch and Belgian naval units (in my mod). I found a bug. If the Allies invade, for example, Belgium, the Belgian navy correctly goes Axis. However, when Belgium surrenders to the Allies, the free unit script switches the unit back to the Allies. They should stay Axis or surrender altogether.

OK, I have it converted now and will upload sometime today. I am not sure what is happening with that Naval loop. I will check the script and if I still can't figure it out I will simply cut a hole in Malaya to allow the units to pass through until I have the time to move the map East. I played a game versus the Axis last night and everything worked fine, the Germans did not leave the Siegfried line. Other changes: 1. I reduced all of the corps attack values to one as per what Hubert did in the patch. 2. As the hull of the Graf Spee was laid down in 1939 and just awaiting completion (which Hitler never authorized) I added the Graf Spee at value one and made the cost of carriers expensive for Germany. This will make it expensive for the Germans to outfit the carrier but it gives a great "what-if" possibility. 3. I have adjusted the alternate convoys after the fall of the UK to go to Canada. 4. Germany, USA, France and UK start at level one IW on all units. Italy and Russia start at level one IW tech but need to upgrade their units. 5. The reason the Indian Ocean says Med is that I used that weather zone for the Indian Ocean. Its just a weather zone, not an actual name. 6. I opened up Siberia to have a direct link from Irkutsk to Vladivostok as there were problems when the Far East reserves were activated. The new version will say Version 7.