Comments and Questions, Part II

[Lion9]

I have played my current mod into 1942, and have made notes as I go, as follows:

1) When there are fleets in a sea-zone which belong to more than one "allied" nation, could we have the fleets belonging to the CURRENTLY active nation on top of the stack? As is, sometimes they are, but often they are not. IE, I am playing the Great Britain turn and instead of one of their fleets on top, it is France. Or Norway. Or Russia. Or Poland. Etc.

2) Shouldn't BOTH GErmany and Russia have "up front" common-border requirements? Russia enacted this policy so to illustrate to potential comintern allies that they were strong and serious about their army and their politics. GErmany kept a lot of troops on the border (from conquest of Poland; increasing as 1940 progressed) so that they would not be over-run.

3) When I open the fleet display, there is no indication of WHO the commander might be. As with land and air units. Instead I have to click on the commander tab. Could we have the current fleet commander on the first screen we see?

4) When Vichy France is formed, shouldn't there be a garrison unit placed in each of Algeria and Syria. The AI won't eventually send a garrison. You have to play Vichy yourself in order to get a garrison over there.

5) The cost for "strategic movement" seems rather high, especially for UK. Russia I can certainly see, but UK? If NOTHING else, they had (long-established and dutifully maintained) movement infrastructure from -- well before the beginning of the war. You have to spend a LOT of $$$ to permit UK to strat-move a TAC unit to Egypt, for instance. GErmany can do it easily and without ADDED cost, so why not UK?

6) Algeria covers the ENTIRE area west of Libya. I would suggest a separate country of Morocco. For this reason -- when USA torches north africa, they should be able to count on good supply lines without building a mulberry. Having one city in Morocco (Rik's Place in Casablanca, but of course, as time goes by) would give them a port and city. Ideal, especially if GErmany takes Gibraltar and shuts the Allies out of the western Med.

7) One-hex islands: Perhaps you could add a hex? IOW, place a hex next to Malta. So UK could base planes, for one thing. For another, you would have a landing hex for amphib. History tells us that the Italians -- hesitant as always, though GErmany successfully insisted -- were prepared, and able, to launch an amphib invasion against Malta. For Gibraltar, just place that hex in Spain. I trust Franco would not object? You are Master of this Universe nein?

8) Your "ready for deployment" icon only shows up about HALF the time, if that. Usually it does so for GErmany, but not so often for other nations, and rarely if ever for Minors.

9) Your Greek war event has "33073.1" as one of the 2 choices.

10) Auto Convoys need tweaking -- when GErmany invades Norway and secures port of Oslo, the program seems quite reluctant to send a convoy there. I have to over-ride by turning off auto convoy.

11) Italy or GErmany cannot declare war on Vichy France? In my game I have not been using Diplomacy, so each nation has a HUGE amount of DP's by late 1941. Which is when I tried to get Italy to DoW Algeria. Not permitted.

12) Occupying Denmark should ABSOLUTELY (fortress guns, LOTS of GErman mines) keep Allied fleets out of the Baltic Sea. And keep Russian fleets IN. I have seen UK fleets in Baltic well after GErmany takes Denmark. This is so very unlikely that it makes the game seem more in the "fantasy" genre. IMHO.

14) [I don't type out #1*, no more than I would whistle in a graveyard] On we go -- tiny little near-irrelevant IRAQ has entirely too many units available. The PP's from Iraq should be going to Great Britain in a PP-convoy. IDK, could be you are using Iraq as substitute-Commonwealth? So to provide ANZAC and SA and Indian forces (as historical) to Egypt? Well, I don't think this is the best way to do that. You could either set up a new "holding-country" of CW, or you could place CW units using the "in-reserve" feature, to include "event" programming. IE, "ANZAC forces arrive in Egypt."

15) I would INCREASE the range of Fighters by one, and TAC by 2 and SAC by 3. Why? Because, as implemented -- you spend MORE time moving planes around with re-base than you do attacking and defending with them. Too, the AI moves them around too much also. Instead of actually conducting combat with them. Besides, we are talking one MONTH turns. WW2 era planes can fly a long, long way in a month. Speaking of which...

