Exapnded Custom Scenario

[ChrisND]

Honch,

Just so you know, my testing with garrison units and the AI was an utter failure, because the AI still treats them as engineers. Thus, it does not garrison any cities with them and uses them for offensive combat. They can only be used for PvP.

[Major Spinello]

Quiet in here - seems we are all still waiting for 1.05 to happen ...

[Honch]

Patch 1.05 is still testing. It works very well though. The AI beat me twice as Allies at difficulty level 100%.

Yes, the AI will still treat the militia/garrisons as engineers as even as garrison troops they still have the ability to fortify. Actually, in my two games testing 1.05 they worked out great, the USSR completely surrounded Moscow by forts and I was able to use my corps for something other than guarding cities. Their attack, move and defense is very limited but they make a quick and easy manpower build.

The fortify ability represents the militias, civilian conscripts and low level troops that created all of the fortifications in the war.

As soon as 1.05 is posted I will post the updated scenario to cmmods.

I am currently playing Gary Grisby's WAW: A World Divided. Its really just glorified Axis and Allies but its actually quite fun.

I am waiting for Slitherine's European Commander and, of course, WIF from Matrix Games. I have not downloaded the demo of The Calm and the Storm but it does sound like HOI alot, a game system I didn't like.

War in Europe from Decision Games and The First Blitzkrieg from HPS look like do-able division level games but abstraction of the air and sea war really leaves something out for me.

[Honch]

Version 11 (1.05) is on cmmods!

Changes since V10:

Renamed units:

Battleship -> Heavy Battle Group

Cruiser -> Light Battle Group

Carrier -> Carrier Group

Air Fleet -> Tactical Air Group

Bomber -> Bomber Group

Changed the Engineer NATO symbol to "Militia"

Changed the Militia/Garrison bitmap to one figure to differentiate it from partisans.

Reduced Militia/Garrison soft and hard attack values to zero. They can only attack other land units if given some infantry weapons tech. Therfore, minor militia/garrison can only ever defend in combat with other land units.

Reduced the Soviet Siberian Transfer slightly.

Updated all scripts for patch 1.05.

[japinard]

Originally posted by Honch:

Version 11 (1.05) is on cmmods!

Changes since V10:

Renamed units:

Battleship -> Heavy Battle Group

Cruiser -> Light Battle Group

Carrier -> Carrier Group

Air Fleet -> Tactical Air Group

Bomber -> Bomber Group

Changed the Engineer NATO symbol to "Militia"

Changed the Militia/Garrison bitmap to one figure to differentiate it from partisans.

Reduced Militia/Garrison soft and hard attack values to zero. They can only attack other land units if given some infantry weapons tech. Therfore, minor militia/garrison can only ever defend in combat with other land units.

Reduced the Soviet Siberian Transfer slightly.

Updated all scripts for patch 1.05.

Sweet. I wish I had the time to play right now... but as soon as this project I'm on is complete - I'm going to play your mod like crazy. Can't wait!

[Blashy]

For Siberian transfer I found excellent information.

It was VERY light. From my mod:

7- Siberian transfer is now only 1 corps, 1 army, 1 tank, 1 rocket and 1 airfleet all of which are at strength of 1 and they arrive once any of the following cities are taken; Archangel,Vologda, Moscow, Leningrad, Smolensk, Karhkov or Rostov.

This is the more realistic approach, the transfer of troops was very minimum and was not what saved Russia (Zhukov's memoirs attest to that) Total troops in Siberia was very low, the biggest battle vs. Japan was with less than 60 000 troops and the Siberian Elites were transfered from within those troops. Battle:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Halhin_Gol. Russia outproducing Germany is what saved them, due in part to lend lease providing them with 75% of all its logistical support equipment.

[Honch]

Thanks Blashy. I reduced both the numbers and strengths of those transfers.

[Major Spinello]

Originally posted by japinard:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Honch:

Version 11 (1.05) is on cmmods!

Changes since V10:

Renamed units:

Battleship -> Heavy Battle Group

Cruiser -> Light Battle Group

Carrier -> Carrier Group

Air Fleet -> Tactical Air Group

Bomber -> Bomber Group

Changed the Engineer NATO symbol to "Militia"

Changed the Militia/Garrison bitmap to one figure to differentiate it from partisans.

Reduced Militia/Garrison soft and hard attack values to zero. They can only attack other land units if given some infantry weapons tech. Therfore, minor militia/garrison can only ever defend in combat with other land units.

