A Bigger Boat

[Desert Dave]

Droll comment made to the grizzled old sea captain, upon first seeing The Great White Shark, in the movie Jaws:

"... we're gonna need a bigger boat."

All right, at the risk of sounding precocious -- though, I surely believe that many others out there have also found this to be true -- I have played consecutive games as Axis at Expert +2, using FOW (with ALL options favoring the Allies) and have defeated them both times by July of '45 (average score 181). Every country on the board defeated. So.

What to do?

I suppose there could be personal House Rules, or fiddle with the starting MPPs, or edit the starting countries.

The trouble with that is -- you can only edit Britain, France or Germany in the '39 Campaign game. And you don't really want to do too much of that for fear of throwing the whole historical starting forces out of whack.

1) Editor: Since you don't wish to activate Russia, USA, and Italy in Fall of '39, I would suggest changing this in a patch to allow editing of ANY country, minors included, with a choice for the political option -- "remains neutral."

2) Research: Germany is the only country that can afford to invest in a lot of research for the first few years. They can reach 5-level Industrial Tech in no time. I like those ideas that have research on a gradually decreasing effectiveness, say -- 5-4-3-3-2%.

3) Experience Levels: May need a reduction to the MPPs gained in plunder. This would require shifting the current set-up, or simply adding another level.

I wouldn't mess with the Experience, by making a +3 possible, because it is already strange to see a piddling corps destroying half or more! :eek: of a tank detachment in one attack.

The problem is not France anyway, as that still takes 3-6 months to conquer (... no blitz). If the plunder was reduced another notch, that might prove effective.

And you don't really wish to make Britain a Leviathan, or reduce Germany to a level where they can't hardly blitz Poland.

Anyone else have some thoughts on this need for -- a slightly bigger boat?

[Willard]

The answer is you need to increase USA MPP from 180 to a higher number. It is way to small a number given the industrial might of the US. That will balance out any German advantage. The US MPP should start at 180 at the beginning of DEC 1941. It should gradually increase overtime so that by 1944 it is upto 400 MPP. This is a more realistic US impact on the WTO. It started small, but by the end it was unstoppable.

[pzgndr]

Research, especially industrial tech, has a huge effect on play balance and historical accuracy. The economic game is tied to the fixed resource centers defined on the map, which we can't change now, but we can tweak research points, tech levels and starting MPPs at setup.

In my few games so far, I've seen some rapid tech advances both for myself and the AI. IMHO, 10 research points and 5 per area seem to be too much. The 5-4-3-2-1 idea may be the way to go to slow things down some. That may be easier than considering a game option for manually setting max points and max per area. But something should be done to make research a bit more subtle than it is now.

I made a post about research thoughts a couple days ago and hinted about specific constraints and limitations for research. That's too much to worry about right now, but at least we could get historic tech levels defined and tweak the scenario setups to provide better play balance. This kind of stuff is going to take a looong time to sort out. But at least we can use the editor for doing a lot of this ourselves and see how it works. A thousand monkeys pounding on the editor are bound to produce the perfect tweak sooner or later!

[Aloid]

Immer, drink more beer!

Works for me... now I can't win a game... or even find it...

Aloid

[Straha]

We mustn't forget that people also want to have a challenging game as the Allies. That's why I'm for house rules, but against any further changes in the actual game which favor the Allies even more. Given standard settings, it's far easier to win the game playing the Allied side. (At least that's what I can say based on my experience with the demo,but think this will be even more pronounced given the full time period.)

Straha

[Silvercloud]

I think I may have made this comment before, but we really need to be able to declare war on our allies. I want to declare war on Italy as the germans (not completely unrealistic either, as it was considered by Germany for a time).

Also on tech, I dont think the current system works... we need a system that works from tech costs--- one should need to accumulate a number of tech points to reach level 1 (say 15) and then more to reach level 2 (say another 25) (so in total 120 points)... this way it would take 3 turns to get to level 1 with 5 points invested and 5 to get to level 2 (8 in total)... something like this would be much more effective, as it solves the "I never got any tech for 2 years, with 10 points invested".