16) Planes are just too vulnerable. To ground attack. I would surely suppose that -- in most instances -- base commanders would KNOW when the enemy is advancing, so they would simply MOVE the planes further to the rear. As is, it is just too easy for any ground unit to completely DESTROY a full formation of planes. In consideration -- usually the air bases had some garrison and/or highly mobile unit nearby. To protect them from partisans and sabotage. I would have, at minimum, a 50/50% chance that planes "auto-rebase" when attacked, and also a minimal defense strength against ground attacks.

17) I would have a "hover function" for all those FLAGS that appear. For instance, when you get the pop-up for convoys. I doubt that most game players have all those flags memorized. Though, should you put this feature in there, they soon enough will! A history lesson.

18) Railroad repair time: presently the default is at "1." According to the Manual, it is THREE (3) turns for repairing captured rail-lines. How about repair= 2 turns?

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Good enuff for now. Yep and yeh, I understand that some of the above can be edited. Well, not eveyone has the inclination to even TRY to use the old or new Editor. They just want to play the game. I guess I am suggesting that the "default game" be adroitly modified.

[Joan d'Arc]

Some of the points raised above effectively kill the game for me. Grand Strategy is not just about fewer counters and hexes representing larger swathes of terrain.

Leaving out some aspects of the real war, make it a complete waste to call it WW2 to begin with.

I usually look for key details in a grand strategy design to tell me if it is not relevant whether the AI is any good or not. No Malta is the same as the game is no good .... at all. It's simple history boys, Rommel lost because if it. The war in the desert was won because of it. This is not an exaggeration, it's blunt inescapable fact. The allies poured all manner of planes into Malta to accomplish this. They lost ship after ship, including precious capital ships like carriers. They lost planes by the bunch. That island was awarded a mass medal the George cross for the sacrifice made on it. No Malta means this game is really not really WW2 enough to spend time fretting over any other design aspect. Other designers have done it, thus it can be done.

I can see the AI being a nuisance with inexplicable play behaviour being something of a bother, but, a game can always be played hotseat even if most wargamers are loathe to play alone as both sides. I've seen the laments in games before lads. But we gamers can't solve design limits that can't be fixed ie terrain details like key missing landmarks that dominated the game. Ireland, Iceland these islands are not negotiable, they influenced the entire war. Lose the war in the Atlantic, and the Allies lose the war.

I was on the fence about this game for a bit, but currently I have climbed back down so to speak. I'm currently back on the not purchasing side. To date the market has been given several grand strategy designs in recent years, some of them very good looking indeed. But there are also several other very fine looking games at other scales of action that likely will gain my cash faster. Fewer game killing gaffes.

It looks like in most cases, the design simply refused to play on a map large enough to detail out the terrain well enough to make small terrain features part of the design. If you need a map 100 units wide to generate an island feature in a size large enough to be included in a confined space, then you don't draw the map 50 units wide and pretend it can be ignored. The only other alternative I can think of, it employ abstract locations such that the island it functionally present in the setting, even if not a drawn feature. Malta was within spitting distance of Sicily. If you need to pretend it is sort of part of a Sicily hex, then you code it to ignore terrain feature unit limitations and you make it so the game can represent both locations as separate.

I know nothing of software code gentlemen, but that is no my problem. I know a great deal about the subject though. And a game that is a sham of a recreation, is not really recreating it the subject. At that point, the game becomes lacking a point. Why call it what it isn't?

[Lion9]

Grand Strategy is not just about fewer counters and hexes representing larger swathes of terrain.

And that's for doggone sure!

I only quote that abbreviated comment for now. Because -- in one short sentence you have -- quite precisely summed up -- what -- it -- takes.

To make something other than a pretty, but finally failing game.

[Long Aside: As Slith Inc did with CEAW, to provide a real-time example. Yeh yeh, as their home-boys always say -- "it is for PBEM play!" All well and good, but that is NOT enough, not close, so -- no smoking stogie! LOL, after all this time there is STILL no simple invasion of North Africa, let alone Italy! Flash-trash is all it actually is. But the home-boys have made a "community mod" don't forget! Uh huh, and the installer has been promised since last December and? That is X-ceptionally fall-to-knees -- laughable. I know this niche-game-maker who -- all by himself, can make and release an installer in -- one day. OK, that's Slith & Matrix for you, never mind, back to the topic wayfarer!]

