WWII wonders

[Grothgar]

Yes again i agree with case, hmm getting to be a habit , that the soviets did have some very good physicists working for them, Igor Kurchatov comes to mind and while the method of results or your dead seems a bit crude it does get results out of people

Nukes should be extremely expensive, and there should be a house rule that you cant buy them right off with money, you should have to build them like they had to do in real life. I mean nowadays you may be able to buy nukes on the market, (One nuke, nukes for sale, perfect christmas present!!) but then you couldnt. So yes im thinking about 500 shield or so

[MagyarCrusader]

Originally posted by techumseh


Exactly. Pretty historical, oui?

As the scenario designer you must compromise between historical accuracy. Of course, I always tend to lean towards the historical accuracy side, just keep in mind that if you have an intense PBEM game going on and all of a sudden somebody gets 'the bomb', you're gonna have some depressed players.

[MagyarCrusader]

What about 'steal technology'? Will that screw up the whole game?

(edit) After actually testing this idea, I find it doesn't work after all. Also, I thought civ specific techs in ToT were protected from being stolen, but they're not. So stealing techs is out.

Why? This is ToT, not FW, so you can have generic technologies appliable to all civs, yet with the extra unit properties you make them civ specific.

[Thoddy]

[SIZE=1] Heresson, while what you say makes sense, it does so only in the context of a Single Player game, in a multiplayer game its, obviously , humans which are playing and thus it will be harder for germany to reach the position it was in real life, i mean check out the TSFE PBEM thread to see what human players can do to a timeline.

For this case the designer should include "Doomsday" events (for instance massive change money events against human player, few turns later, their economy begins to starve, lots of improvements will be sold) to prevent human players to play against the rules.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by MagyarCrusader

As the scenario designer you must compromise between historical accuracy. Of course, I always tend to lean towards the historical accuracy side, just keep in mind that if you have an intense PBEM game going on and all of a sudden somebody gets 'the bomb', you're gonna have some depressed players.

They won't be depressed for long! Seriously, I think it's possible to limit the construction of an A-bomb to someone who has clearly already won.

Why? This is ToT, not FW, so you can have generic technologies appliable to all civs, yet with the extra unit properties you make them civ specific

You can have Civ specific techs that cannot be researched or traded by another civ, but my experiments show they can still be stolen by spies.

Originally posted by Thoddy For this case the designer should include "Doomsday" events (for instance massive change money events against human player, few turns later, their economy begins to starve, lots of improvements will be sold) to prevent human players to play against the rules.

Parallel thinking again! As a PBEM game, it's feasable to make all neutrals Barbarians. How do you allow a (German) human player to attack Poland or Norway, but prevent an American player from blitzing Venezula, Columbia and Peru? Well, fortress units for one thing, but beyond that, consequences - delivered by events.

For example, the American player gets 100 gold/month from the Venezulan oil fields as long as the Neutrals control Caracas. If anyone takes the city, INCLUDING THE AMERICANS, the benefit is permanently lost. It creates a built-in incentive for the Americans to protect South America from others, but refrain from trying to conquer it themselves.

[Thoddy]

Originally posted by techumseh
Its feasable to make all neutrals Barbarians. How do you allow a (German) human player to attack Poland or Norway, but prevent an American player from blitzing Venezula, Columbia and Peru? Well, fortress units for one thing, but beyond that, consequences - delivered by events.

Creating flag units in the affected cities
Neutral(Barbar)Warsaw include the no american, no soviet flag unit So only German player can attack Warsaw without fear.
Neutral Sweden includes the flag units no soviet, no german, no american. so nobody should attack this city.
Neutral cities eastward the Curzon line should include the no germanand no american flagunit. So only soviet player can take these cities. To prevent these cities from being a bufferzone between Germany and the Sovietunion if both played by an Human player you can toggle the event off by june 41. Its easy.

But killing flagunits also affects AI players. So there is a must, to toggle these events off, when a civ was played by an AI to keep the scen playable.

Alternatively you can set flags for capturing cities from somebody.

Next problem ist is historical accuracy. An AI player dont play the script in the expected way. So you should plan alternatively starts to historical events(IF AI wish to start the thing let it happen and toggle the timetriggered event off).

At my WW2 scen I am experimentalising with AI Player identification for selective AI-assistance and variable starts to historical events and most of the time they work in the expected way. But it needs a lot of time to correct teething problems. And I dont have the time.

In my experiments I use first no.no (and untradeable flag)techs as flags because its easier to debug techs than ToT-flags but I had the same problems as techumseh described so I change to flags and new problems.



nuclear research I would use the additional alien research path from the extended original game, this thing is testet and works properly. By an technology at this path you can create a expensive flagunit(first Test) or something in that way.

Via trigger city produktion an some Flags set by researching certain techs and /or some special events they enable the manhattan wonder or create a barbarian atomic bomb(First test fails)if some/any requirements were not fulfilled.