If one still wants some randomness I suggest that once 90% of the tech points are accumulated there's a 1% chance per 0.01% points over 80 (eg 96% of points gives a 60% chance of breakthru)

I definitely feel that USA should accumulate some more production during the war, but not much..possibly something like 50 points over the whole 5 year period (something like a 10 point per year boost)... this becuz every country can get industrial tech, so that does not completely excuse 180 versus 480

Thanks for reading,

Silvercloud

[Dallas]

Perhaps an option that forces you to upgrade each existing unit to new tech levels at a cost might be worthwhile. It seems too easy that you can buy many units at low cost after researching Industrial Tech and then target other techs and have all your low cost units automatically upgraded.

Alternatively, a number of points could be deducted on new tech advances depending on the number of affected existing units that are in play. If you don't have enough points.. you miss out on the advance??

[Aloid]

Originally posted by Dallas:

Perhaps an option that forces you to upgrade each existing unit to new tech levels at a cost might be worthwhile. It seems too easy that you can buy many units at low cost after researching Industrial Tech and then target other techs and have all your low cost units automatically upgraded.

<snip>... (ouch)

I've suggested this before as well... (so I totally agree with it)

The Germans were never able to fill their ranks quickly with new hardware. They never had Me 262's in every fighter unit, over night.

While I would agree that the game is at such a high level, that it's really representing an overall improvement in many weapon systems per unit, there is not enough investment (or cost per unit) to reflect how hard it was to convert to the new tech achieved.

Great game though!

Aloid

[DevilDog]

Willard:

I made a post a while back prior to release stating that the USA's MPPs at entry into the war should be tied to Axis performance, i.e. if Germany has practically wiped out everyone else then the USA should be able to take on Germany by itself, or if Germany hasn't even been able to take out France yet then USA involvement should be minimal. While this may not always result in a historical force pool, it would do wonders for the gameplay.

My 2 cents.

[jmbunnelle]

I agree on the research-upgrade issue. Following an advancement in research, I think the player should have to upgrade each unit individually at an industrial center.

[blackbellamy]

Immer, I have also began to win consistently at +2 as the Axis.

I have taken some steps to make the contest more even.

I have adjusted Industrial Tech for the following countries:

Britain: 2

France: 1

Russia: 3

USA: 4

I have left all other settings at default.

As a result, France is a bit tougher to take, Britain becomes more invasion resistant, Russia is able to generate sufficient replacements to fill holes in their lines, and the USA becomes a true threat, being able to stretch their 180 MPP's a lot further.

[USGrant]

I've come to the conclusion that the German research thing is way out of whack. To get it in whack I have implemented a house rule (against the AI) that says I won't buy more than 8 research points and put more than 3 in a single category. I really think these changes should be included in a patch. This would be much simpler than the various suggestions to overhaul the whole research structure.

[pzgndr]

To get it in whack I have implemented a house rule (against the AI) that says I won't buy more than 8 research points and put more than 3 in a single category. I really think these changes should be included in a patch.

The only problem with making changes like this for everyone is that everyone won't like them. Whether it's 10/5, 8/3, 5/2 or something else, these are defined game parameters. An editable game parameter file would be very nice to have. These numbers are in the code somewhere, but probably referenced and not coded directly. So it *should* be trivial to define the default values somewhere and then provide a user editable file which could override the defaults. I'd much prefer to see this and then exchange ideas on the forum for what the values should be, rather than haggle about universal changes. We'll never agree on those. If we ever see a parameter file, PBEM players would have to ensure they are both playing with the same file and scenario (if modified), but this is easy. Anyway, players could then make their "boat" as big as they want.

[Aloid]

I just thought of that line in the movie "Battle of Britain", where Dowding says he's "trusting in God, and praying for radar"...

Sounds like my games in SC!! heh!

I think Hubert got it right after all!

Aloid (praying for that next tech level)

[Desert Dave]

blackbellamy,

Thanks for the suggestion.

You are right -- the increase in Industrial Tech will surely enable the Allies to produce more units over time -- the thing is -- will the AI make good and appropriate choices?

I had given each Allied country an extra 400 MPPs to play with at start of '39, and was surprised that Britain landed a corps and the Canadian Army near Brest -- I had never seen that before, so I guess the AI will consider the situation and use the extra MPPs to max advantage.

Still, I would prefer to be able to edit ANY country, minors included.