Glimmer of Hope Department: the new SwiE editor is flawed and has some bugs, yes, it's true, the fault is NOT in the stars, but in you! All that being said -- there is absolutely something (nah, not the blind poet Milton's forlorn cry -- Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here!) that CAN be done with this game. Maybe. Depending.

For just one thing -- and this adheres to your comment as well -- the "events" make it possible to more closely craft an actual WW2 ETO GS game. Trouble being -- the events file is so arcane and poorly explained that it would take Neo Enstein to even understand it! At least, that is the case for me. doomT says it is -- easy. LOL! No it's not.

I think back to Third Reich the board game. All those "variant" chits you could draw out of yer baseball cap. Events and variants. Keep the game fresh and interesting instead of the same-old same-old.

Too, the current editor -- existing in a kind of deep-space black-hole since NOBODY here cares enough to even explain how it works -- DOES provide some... hope. For instance, in my (ongoing, unfinished, mostly due to that LACK of explanation) MOD, I have reached a place where the game IS fun to play. Hotseat. The AI is not very good, to be charitable.

There are indeed many fine features. The whole attack/defend paradigm is good-to-excellent because you can use your "action points" at any time in the turn. Move a unit, leave it, open a gaping whole in the Foe's front-lines, come back to that unit and exploit. That makes for truly complex "maneuvers." Well, it is needed because of no-stacking. Which I like. Nothing worse, to me, than having to constantly examine large stacks of units -- in order to RE-discover my long lost mech unit.

There are more, but I come back to them another time. Enough to say -- now, that much more needs to be done, it all depends on whether the Dev wishes to invest his time in making it happen.

We'll soon enough see, I reckon it.

[Joan d'Arc]

Ok you mention CEAW here so I am confused as to why in the other thread you seemed to not know of it.

Any way, the Third Reich reference, yes, it was done so well in board games, and so much of so many of our computer adaptions seem to be so completely looking like board games on a computer it always mystifies me, why not just steal the ideas from the board games? Subs seem to be a curse to computer wargame designers.

And I have seen the limitations of computer games with very few initial forces (counters) that are always, without fail, set up identically in the same fashion. Is it that hard to design in a variable set up? Some grand strategy games get a bit silly when the player becomes incapable of not knowing where the enemy will be whether hidden or not. True, board games can suffer from 'perfect set up syndrome'. There is really only one way to set up the Poles in Third Reich. And then the German rolls the dice twice hoping to get the magic numbers so he can remove the Poles from the game prompt like. It's a rare game it happens any differently. But there is only so much you can do with something like 7 counters including the airforce. You defend Warsaw, and the German either screws the dice rolls or not, but either way the Poles lose and maybe just maybe the German wins, but with egg on his face.

Grand strategy is likely the hardest to design for simply because you get so few counters, so little mapt to work with, and almost no way to recreate garrisons in vital military locations without a lot of real genius. Squad tactical is idiot simple simply because there is such enormous sums of variables to work with, all that won't really have earth shattering repercussions either way. Win or lose, most battles in ASL won't mean squat to the rest of the war.

Given a choice, of a grand strategy design, that has killer smart AI and no terrain features missing, or someone just shamelessly copying essentially what Steel Panthers was to us, but in modern software, I think you will get more sales from the latter, because I am not sure the former is even really possible to some extent. It's been a long time and many games designers and many games, and I can't actually think of any grand strategy designs at all that feature AI that can actually figure out the naval game.

[JMass]

[Long Aside: As Slith Inc did with CEAW, to provide a real-time example. Yeh yeh, as their home-boys always say -- "it is for PBEM play!" All well and good, but that is NOT enough, not close, so -- no smoking stogie! LOL, after all this time there is STILL no simple invasion of North Africa, let alone Italy! Flash-trash is all it actually is. But the home-boys have made a "community mod" don't forget! Uh huh, and the installer has been promised since last December and? That is X-ceptionally fall-to-knees -- laughable. I know this niche-game-maker who -- all by himself, can make and release an installer in -- one day. OK, that's Slith & Matrix for you, never mind, back to the topic wayfarer!]