Reduced the Soviet Siberian Transfer slightly.

Updated all scripts for patch 1.05.

Sweet. I wish I had the time to play right now... but as soon as this project I'm on is complete - I'm going to play your mod like crazy. Can't wait! </font>

[Major Spinello]

... of course, I couldn´t resist firing up the scenario and play at least one turn right now.

I have to say that, for me, the sheer beauty of Dave´s scenario is overwhelming - especially since the "map coordinates" were relocated. What´s missing to make it perfect now is just that the southern part of Africa is not yet"de-abstracted". We will lose some colonies that way, and there will have to be arrows to get around the cape, but the payoff in terms of geographical correctness (and "focus")will be much bigger.

By the way, screw the engineers, I *love* the milita. I hope they will work out fine as they are now. Shouldn´t we be allowed to buy more of them, though?

[Cordell]

Hey this mod look pretty good but its not possible to play it with french/german(?)localized version So does Battle for Russia, then Kuniworth made some change in his mod, can you do the same for us Honch?

please

[Honch]

I would be happy to. What is the solution that I need to implement?

Also, version twelve WIll have all of Africa and Madagascar in its proper place. It won't make an impact on game play but will look nicer. It will also allow me to put Montevideo in its rightful place.

[Blashy]

I'm going to play your mod for an extended period this weekend and will make notes.

When will version 12 be uploaded? Or is the one there now with the Siberian transfer fix?

Oh and what is the goal of your mod? 50-50 or have historical production, which means the Axis can only win by holding off the Allies until X date. I have the historical production in my mod.

[Cordell]

Originally posted by Honch:

I would be happy to. What is the solution that I need to implement?

Also, version twelve WIll have all of Africa and Madagascar in its proper place. It won't make an impact on game play but will look nicer. It will also allow me to put Montevideo in its rightful place.

Since the French, or German versions are localized differently for folder items such as 'Campagnes' etc., by including the entire English localization.txt it causes problems when attempting to load files. For example, once you click on a campaign to be played, if it is customized and if the customization text does not match up logically, i.e. in your case it then starts to look for files in the 'Campaign' directory not 'Campagnes' and thus causes the problem.

Easiest solution is to simply cut out any unchanged text, i.e. only include the text you changed in the 'localiztion.txt' file like unit type names etc. in your Campaign subfolder and this should resolve the issue.

Hope this helps,

Hubert

Sound pretty simple!

I am impatient to play with your mod, I watch it by te editor and i saw full of nice opportunities for my U-Boote . But where to you want to stop? modelize the entire world?

[Major Spinello]

Originally posted by Blashy:

I have the historical production in my mod.

As a single player gamer I do not care for the 50/50 tournament approach. However (and that´s not at all meant as an offense, Blashy), I´ve been into history and wargaming too long to not become extremely suspicious whenever people claim "historical correctness".

So: what exactly do you mean with "historical" production? The de facto amount and type of what was actually produced in the war each year? Or the industrial potential? And would that be dynamic (i.e. changing with the industrial regions and resources occupied by the player) or static (i.e. changing, but only corresponding to the de facto historical output of each side per year)?

"De facto" plus "static" would not only be rather boring IMHO, it would also not be sound insofar as this

a) would not take into account the actual development of an individual game

would confuse actual historical production with historical production potential. (Just an example: I´ve read somewhere here on this board a while ago that the UK "outproduced" Germany in 1941 - but an argument like this of course totally neglects the fact that Germany did not even see a need to change to war economy until somewhere in 1942!)

Another difficult issue regarding production is that the amount of stuff produced at a given time does not readily translate into effectivity. A good example for this is fighter production: The UK did produce alot of fighers in 1941 but at that time didn´t have the pilots to man them. The same goes for Germany and Japan late in the war (actually Germany´s production de facto peaked as late as 1944!)

Don´t take me wrong: I don´t have anything against realism and historicity in games, on the contrary. The devil lurks in the details, however - in how to decide what´s pertinent and what not, and if pertinent, then to what degree.

For example, there is an influential school which claims the only pertinent variables in a war are those pertaining to economy and resources. It downplays the impact of doctrines, the importance of certain persons being in certain positions at certain times, even the impact of things like weather or chance. I think, though, that this line of thought is too simple. It is only applicable (with correct results) with respect to prolonged wars of attrition - and even then the neglect of psychological factors (e.g. war tiredness, religious and cultural bonds, the unexpected death of certain key persons etc) can still falsify prognostic hypotheses based on economic variables alone (see Vietnam).

