PDE

[scottsmm]

as everyone already knows it scheduled for release this month and what just hit me is what a great game it will be and one last question. This expansion is based on the "what ifs" so what if the war (WWII) didn't end on may 8th would that activate all the new technologies that would become available to the allies at the end of the war. Also if you play a campaign before the cold war and the allies win it would the cold war start immediately after the end of the Axis powers downfall with all western powers DOW on the eastern communists. Actually my first question also relates to before the cold war starts just to make sure there is no confusion.

[arado234]

How have you worked out the industrial output of all th nations?

-Is it going to be set at historical levels?

-Will resources playe a bigger role?

[Hubert Cater]

scottsmm,

For the expansion what we tried to do is tailor each campaign accordingly using the existing research setup.

For example, the 1945 campaigns start with adjusted research values, i.e. lowered relative to what you would typically see in the older 1944 D-Day campaign so that when you reach let's say level 5 in tanks it has the same feel as going from Level-1 to Level-5 as it did in the 1939 Fall Weiss campaign.

We thought about having a campaign where with the defeat of Germany the western Allies could go immediately to war with the USSR but this presented a few difficulties. For example, since the current Allied player plays both the Western Allies and the USSR it would be a bit tricky to have this change go over intuitively, i.e. which player now plays the USSR, which player now plays the Western Allies. Also in a game against the AI or even Multiplayer for that matter, there could be exploits such as disbanding all USSR units before the fall of Germany in order to give one side an advantage etc. If you remember this was also an issue with an older setup for Blitzkrieg where we allowed players to DoW on inactive major Allies. A common exploit was to vacate the USA of units and then invade as the UK for a quick victory and as a result we had to eliminate this option.

There were a few ideas floated around to help resolve the above issues but in the end we decided it might be more trouble that it was worth and add to a lot of (perhaps) unnecessary complexity to the current game design.

As an alternative option we did include the 1944 Shattered Alliance campaign that starts with the Germans surrendering to the Western Allies and in turn they set their sights on the USSR. This campaign is a lot of fun actually

[Hubert Cater]

arado234,

Resources are much more plentiful in the Western Allies vs. the USSR campaigns as both sides pretty much start at optimal positions. Losses can be quite high but very often quickly replaces as MPP income allows for much more builds and replacements.

US also starts with more resources on map but a nifty implementation by Edwin delays a part of their full mobilization until the Japanese surrender.

This also applies to the 1939, 1941 and 1943 campaigns where once Japan surrenders the US industrial complex pretty much just goes into overdrive so the Germans really need to secure victory before this otherwise they quickly run into trouble.

[scottsmm]

thanks I see what you mean in your message.

I'm currently experiencing technical difficulties with a PBEM game and was wondering if you (or anyone else who knows)could tell me what I have to do to launch a multiplayer game from my email attachment. Thanks in advance I know it's easy it's just I don't get it for some reason.