CEAW GS 2.1 is available but not the installer, anyway it is easy to manually install. I like it because it is very fun to play.

For just one thing -- and this adheres to your comment as well -- the "events" make it possible to more closely craft an actual WW2 ETO GS game. Trouble being -- the events file is so arcane and poorly explained that it would take Neo Enstein to even understand it! At least, that is the case for me. doomT says it is -- easy. LOL! No it's not.

I am adding some historical events (coup d'etat in Yugoslavia and in Iraq, to begin) and experimenting with half month turns.

[Lion9]

CEAW GS 2.1 is available but not the installer, anyway it is easy to manually install. I like it because it is very fun to play.

Any idea why Slith/Matrix can't get a simple installer made? I can recall reading that it would be available LAST YEAR. Then, it was to be -- Easter. What is today's date? Darn near the dog-days of August (old baseball expression). <puzzled and done run out of patience>

There is no decent AI. They can't seem to program an invasion of North Africa or Italy. The whole Med Theatre is missing in action. Well, I LIKE the Med Theatre. JMO, but Slith threw the thing out there and did not bother to improve the AI. Gathered up their $$$$ and... flew the coop. Sure, I deliberately intend that suggestive metaphor. Well, as mentioned in another thread, I am determined to find and play a good solid WW2 ETO Grand Strategy game. While I still have time. To each their own kind of -- gaming, eh?

I am adding some historical events (coup d'etat in Yugoslavia and in Iraq, to begin) and experimenting with half month turns.

And so, you and Gunga Din are both better men than I. Yep, there are quite likely oh, millions if not billions of men that fit that description, I don't mind.

Could you help me out here JMass? Could you go over to the "mods forum" and POST UP one of your successful "events?" Would be great if you also included some explanation of HOW you managed to get it done? Don't have to do either, that's certain, but boy O boy, I would surely appreciate it! :0

[JMass]

4) When Vichy France is formed, shouldn't there be a garrison unit placed in each of Algeria and Syria. The AI won't eventually send a garrison. You have to play Vichy yourself in order to get a garrison over there.

I found an issue in the event file, two infantry corps and an air unit should be placed when Vichy is created but the file lacks of the correct hexes of placement.

[JMass]

Any idea why Slith/Matrix can't get a simple installer made? I can recall reading that it would be available LAST YEAR. Then, it was to be -- Easter. What is today's date? Darn near the dog-days of August (old baseball expression). <puzzled and done run out of patience>

Because they are overwhelmed with a lot of games and patches releases.

Could you help me out here JMass? Could you go over to the "mods forum" and POST UP one of your successful "events?" Would be great if you also included some explanation of HOW you managed to get it done? Don't have to do either, that's certain, but boy O boy, I would surely appreciate it! :0

I will post them when they will be ready and tested but for explanation I could be too much busy...

[Lion9]

Because they are overwhelmed with a lot of games and patches releases.

Yeh, but like I said, I personally know a Dev who has a larger game, mega-byte wise, who can and HAS completed an installer in ONE DAY. Some can, some can't. Some talk, some do. It's the same old story, a fight for love and glory. Guess it all depends on what is vital and what is not. So be it, I don't care, I'm not going to play CEAW any time soon anyhow.

I will post them when they will be ready and tested but for explanation I could be too much busy...

LOL, OK JMass. Put 'em up when ready. I'll be interested to see HOW you did it; maybe I can learn something new? But, as for explanation, yep, you could be -- too busy, who can know such a thing ahead of time? Greek Oracle? Nostradamus? My friend the local Curandero who rattles chicken-bones in an old used coffee can and pitches them onto the dirt and then tells me why there is not enough rain in the acequias? Forget Global Warming, she ain't got a BIG enough coffee can for that prob. Let me wonder, hmmm, who else could help us here?