[Heresson]

Make Germans barbarians. Much more correct.

[Mao]

oooooh....extra harsh...beef! beef!

[Henrik]

You might not want to go overboard with "punishments" for the players that don't follow the historical path, historically lots of decisions could've been made differently, make the options one has result in stuff that could've happened rather than just imposing a big penalty on the civ that doesn't follow the historical "path" (for instance I don't see why the americans would lose profit if they conquer those oil fields for themselves).
PBEMs should be a gaming experience, not a movie one (imho no civ scenarios should be but aparently very few agree).
On the other hand for every decision made there is most likely a reason (or several), I'd try to include that reason rather than just punishing people not following the "rules".
Just a thought...

[Heresson]

People never do what You convince them too; people must be forced! That's the only way. For example, in giant and nice Hannibal game, I obviously took the path I was discouraged to take and all the game was ruined. Rome was
destroyed.

[Henrik]

And how is it an MP game is ruined when history is changed?
Would it be fun playing hanibal if you where forced to lose?

[Heresson]

Yes!
No, no, no. Don't get me wrong. People should have a chance to win the game despite the real history, but it should be much less probable than going the history's path.

[The ANZAC]

Originally posted by Heresson
Yes!
No, no, no. Don't get me wrong. People should have a chance to win the game despite the real history, but it should be much less probable than going the history's path.

It's called predestination

[Heresson]

It's called "what Heresson tells You to do and what You wil do"

What's this "ANZAC" btw?

[The ANZAC]

ANZAC- Australia New Zealand Army Corps, an ANZAC is member of it. The ANZACs served in both world wars and I think were disbanded after the second. So there's what they are

BTW many people have asked, but I am not Australia, it just so happens before I made my username I saw the movie Gallipoli

[Heresson]

Aha. Where are You from, then?

[The ANZAC]

new jersey

[Case]

The ANZACs served in both world wars and I think were disbanded after the second

Not quite - Australia and New Zealand enjoy very close relations to this day and when our troops deploy together these contingents are generally called ANZACs (ie 'ANZAC' forces are currently operating together in East Timor)

To be really pedantic, the ANZAC only exhisted during the Galipoli campaign of 1915, the later stages of the WW1 in Europe and in 1940-41 when an ANZAC was formed in North Africa and later Greece.

[The ANZAC]

oh, I thought the ANZACs were in Italy? or is that outside of your pedantic explanation

[Case]

Nah, only the New Zealanders sent troops to Italy [the the form of the 2nd Division] - by that stage of the war the entire Australian army was engaged in fighting Japan, and the only Australians in the European theatre were several thousand members of the air force (including a single fighter squadron which operated in Italy) and various Aussies sprinkled through British and Canadian naval units.

[MagyarCrusader]

They won't be depressed for long! Seriously, I think it's possible to limit the construction of an A-bomb to someone who has clearly already won.

Ah yes! Good point. In a massive scenario, just as any WW2 project, when the tables have clearly turned to someone's favor, it would be a bad thing to have the game drag on while one side gets slowly crushed without any chance. Nukes could bring a sudden, and exhilirating end.

You can have Civ specific techs that cannot be researched or traded by another civ, but my experiments show they can still be stolen by spies.

No no, the point I was trying to make is why would you need civ specific techs?

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Henrik
You might not want to go overboard with "punishments" for the players that don't follow the historical path, historically lots of decisions could've been made differently, make the options one has result in stuff that could've happened rather than just imposing a big penalty on the civ that doesn't follow the historical "path" (for instance I don't see why the americans would lose profit if they conquer those oil fields for themselves).
PBEMs should be a gaming experience, not a movie one (imho no civ scenarios should be but aparently very few agree).
On the other hand for every decision made there is most likely a reason (or several), I'd try to include that reason rather than just punishing people not following the "rules".
Just a thought...

I agree Henrik. You want to keep the alternate options open and limit resulting penalties to within reasonable historical limits. But you also need to recognize that there were negative consequences to attacking any Neutral. It's just in some cases the benefits outweighed the costs. Why did Germany attack Norway, but not Sweden? Or the Allies occupy Reykjavik but not Dublin?

It really comes down to balancing the strategic and economic benefits against the cost. Hopefully the events will give a reasonable choice in each case. At a minimum there will be a one-time financial penalty for each Neutral (barbarian) city conquered.

The Americans received the benefit of the Venezulan oil fields without actually occupying the country, a more advanced and economical state of affairs (Neocolonialism) than traditional colonialism. There was no advantage and possibly a significant disadvantage to the US of attempting a direct conquest of Latin American cities and I want the scenario represent that. (The same with Gemany and Sweden or Britain and Ireland.)

It should also simulate the burden of hemispheric defense on the overall American war effort. I just think it's more interesting to force the US to defend a barbarian controlled South America without creating an advantage for direct conquest.