Gosh, I´m sorry that my post got so long - I usually avoid such discussions altogether. It´s probably just that I wouldn´t like to see my favorite mod to get "historical" in a too narrow sense of the word.

[ November 25, 2006, 12:17 PM: Message edited by: Major Spinello ]

[Retributar]

Major Spinello!,... we are on similar lines of thinking!. I too am wary of 'Historicity!!!'...so as you said ..." The devil lurks in the details, however - in how to decide what´s pertinent and what not, and if pertinent, then to what degree ."

Excellent Posting by the way!,...never feel like you are rambling on!. I find when one's thought process get's going, sometime's rambling creep's in, however it can sometime help to un-cover the usually uncoverable!.

[Honch]

Blashy, Retributar, Cordell, Major:

I decidied to go historical accuracy on starting OOBs only. I think that what I have done is quite close, it will never be perfect. I have had to combine certain starting corps into single units etc. or else the entire map would have been filled with German units in 1939.

The only problems I faced was how to represent important division and brigade size units (such as the Waffen SS, Hitler Youth, free Greek and Polish units etc.) in an army size game. (In my opinion SC2 is not even a corps sized game) I decided to simply address the problem as follows:

An army is an army, example, German 6th Army, BEF, US 3rd Army.

A corps is a corps if it is strength 5-10, a division if it is 3-4 and a brigade if 1-2. After that the player can reinforce them to whatever size they want.

This produced a problem with historical unit names. I decided to remove most of the Corps names except for the obvious ones. Russian armies were renamed to their general's names.

I then decided that,at this level, artillery/rockets must stay abstracted within the existing units, this allowed the atomic bomb unit to be added.

So....starting OOBs should be quite historical, I went through ALOT of hours to do this, after that, and with the exception of a few units that I made sure were in the production queue and unit scripts for specific dates, its a complete what-if scenario, production wise.

Version 11 on cmmods has the reduced Siberian units transfer. I did not reduce as far as you but I have changed it to an "activation" event (not to be confused with an activation script) as the units appear in central Siberia and need to be op moved to the front. There is an activation of Far East reserves and an activation of Trans-Baikal reserves.

If everyone is of a concensus that your Siberian transfer is the best model I will make that change.

Note: I am really enjoying the militia units now. I don't miss engineers at all. If you raise a large militia you can fortify half of Europe if want.

Finally, I will try and fix the localization file this weekend and re-post to cmmods for the German and French users.

[Blashy]

Historical in terms of giving the Allies their due in MPP production.

The default campaign USA is severly gimped so the game can remain 50-50.

Basically it just means giving USA their due.

Nothing else was really changed. I kept it very simple.

Thanks for the reply Honch. I look forward to giving your mod a go then.

[Retributar]

Honch!,... Superb Effort on your part, we appreciate your tireless commitment to fine-tuning and improving your game!.

Currently im using v1.05a and your new Version 11 will not work in this latest version. Can we expect an update package for v1.05a?.

[Honch]

Not sure why. I used the last "Beta Test Patch Candidate" that Hubert posted and he told me that it was identical to the publicly available "super patch". Anyway, I will download the super patch and convert the file tonight.

[Honch]

A slightly updated Version 12 is on cmmods.

[ColumbusOHGamer]

SC2 won't "see" Honch v.12. It doesn't show in the list of scenarios. What am I doing wrong?

[Major Spinello]

@Retributar: thanks for encouraging me to share my thoughts.

@Blashy: thanks for answering - upping US mpps is indeed a good idea.

@Dave: Thanks for shedding light on your design strategies in that last post.

@everyone: I´m a bit confused. I had applied the new "superpatch" 1.05 and then Honch11 - game worked just fine (played only one turn, though). Should I stay away from Honch12 for the time being?

[Honch]

I encourage anyone having problems to send an email to Hubert. It works fine for me and at least a few others. Make sure that you unzip it to the correct directory.

Next:

Other than filling out Africa and minor tweaks along the way, what would everyone else like me to consider adding/changing?

[ColumbusOHGamer]

Originally posted by Honch:

I encourage anyone having problems to send an email to Hubert. It works fine for me and at least a few others. Make sure that you unzip it to the correct directory.

The main scenario file was missing ".cgn" on the filename. I added that and everything is fine now.

[gravyface1]

kind of OT, but Honch mentioned this earlier:

what is "WIF, by Matrix Games" -- I'm always on the prowl for new wargames but I've never heard of this abbreviation.